The college has 41 sponsors for the bill by Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, and Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo. \u2013 twice as many as last year\u2019s unsuccessful bill.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s bipartisan. We have more supporters in the House than the Senate, but we have a number of senators considering sponsorship,\u201d Thomas told the Joint Budget Committee during the college\u2019s annual hearing.<\/p>\n
Fort Lewis is one of two colleges in the country to offer free tuition to Native Americans, because of a century-old contract between the state and federal government.<\/p>\n
Colorado will spend $15.3 million on the tuition waiver next year, an increase of $837,000 from this year.<\/p>\n
State legislators balked at the price tag in 2010, but they have supported the college for the last several years, and that didn\u2019t change Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you make a promise, you keep a promise,\u201d said Rep. Cheri Gerou, R-Evergreen. \u201cIt is a credit to your institution and your community that you are keeping that promise on behalf of the state of Colorado.\u201d<\/p>\n
Statewide, Gov. John Hickenlooper\u2019s budget calls for a $100 million increase for colleges and financial aid.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a request for a serious reinvestment in higher education,\u201d said Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia, who is also head of the Department of Higher Education.<\/p>\n
Despite the increase, colleges have borne the brunt of a tough era for the state budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s keep that in context. This is in the face of cuts that dwarf that amount over the last decade,\u201d Garcia said.<\/p>\n
In return for the increased support from the state, Garcia said he has handshake agreements with the leaders of every college to limit next year\u2019s tuition increases to 6 percent or less.<\/p>\n
Many colleges have raised tuition by 9 percent or more each of the last several years as state support dwindled. Several legislators Thursday said they want a stronger guarantee that tuition won\u2019t be raised more than 6 percent next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
college has 41 sponsors for the bill by Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, and Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo. \u2013 twice as many as last year\u2019s unsuccessful bill. \u201cIt\u2019s bipartisan. We have more supporters in the House than the Senate, but we have a number of senators considering sponsorship,\u201d Thomas told the Joint Budget Committee during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-122392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122392"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=122392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}