LAWMAKER PROPOSES CHANGE TO ALLOCATION OF BLINN FUNDING

  

If a Brazos County lawmaker gets his way, most of the state funding for Blinn College would head to its campus in Bryan.

State Rep. John Raney has filed House Bill 1903 which would drastically alter how Blinn’s state funds are distributed.

According to Raney’s bill, funding would be based on the number of student contact hours on Blinn’s campuses.

Blinn’s Bryan campus will have an estimated 2.3-million contact hours for this current spring semester, while the Brenham campus will have just under 490,000.

Blinn’s Bryan campus is the largest in its system, with over 12,000 students enrolled for the spring semester, compared to 2,230 on the Brenham campus.

State funding is currently determined by contact hours, or the number of time students spend with their instructors, but that money is currently not allocated by campuses.

Under Rainey’s bill, Blinn would have to direct a proportionate amount of the total funds the district receives based on contact hours to each district campus, based on the percentage of the total amount of tuition and fees collected at that campus.

If passed, the allocation requirement would begin with the state fiscal biennium ending Aug. 31, 2017.