This afternoon the House Higher Education Committee moved some legislation forward for further consideration.

The Committee took action on three bills:

House Bill 1522 would require collaboration among higher education institutions and state agencies to increase the number of students who receive credit for prior learning and increase the types of credits awarded for prior learning.

The bill was amended in three ways: (1) Adds a focus on quality of prior learning assessments in addition to increasing quantity of credits awarded under the goals for the Work Group; (2) Emphasizing improvement and not consistency for one of the work group goals to avoid any potential for standardization of practices that do not fit with an institution’s mission; and (3) Requiring the HECB to staff the prior learning work group instead of the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges.

The bill passed out of committee.

House Bill 1089  prohibits an institution that provides a specialized format version of instructional material to a student with a print access disability from requiring the return of the material.

The bill was amended to allow institutions to require the return of the specialized format materials that were transcribed or translated at the expense of the institution where the cost of making a reproduction of the translation or transcription is more than 100 dollars.

The bill was passed out of committee.

House Bill 1425 removes responsibility from the Higher Education Coordinating Board for: (1) developing evaluation and performance measures in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the programs in a Health Sciences and Services Authority; and (2) reporting to the Legislature on a biennial basis.

The bill passed out of committee.

The Committee also held a public hearing on HB 1586 and HB 1650.  The Evergreen State College signed-in to support HB 1650.

House Bill 1650 allows part-time students who are accepted for enrollment for at least three credits to be eligible for the State Need Grant, by removing the pilot status of the program and the expiration date and restores child support payments in computations of financial need for part-time students applying for the State Need Grant.

Finally, the Committee held a work session on the Governor’s proposed budget and tuition setting and the Community and Technical Colleges’ Student Achievement Initiative.

The House Higher Education Committee will meet again on Wednesday at 8:00 a.m.