Lawmakers no longer exploring college performance-based funding, financial literacy this session

• Bills to ensure confidentiality of NIL deals and create a last dollar scholarship program at state community colleges did move forward in the House.

Two bills that were being considered by the Mississippi Legislature concerning the way universities and community colleges operate are not expected to move any further in the 2026 session. 

A bill proposing that all Mississippi universities and colleges provide financial literacy to their students, SB 2344, and a separate bill that would have created a performance-based funding model, SB 2523, are no longer working their way through the Legislature. 

The announcement on the two bills came Wednesday during a meeting of the House Universities and Colleges Committee. 

Financial Literacy Bill

House committee Chairman State Rep. Donnie Scoggin (R) said the financial literacy measure is apparently not necessary.

“In talking with the IHL and the community colleges, most of them are already teaching this,” Scoggin explained. “The ones that are not teaching it will be encouraged to do something with that.”

The bill sought to ensure students know how to manage debt by developing skills in budgeting, while gaining knowledge on how to get a loan, use credit, open bank accounts, and save, to name a few. Scoggin added that the Senate agreed with the House to not move the bill forward. 

Performance-based Funding

Earlier in the session, SB 2523 was introduced as a way to create a performance-based state funding model for the Mississippi’s Institutions of Higher Learning, which oversees the state’s eight public universities.

Rep. Scoggin said the decision to cease work on the bill was made because the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems is in the process of developing a new budgeting model for IHL.

“That’s not going to be ready until May or June and at that point then we can look at that and see what’s going to happen,” Scoggin told the committee. “I don’t want to take up a bill that’s going to interfere with them coming up with a funding formula.”

The plan is to revisit the matter during the summer after NCHEMS completes its work and review the funding formula IHL decides to enact.

While he knows buildings and total square footage of each institution will be some of the factors considered in the new formula, Scoggin hopes the graduation rate and other student performance metrics are taken into consideration.

“I do encourage them to make sure it’s performance-based and not just number of students and number of buildings and size of campuses and stuff like that,” Scoggin added.

State Rep. Rob Roberson (R), chairman of the House Education Committee, asked if consolidation of the number of public universities would be part of the budgeting conversation, saying that the state only has 3 million people, but eight universities.

Discussions about the potential need to close or consolidate a few of the underperforming universities in previous sessions were unfruitful. Scoggin responded to Roberson by saying consolidation is not off the table.

“The Speaker has encouraged us to look at everything, and whether that’s an issue then we’ll make that decision and go from there,” Scoggin added. “And also, he wants us to look at community colleges as well, not just IHL.”

At the end of the meeting, Scoggin alerted the committee members that Wednesday’s meeting would be the last in which they would address Senate bills “to my knowledge.”

Other Bills

Several Senate bills did pass out of the committee, such as SB 2522, which creates a last dollar scholarship program for those attending community college and enrolled in training in highly sought after careers.

Another bill, SB 2044, passed, which, among other things, would provide confidentiality in college student athlete’s contracts related compensation received for their name, image and likeness, or NIL.