Reeve Hamilton

Gov. Rick Perry on Monday renewed a call for 10 percent of state higher education funding to be based on institutions’ graduation totals. House Higher Ed Chairman Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas, wants to take that proposal even further.

UPDATED: Gov. Rick Perry on Monday proposed requiring public universities to inform incoming students upfront about how much their degrees will cost relative to how long it takes them to graduate.

As with Gov. Rick Perry’s $10,000 degree proposal, his latest call for reducing the price of college — locking in tuition for four years — may prove difficult to implement uniformly in a state as diverse as Texas.

University of Texas at Austin President Bill Powers said he was “heartened” by the statewide discussion on locking in students’ tuition rates for four years, and he called on the state to similarly lock in funding for public universities.

WGU Texas, the state’s online university, and Austin Community College are teaming up to translate the concept of competency-based learning from online to “on ground.”

In the last several days, multiple universities, including two in Texas, have received bomb threats. The different responses highlight the individual nature of each case and raise questions of how best to go about warning a campus.