JACKSON, Miss. – The future on Wednesday of the Mississippi Prepaid Affordable College Tuition Plan is still undecided after the board that runs the program met.
That’s the plan that allows parents to prepay their child’s college tuition and lock in current tuition rates but its enrollment has been frozen for the last couple of enrollment periods due to financial issues.
Currently the plan itself has an estimated deficit of over $80 million because of prices being set too low at the onset of the program and those prices not rising accordingly with other costs.
“The contracts were not priced consistently over the years nor were they moved up,” said state Treasurer Lynn Fitch.
In essence the plan had been paying out more than it took in even with investments.
If it’s to be reopened in the future a price increase for people who enroll will have to happen.
“They’ll have to be at least 25 to 30 percent higher,” Fitch said.
She related that kind of pricing could be too high for many people to join MPACT.
Currently the board has passed a motion to let actuaries crunch the numbers and see exactly what kind of pricing change would need to occur before they decide the fate of the MPACT moving forward.
