JACKSON Miss.—It’s still not clear whether Mississippi’s prepaid college tuition plan will reopen for additional enrollments, or when that might happen.
But if the plan does reopen, price increases of at least 20 percent could be needed to keep the plan afloat.
The board that runs the Mississippi Prepaid Affordable College Tuition plan voted Wednesday to ask actuaries to prepare figures for how much the plan would have to charge in the future to avoid deficits.
The board also voted to explore using income from the state’s unclaimed property program to pay down a projected deficit of at least $82 million in the current plan.
That hole opened because of bad investment performance and higher-than-projected tuition increases. But actuaries have also told the board the plan’s previous design was flawed because it didn’t set aside extra money to cover unforeseen bad events.
The board, at Treasurer Lynn Fitch’s request, has not sold contracts during the last two fall enrollment periods. On Wednesday, Fitch again noted that many other states have shuttered their prepaid tuition plans.
“The flavor across the United States is people are getting out, closing it down,” she said.
