NATCHEZ — Legislation recently signed by Gov. Phil Bryant could mean that college will be a little cheaper for some local students.

House Bill 1095 allows Mississippi’s Institutions of Higher Learning to waive the out-of-state tuition fees for some students, meaning that students in communities outside the Mississippi border don’t have to worry about higher tuition if they want to attend college in the state.

Alcorn State University President M. Christopher Brown said the university is excited about the legislation, saying that being able to draw from the population base in Concordia Parish will be a boon for the ASU Natchez Campus.

“I have employees who live in Vidalia whose children don’t come to Alcorn because of the out-of-state tuition differential,” he said.

“The Natchez campus is much closer to Vidalia, Ferriday and some (other) parts of Louisiana than other (colleges). There is a population base that can be drawn there.”

Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, said other states — for example, Alabama — have adopted similar programs. Johnson pointed out that people who attend college in an area are more likely to stay in that area and contribute.

“I look at what Alabama is doing, and we see a sort of an outflux of people from the coastal region going across the region to Mobile, Ala.,” he said.

“It is a way to invest and get people who wouldn’t otherwise be here to be here.”

Sen. Melanie Sojourner, R-Natchez, said those with constituents on the Alabama border originally proposed the legislation, but she saw the potential it could have for the Natchez area.

“As soon as the legislation came forward, it really sparked the interest for us, because some of the rest of us live in border cities that have these IHL (schools),” Sojourner said. “I think we have something to gain. Students have long jumped across the state line, and this is just an added incentive to bring those students from across the river to Natchez at a competitive rate.”

The idea for the tuition waiver was initially brought up in a meeting of IHL presidents, Brown said, and the presidents all endorsed the idea. This doesn’t mean, however, that all out-of-state tuition fees are off the table.

Brown said ASU will likely develop a plan that allows waivers for students who live within a certain radius of the Mississippi border to take advantage of the waiver.

“They did not want to disrupt out-of-state tuition, which is a funding strategy that guarantees that people from Nebraska or Arizona are not benefiting unfairly from the tax burden on the Mississippi taxpayers,” Brown said.

“We have a team of people led by our dean of admissions, provost (and) chief financial officer to figure out what is the proper mile radius that we will propose, that we will consider giving the out of state waiver to — what is the likely geographic distance at which those people are consumers of the state of Mississippi?”

Brown said ASU might consider the waiver for residents or any county or parish that borders Mississippi.