Tuition boosted at Louisiana colleges - MELINDA DESLATTE, Business Week

When students return to Louisiana's public colleges this month, they'll be slapped with larger bills, hundreds of dollars in tuition increases even as family budgets have tightened. Tuition is going up between 8 percent and 10 percent at all four-year campuses and two-year community colleges, under a newly passed law that allows the fee hikes in exchange for promises of improved performance. College leaders have said the tuition increases are needed to help offset more than $250 million in cuts that have stripped state funding from the campuses in the last two years and to cope with another $300 million in reductions expected to be levied upon them in a year.