2025 · Regular session · House bill
HB300
HB300 expands the Texas Armed Services Scholarship Program beginning with the 2025–2026 academic year.
Official caption: Relating to the Texas Armed Services Scholarship Program.
Official report lists House author(s): Wilson. This does not identify sponsors or amendment drafters.
Bill explanation published · Version and amendment review scope is stated below · Individual amendment records may not be separately annotated.
Bill highlights
Selected points from the published explanation. Follow each point to its source-linked context; conditions and limits may matter.
- HB300 expands the Texas Armed Services Scholarship Program beginning with the 2025–2026 academic year.
- Students must attend a Texas public or private college, receive an appointment and sign the required agreement.
- The governor and lieutenant governor must each appoint two students and two alternates annually; each legislator must appoint one student and one alternate.
What does it do?
HB300 expands the Texas Armed Services Scholarship Program beginning with the 2025–2026 academic year. The annual award formula replaces the old $15,000 figure with the greater of $30,000 or the average cost of attendance determined under Higher Education Coordinating Board rules. But the award is still limited to the amount available per scholarship from appropriations: this is not an unconditional $30,000 payment. The governor signed the law and it took effect June 20, 2025. Final law · Official history
Students must attend a Texas public or private college, receive an appointment and sign the required agreement. The law accommodates students currently in an eligible officer-training program, those who provide proof of successful completion, and those who provide proof of acceptance into the Texas State Guard officer-commissioning program. It replaces the old 150-credit-hour/bachelor’s-degree cutoff with a maximum of four scholarship academic years, and deletes the specific reduction for combined scholarship and military-contract payments exceeding attendance costs. It does not remove the agreement’s graduation deadline, academic-progress requirements or post-graduation military-service obligations. Eligibility, agreements and limits: sections 2–4
The governor and lieutenant governor must each appoint two students and two alternates annually; each legislator must appoint one student and one alternate. Legislators have a September 30 deadline, after which the relevant chamber leader must promptly fill the vacancy or designate a member to do so. The board must designate an employee to help recipients coordinate with colleges and military personnel. It must adopt repayment exemptions for obligations unmet solely because of physical inability or extraordinary circumstances outside the student’s control, and reinstate an erroneously removed recipient who is still enrolled. These are conditional protections, not blanket debt forgiveness. Sections 2, 3 and 5
What changed along the way?
The introduced bill already proposed higher awards, recognition of previous training or State Guard acceptance, four academic years of awards, appointment deadlines and a coordinator. The House substitute clarified required proof, made annual appointments mandatory, allowed chamber leaders to designate another member to fill a vacancy, and added extraordinary-circumstance repayment relief and erroneous-removal reinstatement. The House-passed text retained those changes. Introduced text · House substitute · House-passed text
The sole indexed floor amendment, Senator Hancock’s adopted amendment, removed the section raising the scholarship amount. The House refused to accept that Senate change. The conference agreement restored the House’s award formula; its section-by-section comparison says the other provisions were the same. Both chambers adopted the conference report, and the increase is in the enacted law. Do not read the Senate amendment—or the Senate committee text before that amendment—as the final result. Amendment index · Hancock amendment · Conference report and comparison · All versions
For the full amendment record, open the official amendment index.
Official bill versions
Compare the published text versions in the official text index. A change is not attributed to a specific amendment here without a verified record.
Who could benefit—and who could bear the costs?
Eligible students could receive more financial help, broader recognition of previous officer training, a named administrative contact and relief from repayment in qualifying circumstances. Military organizations could benefit if the changes help recruit and retain people who complete the required service. Those are potential benefits, not measured results. Recipients still risk repayment for unmet academic or service commitments unless an applicable exemption protects them. Final requirements
The final conference fiscal note estimated an additional General Revenue cost of $6,070,630 over fiscal years 2026–2027, or $3,035,315 each year, assuming the maximum 185 new participants annually. It projected the same annual cost through 2030 and no significant local-government impact. The note expressly says HB300 makes no appropriation. These estimates are not proof that those amounts were appropriated or spent, or that every student receives the maximum. The temporary Senate version had a no-significant-state-cost estimate because the award increase had been removed; that is not the final fiscal estimate. Final fiscal note · Senate-stage fiscal note
Official sources
- Bill history and latest recorded action
- Bill versions, analyses and fiscal notes
- Action history and votes
- Amendment index
Catalog report retrieved 2026-10-25. Check the official record for corrections or later changes.