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When Nick Da Silva started at Virginia Commonwealth University in the fall of 2016, tuition and fees at the Richmond school were $13,130. They’ve increased 10 percent since.

A budget presented by state lawmakers would freeze tuition rates in an effort to help Virginia families and students whose bills continue to grow.

“It’s getting up to the point where it’s just too high,” said Da Silva, a senior political science major. “This is a really good solution.”

The House of Delegates’ budget includes $45.7 million for public colleges to keep tuition at this year’s levels for next year. Tuition at the schools rose nearly 80 percent over the past decade. The freeze is not included in the Senate version or the budget proposed by Gov. Ralph Northam in December.

Tanner Hirschfeld, a third-year student at the University of Virginia, said the proposal was “encouraging,” and hoped colleges would “make the tough decisions to cut their budgets, rather than simply pass the burden off to the students as they have been doing for years now.”

“Colleges need to be responsible with their spending, and the General Assembly needs to ensure that is the case,” said Hirschfeld, a government major from Portsmouth.