The state House has introduced a higher education bill that seeks to freeze tuition at the state’s two public higher education systems by increasing their funding. The House’s higher education budget bill increases funding for 2014-2015 by $150 million and gives most of the money to the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system.

Gene Pelowski pulled out his iPad on the first day of session and went straight to YouTube. The incoming Democratic chairman of the House Higher Education Finance and Policy Committee likes to pull up the same video clip for anyone who comes into his office to ask for something: the famous opening scene of the Marx brother’s 1932 movie “Horse Feathers.”