The Board of Higher Education will ask the Legislature to allow any veteran who attends a North Dakota public college to qualify for resident tuition rates, even if the veteran lives outside the state.

The proposal was among a group of bills approved Tuesday for introduction in the 2009 Legislature, which begins its regular session Jan. 6.

The University of North Dakota had asked for authority to grant waivers to any veteran to bring his or her tuition costs down to rates paid by resident students, said Pat Seaworth, the North Dakota university system's attorney.

Once the idea was explored, college administrators thought it would be best to extend the idea statewide and ask the Legislature to endorse it, Seaworth said.

Laura Glatt, the system's vice chancellor for administrative affairs, said Tuesday that officials were gathering information about the proposal's financial impact.

"The expectation is that, even though we'd be losing some tuition revenues by the reduction in rate, that we would pick up additional veteran enrollments," Glatt said.

Most colleges, Glatt said, "are doing this as a service benefit to veterans, as opposed to a for-profit operation."

During a telephone conference call meeting Tuesday, board members agreed to introduce three other bills at the behest of the University of North Dakota's medical school to address questions raised by an August 2007 performance audit of the school's operations.

One proposal would transform an existing loan fund for medical students into a revolving fund, which would use loan repayments to make other loans and include money from transfers, gifts and interest earnings.

Students at UND's medical school could borrow up to $10,000 annually from the revamped loan fund, an increase from $6,000. First-year medical students would be eligible to tap the fund, and graduates would have six years, rather than five, to repay.

Other measures would overhaul the medical school's advisory board and change outdated language in state law about the school's purpose. A reference to psychiatric scholarships, which the school has not awarded in many years, would be eliminated.

Separately, the board approved the dissolution of the University of North Dakota's School of Communication, which lost its accreditation more than a decade ago and has been plagued by faculty dissension.

Greg Weisenstein, UND's provost and vice president for academic affairs, said the school's faculty and programs will be split among other departments in the university's College of Arts and Sciences.

Students still will get degrees in communications programs, but those courses will be based in other academic departments, Weisenstein said.

Michel Hillman, the university system's vice chancellor for academic and student affairs, said the communication school's tenured faculty would be kept on.

"The academic programs will continue. The permanent faculty will continue. The degree programs will be administered under other, existing departments," Hillman said.

Board member Duaine Espegard of Grand Forks asked whether the breakup would solve faculty conflict problems. More changes may be needed, he said.

"This needs to be resolved. It's kind of been a black eye for a good long time on the University of North Dakota," Espegard said.

College administrators have tried for years to remedy differences among the school's faculty members, Weisenstein told the board.

"We believe that we're going to be able to accomplish a better environment for our students and our faculty by dispersing the faculty from the … current School of Communication to departments that will support the programs that they're receiving," Weisenstein said.

He said most students and faculty have accepted the breakup, and said a Web site had been established to provide information about it.

"We've met with students. We've met with faculty. We've listened to their concerns," Weisenstein said. "We've tried to build the concerns into the reorganization as best we can."