Big changes are in the works for parents who save for college through Illinois’ Bright Start Savings  plan. Outgoing state treasurer Judy Baar Topinka announced last month that the state will switch managers for the plan, moving from Legg Mason to Oppenheimer Funds.   Oppenheimer’s news release has few specifics about what it will offer, other than to say it will have both index funds and actively managed funds and will cut expenses by 40 percent.

Topinka, though, says the Oppenheimer program will have the lowest fees of any state college plan in the nation. She says Oppenheimer’s index funds will have annual expenses of between 0.14% and 0.25%, and that account holders will also pay a  $10 annual fee. Topinka says a Utah plan, run by Vanguard funds, is currently the cheapest. It  charges 0.275% to 0.391% in expenses, plus a $25 annual fee.

(The Vanguard plan that Missouri adopted last year will have expenses of 0.62 percent, but no annual account fee.)

One could ask why getting lower-cost accounts took so long — Legg Mason had been charging 0.99 percent annually — but it is good to see state officials driving a hard bargain on fees.