On Monday, March 19 the Washington Senate Majority Coalition Caucus, http://majoritycoalitioncaucus.org/ released its plan to support higher education in the 2013-15 budget, after several years of deep budget cuts and rising tuition.

You can read more about it here: http://src.wastateleg.org/majority-coalition-caucus-introduces-plan-to-reduce-tuition-by-3-percent-increase-funding-for-higher-ed-by-10-percent/

This is a very welcome development as the economic recession and other budget priorities resulted in hundreds of millions cut from the higher education budget.  Colleges and universities were given authority to control tuition for resident undergraduates.  They indeed used that authority to its maximum.  Tuition rose to the point where it costs $11,700 in tuition and fees to attend Univ. of Washington annually to $4000 in tuition and fees for the state’s community colleges.

The level of state funding for higher education has dropped to just over 1/3 of the total cost, compared to state support of about 2/3 15 years ago.  The higher education budget simply has not kept up with K-12, health care and social services/corrections.

The details of the Senate Majority Caucus plan will be known once the budget is released but the plan calls for a ten percent funding increase of $300 million to $3 billion for the 2013-15 biennium, expanding the state’s primary financial aid program, the state need grant, 7 percent to serve 4600 more students and $50 million for “performance funding” that includes hitting targets for STEM degree production.

There are the inevitable calls for “how do we pay for it?” but with the state poised to collect $32.5 billion in the next two years, a sizable amount of tax revenue will be available to pay for the state’s obligations.

Once the state Senate passes it budget, the House of Representatives will unveil its budget.  It remains to be seen what their version of the higher education budget will look like.  We will report on it once it becomes available.

 

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