The state’s five public universities and The Evergreen State College will set their own undergraduate tuition under a bill that passed the Senate on Tuesday and is expected to be signed by the governor. Read the Seattle Times story.

Legislators appear to have reached agreement on allowing the state’s public universities to set undergraduate resident tuition for the next four years. The bill, House Bill 1795, also would permit institutions to charge more for higher-cost degree programs.

With the legislative houses several hundred million dollars apart on a final biennial budget, and the official end of the session coming this week, a special session is all but certain. Dozens of important fiscal and policy bills also await action. Read an update from Olympia here.

House Bill 1795, which is before the House Ways & Means Committee, “attempts to help our state’s two and four year institutions of higher education manage their way through this Great Recession,” according to its sponsor, Rep. Reuven Carlyle.

The bill gives institutions of higher education four years of tuition setting authority to help offset the dramatic cuts to their base state budget. Also according to Carlyle, “it moves from an input to an output based system of funding with genuine accountability for degree production and not merely student enrollments.” The bill also would provide financial aid for the middle class, what he calls “largest expansion of financial aid for the middle class in state history.”

Read more about the bill on Rep. Carlyle’s blog.



“It is discouraging to see half of the state’s appropriation for the UW disappear in the space of two biennia. On the one hand, we are grateful that the House budget writers recognize the links among tuition, state funds, and financial aid. When the state does not have the funds to support higher education, raising tuition and preserving the state need grant are mechanisms by which we can try to maintain excellence and access. However, it is disappointing that the dramatic shift in who pays for higher education in our state continues and that students will bear an even greater proportion of the costs for education. While it may enable us to weather this storm, it is certainly not a viable long-term strategy. We need a different model for funding the university.”

The recent decline in the state’s tax revenue projections leaves higher education especially vulnerable, according to the editorial page of the Tacoma News Tribune.  “… destroying college opportunity is like selling the children to pay the groceries.”

Higher education is at a crossroads. The recession has led to dramatic cuts in higher education funding. To prevent further cuts, “the alumni of the University of Washington, Washington State University and Western Washington University have come together like never before and are raising their voices to call attention to the challenges facing higher education and the need for the Legislature to step in and save our universities,” write the presidents of the three alumni associations.

Unfortunately, on this St. Patrick’s Day, the state’s revenue forecast has the state seeing more red than green.

For more detail on what the numbers mean for the UW and the state, visit the OPB blog here.

The editorial boards of the state’s largest newspapers have commented recently on the crisis in higher education.

The Walla Walla Union Bulletin (editorial not available online) commented March 3, “Higher education in Washington state isn’t getting the respect it deserves nor the cash it needs from state lawmakers…. Lawmakers need to accept their responsibility as stewards of state-owned schools and make sure they are adequately funded and remain affordable.”

The Wenatchee World commented March 2, noting that the proposed budget cuts will mean loss of staff, higher tuition, and longer time to earn a degree. “We have engineered our budgets and are designing a system where acquisition of knowledge beyond the 12th grade is an unsupportable luxury. Avoidable or not, we will regret it.”

The Olympian editorial board on March 1called for the legislature to grant more tuition flexibility to the state’s universities in order to help them offset impending budget cutbacks, “As distasteful as the bills might be to students and their parents – the original legislation acknowledges that the state is not funding higher education at an appropriate level and if they hope to continue to serve as public institutions, colleges and universities need flexibility to make up budget shortfalls with higher tuition. It’s not ideal, but it is fair and equitable.”

The Seattle Times on Feb. 20 said “…the Legislature must get behind a road map charting a better course for universities struggling to pay for the level of access and academic quality state residents expect.”

In a Feb. 19 editorial, the Spokane Spokesman Review said, “Our leaders are great at selling the value of higher education and its importance to the overall health of national, state and local economies, but they fail in keeping the doors of public institutions propped open to qualified students. In fact, the rhetoric seems to rise in inverse proportion to the investment.”

The Tacoma News Tribune on Jan. 30 commented on the connection between higher education and jobs in Washington, “The Legislature this year doesn’t have the money to preserve college opportunity in Washington. It should at least get out of the way and let the universities do it themselves.”



In the midst of a challenging legislative session, it’s always great to get reminders that the UW community is full of amazing people doing remarkable things.

For a daily dose of Husky goodness, check out this video from UW Bothell.

Have your own example?  Send it over to me at mshep@uw.edu.

The Olympian newspaper, in an editorial, calls for giving the state’s universities the flexibility to make up budget shortfalls with higher tuition. The editorial points out that current proposals, if enacted, could mean that state funding of the UW has been cut by half in just three years.

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