SEATTLE — Gov. Chris Gregoire’s goal of not raising college tuition over the next two years is not sitting well with the leaders of Washington’s universities, who say the proposal fails to recognize the budget problems they face.
A decade ago, state dollars paid about 70 percent of the cost to educate an undergraduate student and tuition covered most of the rest. Those numbers have now flipped.
Most of that change has happened during the past four years, as the Legislature put double-digit tuition increases into the state budget to help make up for decreases in state dollars going to Washington colleges and universities.
By encouraging no tuition increases in her proposed budget for the next biennium while not finding other money for higher education, Gregoire is leaving universities to solve their own financial problems, University of Washington President Michael Young and his colleagues from the state’s four year colleges and universities said.
Young said state government can’t reverse the damage it’s done to Washington’s six, four-year schools just by stopping the cuts that took away half their state money and replaced most of it with higher tuition.
The universities say they have swallowed the rest of the state budget cuts by not filling job openings, putting off maintenance, increasing class sizes, hiring fewer teaching assistants, closing or consolidating programs and not offering competitive salaries to their faculty.
At the same time, Young said UW has used some of the tuition increases to offer more classes and eliminate bottlenecks that make it harder to earn a bachelor’s degree in about four years.
