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Editorial: What’s best for students is best for Washington

Thu., May 3, 2012

If Washington maintains its current level of investment in higher education, per capita income will increase $1 per year by 2025.

One dollar. That startling estimate by the Center for Postsecondary and Economic Success underscores again just how vital a highly educated, highly trained workforce will be to Washington’s future, as it will be for every other state and the nation as a whole. A center report, “The Credential Differential,” which was released last week, says 60 percent of workers ages 25 to 64 will have to have a bachelor’s or associates degree, or some kind of certificated post-high school education, to meet 2025 labor market demands.

Only 42.5 percent of Washington workers have those credentials today. In Idaho, only 34.7 percent do. To reach 60 percent, Washington must add 448,000 degrees by 2025, Idaho 191,000. Getting to those levels will require Washington to increase the number of bachelor’s and associates degrees by 4.2 percent per year every year up to 2025. Idaho must attain 6 percent annual growth. By comparison, a report from the Washington Higher Education Funding Task Force released January 2011 called for a 27 percent boost in bachelor’s degrees by 2018 in order to fill the two-thirds of 2020 job openings that will require a postsecondary education.

But we are marching backward.

The Washington Legislature has repeatedly cut higher education budgets that campuses have tried to make up for with a series of double-digit tuition hikes. And despite the openings of branch campuses around Washington to bring education closer to students, Washington continues to rank among the worst states in its capacity to accommodate four-year students, a failing offset in part by the highest graduation rate among the 50 states.

Washington will be in trouble if the situation does not improve. That $1 increase in income says it all.

Vickie Choitz, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy, said companies that need educated workers, and pay the highest wages, are going to locate in states – or countries – that can provide them. If Washington can produce the number of workers recommended by the center, per capita income increases by $1,700.

And while the state will have to raise higher education spending, by 2025 additional revenues from increased economic activity will exceed expenses by $1.4 billion.

Choitz said Washington is fortunate because it is among the states that have a shot at reaching the 60 percent threshold. Some are so far behind they have no chance, and will suffer for it economically. So will the United States, already just 15th-ranked among 34 developed nations for college degrees. At the present rate of investment in higher education, national incomes will increase by all of $14 annually by 2025.

The Center for Law and Social Policy, to clarify, includes the Center for Postsecondary and Economic Success, which is funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The credentials study, with an interactive dashboard for each state that shows the effects of adjusting investment, participation or other factors, can be found at www.clasp.org.>

What that dashboard needs is an amplifier. Maybe more people will listen.