About 14,000 have left GET college savings plan since fall

SEATTLE – Since September, about 14,000 college savers have pulled their money out of Washington’s prepaid tuition program.

Those refunds from the Guaranteed Education Tuition program have totaled more than $285 million, but the program still has more than $2 billion invested in more than 120,000 accounts.

The program has been frozen since August and is not registering new accounts or accepting money into existing accounts except for those on a payment plan. The Legislature decided earlier this year that the prepaid tuition program should reopen and the state should start a more traditional 529 college savings plan as well.

The committee that will manage both programs met in Olympia on Wednesday. They are both expected to open sometime in 2017.