Debate On Funding Higher Ed Grows Hot Budget Battle Caps Ongoing Argument Over Who Should Pay: Students Or Taxpayers

Someone needs to step up and give more money to state colleges and universities, lawmakers agree.

The clash is over who should pay: college students and their families, or taxpayers.

Unlike many battles shaping up as lawmakers struggle to craft a state budget, this one does not fall along party lines.

On one side stand supporters of a Senate proposal that would limit tuition increases while carving out a niche for colleges in the state budget.

Opposing them are backers of a House plan to push colleges further from the taxpayers’ trough and force students to pay a larger share of their educational costs.

Both sides say this year’s budget debate caps a longsimmering dispute over how higher education should be paid for.

The state House voted 51-43 Wednesday to raise tuition at all state colleges and universities by 10 percent over the next two years. The plan also would take the unprecedented step of allowing each school to impose a surcharge of up to 15 percent a year.

The Senate alternative also would raise tuition by nearly 10 percent over the next two years, but would not allow any additional charges.

More importantly, supporters say, it would tie all future tuition increases to the growth in personal income. And it would link state budget support to the same standard, giving colleges more money without forcing them to raise tuition sky-high.

The two views clashed during budget negotiations between House and Senate leaders last week.

House majority leader Rep. Dale Foreman, R-Wenatchee, said state colleges are a bargain when compared to private ones.

“Our tuition levels are unreasonably low,” Foreman said. “We should raise them to a reasonable level.”

But the House plan could push tuition through the roof, argued Sen. Nita Rinehart, D-Seattle, who chairs the Senate budget committee.

“Look out, because we are going to raise tuition so high that we might as well just fess up and say the state isn’t doing higher education any more. We are privatizing it,” Rinehart said.

“That is a ridiculous statement,” countered Foreman. “Right now the blue collar person is paying hundreds of dollars to send well-to-do children to institutions of higher education.”

Undergraduate students at Washington State University and the University of Washington pay about $2,900 a year. The state pays the rest of a student’s education.

Regional schools such as Eastern Washington University charge students $2,257 a year. Community college students pay about $1,300.

In contrast, resident undergraduate tuition at Gonzaga University - a private school - is about $13,000 a year.

Many families can afford to pay more, argues Rep. Ken Jacobsen, D-Seattle, who voted in favor of the House tuition bill.

“Our universities are being sacrificed on the altar of low tuition,” Jacobsen said.

With moderately higher fees, Jacobsen said, colleges could avoid the sort of budget cuts that led the University of Washington to eliminate several programs earlier this month, including the state’s only Slavic Languages department.

Others want to raise tuition even more.

“I think we should privatize the university system,” said Rep. Gene Goldsmith, R-Ferndale. “Get it out there in the marketplace.”

Because of low tuition, students “loiter” in college for years, Goldsmith said. “I can flip hamburgers at McDonald’s for three months and make enough to pay for an education,” he said.

High tuition destroys the whole point of public schools, contend critics of that approach.

“We are not a private institution, and they should not compare us to a private institution,” said Greg Royer, executive director of budget and planning at WSU.

George Durrie, a lobbyist for EWU, said even though EWU wants the power to control its own tuition rates, the college would rather not raise fees very high.

“We have no incentive to increase tuition precipitously,” Durrie said. “How would that serve us? Students would stop coming.”

In fact, Durrie said Eastern would like to lower tuition for some students.

Tuition went up by 30 percent in the last two years and is now twice what it was 10 years ago.

Meanwhile, the portion of the state budget devoted to higher education has dropped.

In the early 1970s, about 20 percent of the state budget went to colleges and universities. That has dropped to 11.5 percent in the current biennium. The House plan would take it even lower, to 10.6 percent.

Sen. Eugene Prince, R-Thornton, said the state seems to have forgotten the importance of affordable college education.

“We’ve taken it for granted because we are affluent,” said Prince, who backs the Rinehart plan. Prince worries that middle class families will be hit the hardest by high tuition, because they would have to pay more without qualifying for financial aid.