Lawmakers Push Learning Across State Lines Pilot Program Would Drop In-State, Out-Of-State Distinction In Region

Lines on a map trapped Neil Weber between a university he could get to and one he could more easily afford.

With their home in Coeur d’Alene, and his wife already driving 60 miles to teach in Mullan, Idaho, Weber felt he had two choices.

He could commute 83 miles one-way to attend the University of Idaho, or pay out-of-state costs to attend Eastern Washington University.

He chose Eastern, which costs him $1,500 a year more than it would a Spokane resident, and twice what he would pay to attend UI.

“Eastern, for me, was more accessible than the University of Idaho,” said Weber, 29. But “an arbitrary state boundary shouldn’t decide how much it costs.”

At a time when an information revolution obliterates the significance of many geographic boundaries, Washington lawmakers who agree with Weber hope to wipe out a few more.

Members of the House Higher Education Committee have proposed a bill that would let Weber and other Kootenai and Bonner county residents pay in-state tuition at colleges and universities in Spokane County.

In return, the lawmakers want Idaho legislators to let Spokane residents pay in-state tuition at North Idaho College and other public schools in Kootenai County.

The proposal is a sort of test - a three-year pilot program to treat the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene corridor as one community when it comes to higher education.

It’s an idea some Spokane students, educators and business leaders find intriguing. It would offer consumers more academic choices for less money, could boost flagging enrollment at a besieged Eastern, and could encourage other institutions to invest more in regional programs.

North Idaho educators, meanwhile, are withholding judgment, but Panhandle lawmakers seem as enthused as their Washington counterparts.

“On first blush, I think if it’s done right it’s a win-win situation on both sides of the state line,” said Idaho Sen. Gordon Crow, R-Hayden Lake.

If legislation passes this year or next - and many predict it will in some form - some lawmakers see it as the first step toward complete tuition reciprocity throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Bill sponsor and Washington Rep. Don Carlson, R-Vancouver, chairman of the Higher Education Committee, said he envisions a time when Portland residents could pay in-state tuition at Washington State University, or Moses Lake residents could pay in-state tuition at the University of Idaho.

And that, some of his committee members said, could help provide economic cohesion to an often-Balkanized region.

“Washington, British Columbia, Oregon and Idaho - the area around the Cascade Range - is one economic entity,” said Washington Rep. Al O’Brien, D-Mountlake Terrace. “Eventually, the idea is to have the whole area connected by rail and education and the whole shooting match.”

Specifically, Carlson’s bill would let any resident of Kootenai, Bonner or Spokane counties attend any public college or university in those counties for the cost of in-state tuition. It also would let students use state-sponsored financial-aid packages in either state.

The program would expire in 2001, at which time it could be disbanded or expanded.

“We’d have to see how many students took advantage of it,” said Rep. Renee Radcliff, R-Mukilteo. “If three or four did, it’s probably not worth pursuing. If it’s significant, then we’ll probably look at enlarging it.”

Carlson seized on the idea after discovering southwestern Washington residents who worked in Portland often could not send their children to schools there. Tuition was just too high.

“It seemed wrong, when you consider that 50,000 people cross the bridge to work over there every day,” he said.

Many colleges and universities - including those in the Inland Northwest - offer deals to residents from neighboring states, but they typically are priced between in-state and full out-of-state tuition.

Because Weber, now a junior at Eastern, graduated from NIC’s two-year program, he pays about half of Eastern’s out-of-state tuition. But that’s still nearly double in-state tuition costs.

As more colleges offer courses by computer, state - and even international - borders mean less.

Eastern, for example, offers an art appreciation course by computer in Japan. That makes it hard to explain that “you live in Umatilla, so you have to spend four times as much for this course as you would if you were in Pasco,” said EWU Vice Provost Brian Levin-Stankevich.

Carlson’s committee approved a bill last year to allow reciprocity with Oregon, but Carlson said he yanked it when Oregon declined to pass parallel legislation, fearing an onslaught of Washington students.

This year, Carlson chose the Inland Northwest because it’s a smaller area for monitoring the plan.

Eastern officials were delighted, seeing it as a way to capture more Idaho students.

“In the last five years, we’ve lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 Idaho students as tuition rates have gone up,” said Eastern spokesman George Durry.

That possibility might worry NIC President Ron Bell, who declined to comment on the proposal until he’d had a chance to evaluate its impacts.

But it didn’t worry Sen. Crow.

“We don’t want to siphon all our students out of Idaho,” he said. “But it increases our access to post-secondary education.”

Crow also thought it would provide incentive for NIC and the University of Idaho’s branch campus to increase course offerings to draw more students from Spokane.

And if competition improves academic quality, that could boost the region economically by drawing more businesses, said Tay Conrad, a vice president for business affairs at the Community Colleges of Spokane.

But some fear that in their enthusiasm, Spokane school officials are forgetting why colleges charge out-of-state tuition.

“We don’t want to be educating a bunch of Idaho students at Washington taxpayer expense,” said WSU lobbyist Larry Ganders.

That’s one reason he plans to ask Carlson to include Whitman County and Latah County, Idaho - home of WSU and the University of Idaho - in the pilot project. That would make it more likely that the flow across state lines is roughly the same in both directions, he said.

It’s too soon to know how Ganders’ proposal will fare, but Eastern’s Levin-Stankevich suggested his concern wasn’t legitimate. Additional costs to taxpayers, under either proposal, would be minimal.

“If we added another 500 students, then turned around and said ‘We need another $2 million for a new building,’ that’s one thing,” he said. “But we’re way under existing capacity. Why not fill those empty classroom seats?”

So far, Carlson’s bill has only been heard in the Higher Education Committee. It will be February, at the earliest, before it would even reach the House floor.

But Carlson believes the chances of passage are good.

“I just don’t see a downside,” he said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color); Cross-state schooling