WSU raises tuition, keeping university the most expensive public school in the state as enrollment falls

Washington State University students will be asked to pay more next year for an education that already is the most expensive among the state’s public colleges.

The WSU board of regents, tasked by the governor to oversee the state’s land-grant institution, voted Friday to increase tuition for the 2026-27 academic year by 3.3% for all undergraduate and graduate students.

Friday’s vote marks the tenth increase since the 2016-17 school year, and the third year in a row the regents have increased tuition by the state-allotted maximum.

A Washington resident completing an undergraduate degree at WSU can expect to pay an estimated $13,888 in tuition and fees for the current school year, with $11,678 attributed to tuition. The 3.3% increase will cost those students an additional $385 next year, while their out-of-state counterparts will face a $950 increase.

Resident graduate students and nonresident graduate students will see increases of $445 and $978.

WSU students already paid the highest mandatory tuition and fees at any Washington state school, although exact costs can differ based on degree, classes or education setting.

Regent Howard Wright, chair of the board’s finance and administration committee, said several community members reached out about the proposed increase ahead of Friday’s vote. Several “robust discussions” were had as the regents considered it – which comes at a time of widespread economic anxiety and shakeups in higher education tied to state and federal policies.

“I was deeply moved by the passion and the expression of strong feelings about this subject, and I balanced that also with what I consider to be my, speaking for myself, fiduciary responsibility as a regent and the financial stability and future of our institution,” Wright said. “And some of these decisions are difficult, challenging, or some may be painful.”

The fees portion of a student’s mandatory costs may also increase next year, depending on the needs and desires of various student groups. While the regents set tuition rates independently, the fees are linked to student groups and must be approved after discussions with the board.

The allotted tuition increase rate is set by the Washington state Office of Financial Management. State law tasks the office with calculating the percentage increases to tuition at higher education institutions in the state based on the average of the median statewide wages during the past 14 years.

Student Regent Amina Hussein was the lone vote against the increase, citing a desire not to take the full allotted increase by the university’s student government. The seven presidents of the student associations for the Pullman, Tri-Cities, Everett, Vancouver, Global and Spokane campuses, as well as graduate and professional students, wrote a letter to the board advocating for a 2.8% increase, instead.

The letter stresses the growing cost of living for students, the importance of keeping higher education affordable and accessible, and notes WSU’s status as a land-grant institution. The increase, it says, would be an additional burden for students already struggling and could deter prospective students, hurting enrollment numbers that have been on the decline since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Washington State University upholds its core values rooted in the land grant ideals,” the letter reads. “It is imperative to remind the institution that the proposed tuition increases pose a potential barrier to these very ideals.

Access to education, a cornerstone of these land-grant principles, is at risk when financial burdens on students are heightened.”

In proposing the increase earlier this year, WSU officials cited the financial challenges with which the university, and by extension its students, are currently contending.

Leslie Brunelli, the university’s executive vice president for finance and administration and chief financial officer, pointed first to 2015 changes to how the Washington Legislature appropriates funds to the state’s higher education institutions.

Prior to the change, the state covered maintenance needs, associated rising costs and compensation increases, and the universities had agency over revenues from tuition increases.

State lawmakers now use expected tuition revenues as part of their calculus for biannual appropriations, meaning that agency over tuition revenues was stripped. It’s now assumed that tuition is available to cover things like cost of living adjustments and maintenance needs.

Further complicating the equation for WSU’s biennium budget is a 1.5% cut in funding, or $9.9 million, compared to the 2023 through 2025 allotment. As the state is facing a multibillion-dollar shortfall, the Legislature made funding cuts to a number of public institutions.

Last budgeting cycle, the state provided 66 cents of every dollar WSU said it needed, Brunelli said. The state now only provides 56 cents of every dollar, leaving WSU to pull more money from students.

“As they widen that fund split, we have a bigger gap to fill in,” Brunelli said.

That gap may have grown even wider than state lawmakers anticipated, since they use enrollment data gathered every two years. WSU’s enrollment numbers have been falling since the pandemic, from a record-high systemwide enrollment of more than 31,600 in fall 2019 to 25,477 this year.

“It’s just an interesting, complex problem that we have,” Brunelli said, “that the state is, at the end of the day, expecting us to raise our tuition rates because they are not filling in all the gaps that we have.”