Private colleges lobby to restore cuts to financial aid amid Washington state budget crunch

OLYMPIA – When Jack Kashork was a Ferris High School student, he said he “looked all over the country” trying to decide where to go to college.

He took Running Start courses in high school because he was motivated to stay in either Oregon or Washington due to the ease in transferring the credits he earned . As he narrowed his options, he chose Gonzaga University in part due to its proximity and smaller class sizes, as well as its alignment with his values.

Following a meeting with a financial aid counselor, though, Kashork said the university “wasn’t looking like it was going to be an option.”

The Washington College Grant is given by the state to students from low- and middle-income families. Once Kashork qualified for it, Gonzaga provided additional aid equal to five times the grant.

“So that’s made all of the difference in my ability to attend Gonzaga,” Kashork said.

That state grant program has been the subject of cuts by the Legislature as it wrestles with a multibillion-dollar budget deficit. State lawmakers opted last year to cut the amount of money for 7,000 students enrolled at private colleges through both the College Grant and College Bound Scholarship programs. Students attending public universities, such as Eastern Washington University and Washington State University, were not affected.

The cuts mean the maximum amount students at private universities can receive through the Washington College Grant was reduced by a third, while the maximum amount students could receive from the College Bound Scholarship was cut by half when compared to those offered at public universities.

The cuts will take effect in the 2026-27 school year for the Washington College Grant and in the 2027-28 school year for the College Bound Scholarship.

Faced with another deficit, some argue the state should focus on funding public universities.

Private colleges say the cuts mean it will be more challenging to pay for college, and reduce the likelihood that students choose those schools in the future.

“Moving forward, that will impact hundreds, hundreds of our students for whom Whitworth is the very best place for them to go to school geographically, programmatically, relationally,” Whitworth President Scott McQuilkin said. “To take our students from what was $9,700 to $6,000 on that Washington College Grant, that is a gap that just no institution or family will be able to fill.”

Vernon Glass, a student at Whitworth University, said a letter he received in middle school notifying him of the college bound scholarship served as motivation to pursue a college education.

“My whole mindset as a senior in high school was ‘If you can’t pay for it, it’s probably not for you,’ ” Glass said.

Kashork said he “can’t count the number of friends” who receive funding through the programs.

“And whose educations are made possible by those two financial aid programs,” Kashork said. “And those programs enabled them to choose a university that aligned with their values.”

Gonzaga University President Katia Passerini said in an interview that the school’s board of trustees has authorized $4.5 million in funding to cover the difference for 800 affected students currently at the university. But, she said, not every university can afford to do so and the school won’t be able to continue to do so going forward.

“It’s a disproportionate impact on students’ choice, and also the students who are the most vulnerable,” Passerini said.

Last week, Passerini and Kashork traveled to Olympia to lobby state officials to restore the funding to private institutions.

“If you want to make decisions of prioritizing aid, you do so on the basis of institutions, institutional efficiencies. Those are things that to some extent, might be understandable,” Passerini said. “But at the level of individual students, it’s really telling them that ‘you cannot go to this school or this other school.’ ”

Lawmakers are considering legislation that would restore funding for both programs. The proposal cleared the Senate Higher Education Committee on Jan. 22 and is awaiting action in the Ways and Means Committee. A fiscal note shows it would cost about $17 million a year to restore the funding to students at private universities.

“We have support from both sides of the aisle, for sure, and what we’re hoping is to build enough of a coalition so that that restoration can be done,” McQuilkin said.

Sponsor T’wina Nobles, D-Fircrest, a graduate of the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, said during a Jan. 15 committee hearing that “we go to these college campuses because we want an education like anyone else.”

“I am asking this Legislature, which includes me, to reinstate these funds so that students who did not have the means, like I did at the time, students who are first in their family to go to college, students who just freaking want to make a difference, can do so without barriers,” Nobles said. “We are not less deserving. We are not on those campuses to deal with bureaucratic politics.”

Still, faced with an approximately $2.3 billion budget deficit this year, it remains unclear whether legislators support restoring the funds.

During a media availability on Tuesday, House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon, D-Seattle, said it’s “too early to say” what cuts from last year lawmakers would reconsider.

“There are many reductions to higher ed, and more broadly, that we have caucus members who would like to reverse,” Fitzgibbon said.

Fitzgibbon said the funding “falls into the constellation of difficult decisions” lawmakers will make in the coming weeks.

Senate Minority Leader John Braun, R-Centralia, said Tuesday that while Senate Republicans have not talked specifically about the legislation, he believed “broadly, our caucus is supportive of expanding College Bound to the private universities.”

“It’s one of the best values for the state, when you look at all of the money, how we get our students through a four-year baccalaureate degree, in particular,” Braun said. “I think we’d be supportive, but it’d need to be done thoughtfully, and in a budget process that doesn’t rely on new taxes.

The proposal has received pushback from the state’s public universities, which faced their own funding cuts last year and in the governor’s proposed budget. In December, Gov. Bob Ferguson proposed a 3% cut to Washington State University and the University of Washington and a 1.5% cut to regional universities and community colleges.

Samuel Ligon, faculty legislative representative at Eastern Washington University, told the committee that he understands why the private universities would like their funding restored, and he “feels the same way.”

“Unfortunately, there is no bill yet seeking to restore funding cuts to the state’s own universities, whose very purpose is to serve the state,” Ligon said. “Independents serve the state, too, but that’s not why they exist.”

Ligon told the committee that private universities also don’t face the same constraints as the state’s public universities.

“Privates can charge any tuition they want. Whether it’s $54,000 a year at PLU, $56,000 at Gonzaga, or $66,000 at Whitman,” Ligon said. “Public university tuition is capped. EWU charges a fraction of most privates, around $8,500 a year.”

Bidisha Biswas, faculty legislative representative at Western Washington University, expressed similar concerns.

“This is a year when our state faces significant budgetary challenges and public institutions, like mine and others, are being asked to make painful cuts that significantly impact the services that we can offer to our students,” Biswas said. “At such a time, increasing public funding support for private institutions is not in the best interest of our state.”

Passerini said the pushback is one she hears frequently.

“Our employees pay taxes,” Passerini said. “I want to be clear that it’s not like we’re not contributing.”