Create A Long-term Plan, Stable Funding
for Public Universities: Tuition is Not the Whole Answer.
By V. Lane Rawlins, President
Washington State University
Public higher education in Washington today is a good value for students, the public interest, and the businesses and industries
that depend on our graduates and our research. Without a long-term plan for development and funding, however, that positive
picture is seriously threatened.
Tuition has traditionally been low in our state, a benefit both to college students and the state's employers. Even today,
resident undergraduate students at Washington State University pay tuition right near the average charged by the 22 public
universities that are considered our peers. These are all land grant universities with veterinary colleges. Peer universities with
similar tuition rates to ours include Purdue, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Virginia Tech and Texas A & M.
Low tuition and good public support have allowed us to create good public universities in our state. In addition to the
opportunities for a great education and the provision of a highly skilled workforce, our universities conduct critical research on
which our economy depends. And we have done it well enough to be among the leaders in the nation.
Recently, however, the trend is to lower taxes, increase expenditures in other areas, and reduce the budgets for higher
education. Now, after a series of reductions and tuition increases that partially offset those changes, the quality of our public
higher education system is threatened by additional cuts, high increases in tuition and no clear plan for the future. Classes may
not be available, programs may be reduced or eliminated, and enrollment will have to be limited. We may even find
accreditation of some of our key programs threatened. And this while students are paying more.
Given the bleak revenue picture for our state, we know that we will have to take some cuts in the short term, even if tuition is
increased. A combination of cuts and tuition increases may be the only short-term defense against threats to our academic
programs.
However, we will strenuously oppose tuition increases of 20-30 percent, as some in higher education and government are
discussing. Students today are already carrying a bigger share of the cost of their education than their predecessors did, paying
42 percent of the cost, up from 33 percent a decade ago.
We must have a long-term plan for the development and funding of public higher education in Washington, in order to serve
the needs of students, employers and the state as a whole. Public higher education is as great a benefit to the state's
corporations, agencies and public schools as it is to individual students, and it must be funded based on that clear
understanding.
Tuition increases are necessary for next year, but tuition is not the whole answer. Continued decline of public support for
higher education would mean that many students could not attend college. Each student who is turned away is a cost to all
Washingtonians.
I urge you to join with me in calling on Governor Locke and the legislature for a long-term plan for funding higher education
in Washington. We should expect a higher education system that provides a strong education for this and future generations of
students and helps create an intellectual and research environment that will keep Washington prosperous.
Our problems are here and now. In the coming year, we and other state universities will lose strong faculty because of a lack
of funding, many students will be turned away from college because the programs are full and serious hardship will be forced
on others because of rising costs. We cannot afford to sacrifice our future in this way.
