Olympia Update No.
5 for the 2002 Legislative Session
February 12, 2002
From: Larry Ganders,
WSU Government Relations
925 Plum St. SE - Building 4, P.O. Box 43165, Olympia, WA 98504-3165
For the latest status of legislation affecting WSU
Hopes for a long-term higher education
funding policy this session are dimming
At the scheduled halfway point last week , the 2002 Washington Legislature appeared to give up efforts to achieve a long-term tuition and budget policy for higher education. Most of the bills introduced to deal with tuition in future years are considered dead in the Legislature and fiscal
committee chairs are focusing on the short term, simply setting a one-year tuition rate and a budget cut in the supplemental budget bill.
The state Senate will make public the first legislative budget proposal after the Feb. 21 state revenue forecast, perhaps around Feb. 25. There are rumblings that the Senate budget may cut higher education deeper than the governor's proposed 5 percent cut to Washington State University as legislative staff identify additional shortfalls in the
state budget, a revenue forecast that is expected to be down slightly more, and increased caseloads for social services.
House Appropriations Chair Helen Sommers, D-Seattle, has been outspoken on behalf of higher education and pledges to try to reduce cuts in the House-proposed budget, perhaps to 3 percent. But it is not a certainty that Sommers' Democratic caucus will rally around her commitment to higher education. And there are fears among university advocates that the Senate will cut universities deeper, perhaps in part as a negotiating position with Sommers. WSU has called for the cut to be reduced to 3 percent, flexibility to set tuition
up to 18 percent to make up cuts, and a comprehensive higher education budget policy. If
cuts are to be made up in tuition increases, a five percent cut would require an
18 percent tuition increase.
A letter calling for tuition for the coming year to be set at a maximum of 14.1 percent
higher (which includes a 6.1 percent increase already provided in the biennial budget bill) was fired off Monday by Senate Higher Education Chair Jeannie Kohl Welles and the ranking Republican on the committee, Sen Jim
Horn, R-Mercer Island. But the same letter dismissed any interest in a comprehensive funding policy in this legislative session. "As you know, for nearly a decade there as been no tuition policy in statute for the public institutions of higher education. Rather, tuition rates have been established in the budget - initially by setting the forth the exact amount and currently by allowing local governing boards to set tuition up to a legislatively-established limit," the senators said. "The majority of the committee believes our current fiscal crisis and our short session are not the environment in which to establish long-term tuition policy."
"We believe it is imperative to focus attention on the broader issue of general fund support for public higher education rather than to send a tuition policy bill to the Senate
Ways and Means Committee," the senators said in the letter to Ways and Means
leaders including the chairman, Sen. Lisa Brown, D-Spokane.
Despite no policy, tuition is a growing proportion of Higher Education budgets.
Despite no policy, tuition is a growing proportion of Higher Education budgets.
An analysis provided by Laurie Schaffler, of the state House Office of Program Research, highlights the concerns of students and educators and has been the topic of many legislative hearings. WSU points to the data as evidence that budget cuts to higher education must be minimized this
session. Average state support for higher education institutions was 73 percent of the cost of education in 1991, with student tuition representing 27 percent.
During the decade of no policy, tuition has raised to 45 percent
while the state has trimmed back its support to 55 percent of the cost of
education. There is concern that this legislative session will result in students being asked to pick up a majority of the cost of higher education.
The same trend is true just looking at WSU, where total funding (tuition plus state funds) is flat on a per student basis during the decade.
But tuition is picking up a increasing share of the total (going from 33 percent to well over 40 percent). WSU has called for legislators to establish comparisons or benchmarks to be yardsticks for how much state support is adequate. While state support has waned in most states, benchmarks used internally by WSU indicate that Washington is falling rapidly behind the other states. Comparing with 22 other land grant institutions across the country, Washington State University ranks 21 out of 23 in growth of state funding.
All of this has been aggravated by many years of cutting WSU budgets and adding
enrollments.
Higher Education fiscal discussions thus far have centered on who sets tuition and less on what is the optimum
rate or proportion that tuition should pay. Bills now considered stopped in the legislative session include:
Senate Bill 6707, the governor's tuition bill, giving unlimited tuition setting authority to the regents at WSU in future years. The bill was strongly opposed by the Associated Students of Washington State University and the Washington Student Lobby, who argued
that legislators were more accessible to students than
regents, and therefore should set tuition. WSU supported the bill.
A bill by Sen. Paull Shin,
D-Mukilteo, set tuition at 9.2 percent increase every year (Senate Bill 5736) and had some student support.
Senate Bill 6739, proposed as a discussion document by Sen. Horn,
created a sliding scale for tuition at public colleges and universities, leading to 28 different rates for students attending Washington State University. The rates would be assessed on the basis of each student's family income.
This update is shared by broadcast fax and electronic mail to friends of Washington State University as government developments occur. Contact Kevin Ketchie, WSU Government Relations specialist, 509/335-6292 to be added to the list. Call Larry Ganders at 360-956-2165; From WSU Campuses, Dial 8-2165. E-mail: Ganders@energy.wsu.edu. Contact Jane Yung Dennie
at 360-956-2164. For federal issues, contact Kristi Growdon at 206-219-2424. For state bill status, budget updates, and other government info, visit our web page at
www.olympia.wsu.edu. Improvements have
recently been made in bill status tracking. Just go to our page and click on
"Status" in the left hand column.
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