OLYMPIA – Gov. Gary Locke’s new budget calls for a major expansion of higher education enrollment and scholarships – but it takes higher taxes and large tuition increases to pull it off.
The lame-duck Democratic governor, who calls higher education a surefire way to boost the economy and assure a bright future for the state, said last week that a no-new-taxes approach would require an enrollment freeze.
The need is getting critical, he said.
Some colleges already are turning away qualified applicants and some community college graduates are having trouble getting into a four-year university to complete their degrees, Locke said. But an even larger problem looms in a few short years, when tens of thousands of new students will be pounding on the door, he said.
His proposal is for 7,100 new enrollment slots, some reserved for high-demand, high-cost fields such as nursing, computer sciences and engineering.
The increase, with a price tag of $74 million, would bring Washington’s annual enrollment to about 220,000.
The governor’s $2.9 billion proposal also:
* Expands financial aid, including need grants.
* Expands the Promise Scholarship program, boosting the grant to about $1,200 a year and offering it to more students – those from among the top 20 percent of each high school graduating class, up from 15 percent. The scholarships, now equal to about half the cost of community college, would cover 75 percent of tuition. They can be used at any public or private college in the state.
* Assumes tuition increases of 5 percent per year for in-state undergraduates. The Locke budget also would allow institutions to add up to 4 percent more each year, meaning the total increase could total 18 percent over the two years, generating up to $130 million.
* Boosts research grants by $5 million, hoping to leverage federal and private grants in technology and other fields.
* Expands adult basic education and worker retraining by $5 million each.
The additional enrollment slots and other improvements depend on raising taxes, at least in Locke’s view.
There’s no consensus in the Legislature, though.
The Senate’s new education leader, Rosemary McAuliffe, D-Bothell, agreed with the governor’s contention that education improvements will hinge on the Legislature’s willingness to find new revenue. But she said the exact makeup of the higher education budget and the revenue package are very much up in the air.
“We do need to invest in our institutions of higher education,” she said. “We face our largest high school graduating class in history in 2008, plus more and more people are going back for job training and retraining.”
Republicans, meanwhile, said it’s wrong to hold higher education improvements hostage to a tax increase. Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, the senior Republican budget-writer, said Locke seemed to purposely write a no-new-tax version that hit higher education and other popular items to try to generate support for higher taxes.
The Legislature can produce a good budget for higher education, including additional enrollment slots, without boosting taxes, he insisted.
College advocates are watching closely as lawmakers write the new two-year budget.
Waves of new students already are arriving, and colleges are taking some on an overload basis, said Terry Teale, director of the Council of Presidents of the four-year universities.
“It’s one of those things that as a state, we have to decide: How many students are we going to serve and how will we pay for it? We’re dealing with both capacity and quality.”
The Locke budget includes $696 million in General Fund support for the University of Washington and its Tacoma and Bothell campuses, up from $637 million this biennium. Counting all funds, including tuition and grants, the total is $3.79 billion.
Washington State University, including its campuses at Spokane, Tri-Cities and Vancouver, would get $429.7 million, up from $375.6 million.
Eastern Washington University in Cheney would rise to $99.5 million from $83.3 million.
Western Washington University in Bellingham, would increase to $126.9 million, up from $109.6 million.
The Evergreen State College in Olympia is pegged for $53.7 million, up from $46.8 million.
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