Legislators balk at tuition hikes

By David Ammons

Associated Press

OLYMPIA — Tuition at state-run colleges and universities will soar this fall as a way to help cover budget cuts, but lawmakers are balking at Gov. Gary Locke’s request for unlimited increases.

Tuition increases of 12 to 14 percent now appear likely, even as state appropriations are cut and scheduled fall enrollment increases are in jeopardy.

Locke asked the Legislature to give college trustees unlimited authority to boost tuition as a way to make up for most of the $54 million he proposes cutting from the higher education budget. The state has a budget hole of at least $1.2 billion.

The House budget staff says tuition increases of between 18 percent and 23 percent would be required to fully make up for the governor’s budget cuts. That includes the 6.1 percent already authorized in the state budget for the academic year that begins this fall.

Both House and Senate higher education committees have killed the governor’s request for broad tuition-setting authority for college trustees, leaving the tuition question for the budget writers.

"Now is not the most opportune time to develop a tuition policy, given the state’s overwhelming fiscal crunch and the limited number of days in this short session," Senate Higher Education Committee chairwoman Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, and her ranking GOP member, Jim Horn of Mercer Island, said in a joint statement that circulated Thursday.

In a letter to the Senate Ways and Means Committee, they challenged their colleagues to arrest the slide of state support for public colleges. Without a firm tuition policy for a decade or more, lawmakers have used higher education as a budget balancer and tuition continues to supplant state tax support, they said.

The higher education leaders suggested lawmakers spend the next year identifying a reliable, permanent source of state revenue for higher education.

The Senate leaders suggested that students and the institutions share the pain of the budget cuts 50-50. Locke has proposed a 5 percent cut for four-year universities and 3 percent for community colleges.

The Senate panel proposed that trustees be allowed to raise tuition for in-state undergraduate students by as much as 8 percent, in addition to the previously authorized 6.1 percent, for a maximum increase of 14.1 percent for the upcoming school year.

For the 34 community colleges, the maximum increase would be an additional 6 percent, for a total of 12.1 percent.

House higher education leaders also are not ready to give up legislative control over tuition. House Appropriations Committee chairwoman Helen Sommers, D-Seattle, said she is comfortable with the Senate’s tentative plan to roughly double the previously approved tuition hike.

Senate budget staffers said the policy of a 50-50 split between tuition increases and spending reductions is attractive to senators. Colleges may be given more latitude to boost tuition for graduate students and out-of-state students, they said.

This fall’s planned enrollment increases are on the table and may be rescinded. Taking back the 2,587 new slots, including 767 at the four-year schools, would save $15 million.

The higher education system currently is handling 10,000 more students than the 209,000 provided for in the budget, and colleges have been squeezing their budgets for a decade, said Terry Teale, director of the Council of Presidents. She represents the heads of the four-year universities and The Evergreen State College.

"We’re in a pickle right now," Teale said in an interview Thursday. "Some of our presidents are starting to worry about quality. Our institutions have been cut at the same time we have been increasing enrollment.

"We’re really in a difficult bind. We have the baby boom echo (of much higher demand for college) and we have all these out-of-work people coming to us for retraining."

The potential enrollment freeze and the failure of tuition-setting authority compound colleges’ woes, she said.

A 12 percent increase would boost community college tuition by $210 a year, from $1,743 today to $1,953. A 14 percent increase at the University of Washington and Washington State University would boost tuition to about $4,500.