SEATTLE — University of Washington students are sharing their financial woes with the school’s Board of Regents this week.
During a public forum Wednesday, about 100 students described how much they struggle to pay rising tuition and fees.
Many said they understand that the regents had little choice but to raise tuition in the face of sharp cuts in state money going to the university.
Some asked the university to take a closer look at administrative salaries and student fees, and others called on the regents to show more leadership in asking the Legislature to seek other ways of raising money for higher education.
Gabriela Guillen said that student research into the UW budget said she found more than 150 non-faculty positions in which the salary is more than $165,000 a year — about what Gov. Chris Gregoire makes.
“This is a public university, not a business,” Guillen, a sociology major, said to a burst of applause.
Undergraduate, in-state tuition at the UW went up 20 percent last year, to $10,575 in tuition and fees.
The costs have nearly doubled at the UW in five years. In 2006-07, in-state undergraduates paid $5,460 in tuition, and about 10 percent more in fees.
Since 2009, the state has significantly cut appropriations to higher education and now spends less on funding for its six four-year schools than it did in 1990.
Dharma Dailey, a graduate student from New York, said that after she was accepted into the program on human-centered design and engineering, she discovered she could not get a job in the UW as a teaching assistant, which would have helped pay for much of her tuition and helped her avoid debt.
As a result, she chose to leave her 10-year-old daughter behind in New York with relatives so she could attend school here.
“I think that was the right sacrifice,” she said. “But I want to put on the record that our situation feels very tenuous, and there’s a fine line between tenuous and untenable.”
Students thanked regent William Gates Sr. for his support of an income-tax initiative that failed at the polls in November 2010.
“I really appreciate his effort, but Mr. Gates is the exception, not the rule,” said senior Eunice How, who called for the regents to take “a firm public stand in support of progressive revenue.”
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