Washington’s Guaranteed Education Tuition (GET) Fund is a 529 Plan comprised of a series of accounts owned by parents and others to cover future undergraduate tuition for a specified child. Parents/grandparents and others can contribute to funding the education of a child in this way. The ultimate benefit that each child receives is based on how much has been contributed to their individual account. These accounts may hold tuition credit units up to the cost of eight years (at 100 credit units a year) of undergraduate tuition at colleges or universities.
All of the money in the GET Fund is contributed by account holders. The state’s role in this is to ensure that 100 units, regardless of the unit cost at the time of purchase, will cover one year of undergraduate tuition at the time the child requires the credits. Of course the purchase cost of each unit varies over time as the cost of tuition rises.
My concern is that the proposed “Washington 13 Free Guarantee” legislation proposed in HB 2309) would rely partially on funding from a so called GET program “surplus” discussed in a recent editorial (“Year of free college a boost to students, state,” The Herald Feb. 6). My questions are: 1) how could there be a “surplus,” since all of the money in the program was contributed by parents, etc. for the benefit of their child’s college tuition and, 2) why would any use for these funds outside the GET program’s intended purpose be considered?
It appears that the Legislature has found a pot of money in GET and, of course, legislators can always find a use for such a find. I fully support the intent of HB 2309, but it should not be funded on the back of the GET program account holders, even partially.
John Baker
Mukilteo
Editor’s note: As noted in the editorial, the GET fund is supported by contributions that are invested by the state’s investment board, earning proceeds on those investments. The current fund holds more than 150 percent of its current obligations to future students enrolled in GET, resulting in a “surplus” of more than $500 million above what the program is obligated to provide GET students. HB 2309 would allocate $300 million from the GET fund as one of three sources to provide all students with a year of community or technical college tuition.
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