If you set out to write a formula for societal failure, you’d be hard-pressed to do better than this:
Let state support for public colleges and universities erode over more than a decade and then, when the economy tanks, cut university funding by another 50 percent. With no other options left to maintain quality, hike tuition to the point that middle-class families are priced out of a public university education.
Brilliant strategy. Just as the knowledge-based 21st century economy is poised to take off, the pathway to competitiveness is closed off to much of the middle class. At a minimum, you’ve invited long-term economic decline.
In Washington, we’re on our way. Last week, Washington State University and Western Washington University each decided to raise tuition by 16 percent next fall. Central Washington University announced a 14 percent hike. University of Washington regents are pondering an increase of as much as 22 percent.
Let’s be clear: as a short-term, emergency response, steep tuition hikes were necessary. Further cuts to programs and faculty would have compromised the quality of a university education too much. And the legislative action that allowed these increases also directs more money to financial aid so lower-income students aren’t shut out completely.
But the overall trend ought to be setting off alarms. Families whose earnings are just above the cutoff for financial aid are now looking at a bill approaching $100,000 for four years of study at the UW or WSU, combining tuition, fees, books, food and housing.
A society that won’t make a college education widely available is a society destined for malaise.
How we change course on higher-education funding is perhaps the most important issue to be debated in the 2012 gubernatorial and legislative campaigns.
Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna, the first announced candidate for governor, talked about it in his announcement last week. He said state colleges and universities should get 16 percent of the state budget, twice their current share.
Great, but how do we get there? Well, McKenna said he’s still working on that.
We anxiously await details, from him and from U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, who is expected to enter the race as the Democratic front-runner after Gov. Chris Gregoire announced Monday that she won’t seek a third term.
Education, at all levels, is the key to permanently reducing unemployment. Colleges and universities provide the training and innovation that fuel our economy. We can’t afford to continue starving them, or pricing them out of a typical family’s reach.
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