Families need help catching up to ever-expanding state college costs

There’s a scene in the movie Poltergeist in which the mom is running down the hallway in her home to save her daughter from the mean ghosts. But as she’s running, the hallway keeps getting longer and longer. As a parent of three kids in Issaquah, I feel like I’m living a similar nightmare with regard to college tuition. Just when you think you have a handle on saving for college, the cost of tuition in this state keeps going up – and up – and up.

April 5, 2013 6:17 pm
Jerry VanderWood
Jerry VanderWood

By Jerry VanderWood

There’s a scene in the movie Poltergeist in which the mom is running down the hallway in her home to save her daughter from the mean ghosts. But as she’s running, the hallway keeps getting longer and longer.

As a parent of three kids in Issaquah, I feel like I’m living a similar nightmare with regard to college tuition. Just when you think you have a handle on saving for college, the cost of tuition in this state keeps going up – and up – and up.

The cost of tuition at our state universities has doubled in recent years. UW tuition, for example, increased 20 percent in 2011-2012 alone.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it’s going to get better anytime soon. Gov. Jay Inslee, in his recently-released state budget plan, is proposing a “modest” five percent tuition hike for UW and WSU next year, with smaller increases for WWU, CWU and EWU. The pace is slowed, but the hallway keeps getting longer.

The reason tuition is going up, of course, is because state support for higher education has been cut dramatically. According to UW data, in 1990 the funding per student was $17,000, with the state paying 82 percent and the student/parents 18 percent. In 2013, funding per student is virtually the same at $16,800, but the state is now only paying 29 percent and the student/parents pay 71 percent.

Certainly the tanking of the economy, and therefore state revenues, has provided legislators and the governor the difficult task of balancing the budget with few easy solutions. But in 2009 the state’s operating budget was about $30 billion; in 2012 it was about $31 billion. A flat budget means difficult and unenviable choices have to be made, especially when K-12 funding needs a boost.

But since 2009, during this period of small but upward growth in the state budget, UW and WSU have lost nearly half their state funding. Higher education simply has not been a priority for legislators.

The process to create the next two-year budget for the state is not over yet. Hopefully legislators will find a way to at least freeze tuition rates for a year or two, and give families a chance to make some real headway down that hallway.

Jerry VanderWood lives in Issaquah.