State College Students Owe Rep. Deb Wallace a Vote of Thanks

Rep. Deb Wallace

"A bill that would allow the state's largest universities to set their own tuition, within limits, appears all but dead after it failed to move out of a House committee Tuesday," reported the Times today, just after its editorial board admonished state Rep. Deb Wallace that she "shouldn't drag her legislative heels on what would be one of the most significant fiscal-policy measures to come from the Legislature in decades."

Apparently Wallace does not read the Seattle Times op-ed page, or like many, ignores the unreasoned, unsupported perspectives when they appear.

(Lately the Times has shifted from ill-defended opinion to indefensible opinion, as in today's "forget health care reform" piece in which they argue that the election of a Republican in a state that has already instituted health care reform was a vote against health care reform.)

In any event, students at Washington State University, Western Washington University and the University of Washington can breathe a little easier. The Senate bill (SB 6562) would have ceded tuition-setting control to the state universities, with the ludicrous "limits" of a maximum of a one-year fourteen-percent increase, but not more than an average of nine percent per year, over fifteen years. (It's worth noting that the legislature already granted the universities a one-time 14 percent increase last year.)

As I mentioned a little while ago, Washington state higher education rated an "F" in affordability back in 2008. Tuition at the University of Washington has risen about 327 percent over the last twenty years. College presidents like to pitch tuition increases as a "soak the rich" scheme, pointing to increased financial aid packages, but the financial aid is overwhelmingly in the form of student loans, not grants.

The people getting soaked are the middle class parents of students who go to public schools, and the students themselves. (Median household income has not tripled or doubled over the same time period, if you needed to be reminded.) Certainly what has not increased 327 percent in the last twenty years is the entry-level salary for a college graduate. In the midst of the Great Recession, recent graduates will be lucky to find a job at all.

They can save money for student loan payments, of course, by not subscribing to the Seattle Times. [UPDATE: In retrospect, that last line is too harsh. Plenty of good reporting is in the Times, and it would be a shame for people to go without because of a few hundred witless words. People might even pay extra for a subscription that came without the editorial board or Krauthamer.]