At long last, Washington State has agreed to relinquish its hold on the tuition purse strings of the state’s five public universities and The Evergreen State College. It was a particularly hard position to defend as state funding of the schools has fallen below 50 percent, and the Governor and Legislature want to cut slash higher-education funding by “as much as $642 million over the next two years,” as the Seattle Times reports.
House Bill 1795 passed by wide margins in the House and Senate, and Governor Gregoire has said she’ll sign it. For the next four years, from 2011-12 to 2015-16, the schools will be able to set tuition as they see fit. The bill does require the schools to provide financial aid to lower-income students, paid for out of the tuition increases, and sets a minimum of 4,000 students for the University of Washington’s in-state freshman enrollment, beginning 2012-13. It also allows the schools to price degrees differently, to account for the disparity between the cost of a liberal arts major and any field that will allow you pay back student loans.
Interestingly, the bill has a goal of “increasing the number of bachelor’s degrees earned by Washington’s resident students from the 2009-10 academic year levels by at least six thousand degrees completed or by twenty-seven percent”–per the task force finding that raising tuition rates will yield higher graduation rates.
What does this mean in tuition dollars? Well, the rocket ride continues, despite tuition being forced out of any real relationship with expected income upon graduation. The Times runs the numbers:
Students at the state’s three big universities are already paying almost 30 percent more in tuition than they did in 2008-09 because of state funding cutbacks. If the Senate’s version of the bill passes, students at the UW, Washington State University and Western Washington University will see tuition climb by nearly 35 percent more over the next two years.
For those of you in search of round numbers, that’s UW tuition of $11,567 by 2012. Proponents of tuition increases insist that’s a “bargain,” since in-state tuition at UC Berkeley will set you back $13,360 in 2011-12. If you’re from out of state, be prepared to cough up an extra $22,000 per year.
Now in a purely numbers-to-numbers comparison, there’s not much to carp about then. The University of Washington is a major research university with a worldwide reputation, and there is probably some truth to the notion that you can raise graduation rates by dismissing that tier of students who want “to go to college” because that’s what everyone else in their high school senior class is doing, and the UW is such a great deal.
Conversely, from a numbers-to-numbers comparison, it seems reasonable for lemmings to jump off a cliff together. It is troubling to find ourselves using California as a model, since the state is shorter on funds than even Washington (though for similarly conflicted reasons), and so has turned to cannibalizing its world-renowned higher education sooner.
If you think the recession only spurred on a slow-motion education funding crisis, there’s not much optimism to be gleaned from a four-year plan to test the limits of the affordability of a Bachelor’s degree. To advance that viewpoint, here are a few data points from an article I wrote earlier:
…in the U.S., higher education costs have risen 439 percent since 1982, which is more than medical care (251 percent) and certainly more than the Consumer Price Index (106 percent). In contrast, the median family income rose 107 percent in the same time period, and from 1997 to 2006, the number of students borrowing via Stafford loans grew by 33 percent (total loan dollars doubled).
It’s that last point that’s most disturbing, because the higher education bubble relies upon finding students who can and will buy into our age’s indentured servitude.
So when Washington State agrees to let public universities raise tuition only if some goes to financial aid, that’s more enabling than compassionate. Note the way the aid is even structured: Under the new legislation, a family of four making over $54,500 (70 percent of the median family income) is eligible for aid, yes, but on just 50 percent of that $11,500.
While the schools celebrate their new tuition autonomy, and decide how much more than seven percent per year tuition will rise, it’s worth remembering that median Washington household income for 2010 was projected to fall by $1,000 to $55,379.
Save Washington’s public universities with some of the University of California recommendations.
The public pays toward the costs of University of California (UC):
the UC system is not untouchable. As many Californians face foreclosure,
unemployment and depressed wages it’s about time that the timid University of
California Board of Regents and UC President Mark Yudof reined in
administrative and compensation costs.
As a
Californian, I don’t care what others earn at private and public universities
in the USA.
If the wages are better elsewhere, UC paid employees need to apply for the
positions. If wages are what keep UC paid employees committed to the University of California, leave for the better-paying position.
Talented, experienced UC employees are ready to be promoted to the vacated
positions. The sky will not fall at UC.
Wages at the UC
need to reflect California’s
ability to pay not what others are being paid. California is in the worst deficit in modern
times.
Current UCOP,
campus chancellors, vice chancellors, tenured and non tenured faculty are
replaceable by like or more talented individuals. A rose bush blooms after
pruning.
Here is what we
should do:
18
percent reduction in UCOP salaries and $50 million cut.
18
percent pruned from campus chancellors’, vice chancellors’ salaries.
15
percent trim of tenured faculty salaries, increased teaching load
10
percent decrease in non-tenured faculty salaries, as well as increase research,
teaching load
100%
elimination of Academic Senate costs, wages at UCOP and all campuses
The
UC Board of Regents can begin now to bridge the trust gap with Californians by
offering reassurances that UC salaries reflect depressed wages in California. Everyone is
replaceable at the UniversityCalifornia system. The
sky has not and will not fall.
Californians
are reasonable people. Levy no new taxes until an approved balanced budget: Let
the Governor and Legislature make the tough-minded (not cold hearted) decisions
of elected leadership. Then come to Californians for specified, continuing or
new taxes.
Thanking you in
advance for your partnership and for standing up for all Californians and the University of California.
spam response.
Google this text, and you’ll see it over and over again – this clown posts the same response on multiple forums. The 100% elimination of the faculty senate seems to be a new proposal from this joker.
Here’s a quick tip – this is Washington, not California.
The message about the problems at UC need to get out to America: whether it is repeated or not does not take away from the points in the submission. Public universities have comperable problems in the 50 states
It is always easier to shoot the messanger – the clown – then to deal with the substance of the message.