Lawmakers will return to Olympia on Nov. 28, in hopes of coming to a speedy agreement on how to fill a $2 billion funding gap in the state’s two-year operating budget. Among the cuts proposed by Gov. Chris Gregoire is another $166 million from higher education – the state’s college and university system. The budget reduction represents an additional 15 percent reduction to a category of state spending that has undergone multiple cuts during the last three years. The 2011-13 state operating budget adopted by lawmakers in a May special session included reductions of $617 million from higher education. To offset that huge financial hit, lawmakers authorized college and university trustees to impose double-digit tuition increases – up to 16 percent at major universities. That’s on top of tuition increases of up to 14 percent the two previous years. With the governor suggesting additional spending reductions in her all-cuts budget plan, we have to ask whether the state is living up to its obligation to fund higher education and whether middle class students are being priced out of a college education in this state.
