Wash. university presidents: Budget cuts hurt - Associated Press

Washington ranks 48th among the states in per capita enrollment in public baccalaureate (undergraduate) programs, although it has one of the highest rates of community-college enrollment in the country. In the past four years, funding for the state's five universities and one four-year college - The Evergreen State College - was cut by about 50 percent. The state now is funding four-year schools at about the same level it did in 1991. "No state has found it necessary to slash higher education to the extent that the state of Washington has," Shepard said. Last week, President Barack Obama called for colleges to work harder to identify cost savings and stop increasing tuition every year.