In 2019, the Washington Legislature passed the Workforce Education Investment Act, designed to inject nearly $1 billion into higher education over four years. But even that might not be enough to stem the perfect storm that is swamping American colleges. Nationally, enrollment in two- and four-year colleges declined 5 percent from spring 2021 to 2022. In Washington, undergraduate enrollment fell 13.5 percent. Perhaps most important, the trend can exacerbate the divide between rural areas and urban areas, and coastal states and inland states. We have seen how such a divide impacts everything from our politics to our economy, increasingly creating two separate Americas.
