WASHINGTON STATE

Washington State House Democrats

HOUSE DEMOCRATS

High tuition bad for students — and for state’s economy

It’s not news that tuition at Washington’s public colleges and universities has been rising at a dizzying rate for years.  This is the first time since 1986, in fact, that in-state rates have not increased. What might be news is that all those years of tuition hikes have given Washington the dubious distinction of being the 10th most expensive state for higher education.

Most of the increases in the last three decades were relatively small and steady, essentially reflecting minor bumps in the cost of living. But the Great Recession blew that pattern to bits.  In a five-year period, tuition (along with fees) spiked by 60% overall, including 69% at UW.

student-loan-debt2The current average price tag for a year in college here is $10,811 for a resident, and $25,189 for a non-resident. And while that’s without question kept many potential students from pursuing higher education, House Higher Education chair Larry Seaquist sees even bigger problems.

“Everybody’s conscious of how expensive it is to go to college,” he says.  “The big thing we did in the last session was stop the increases, and what we need to do now is drive down the cost” of going to college in Washington.

But he’s even more adamant that “We’ve got to drive down the debt levels.  We’ve got students coming out of college who are so deep in debt they can’t buy a car, they can’t get married, they can’t keep on going to school.  Those debt levels . . . are hurting our state’s economy.”

Think, Seaquist says, of the hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of dollars a month that a grad – or dropout – sends off every month for years to pay off student loans. Much of it goes to out-of-state lenders, and none of it goes to the small business down the street, to local restaurants, car dealers or home sellers.

It doesn’t generate money for the state treasury, money that could, in theory, help reduce the cost of tuition. It’s a destructive cycle, and knocking it off the track is one of Seaquist’s goals for 2014.

On the bright side, at least we’re not New Hampshire, which lays claim to first place in a bad competition, with an average annual tab of $14,655.