The rarity of a public-college tuition cut became a reality this year in Washington State, where lawmakers approved a reduction for state residents over the next two years. At some institutions, the price tag will fall by one-fifth for in-state undergraduate students.
Every campus will see a 5 percent cut this year, and for 2016-17, students enrolled at four-year colleges and universities will see tuition fall by an additional 10 or 15 percent. Lawmakers also will tie tuition levels to the state’s median family income starting in 2017 in an effort to keep college costs down in the future. (Some campuses are raising tuition for nonresidents and graduate students, although the increases vary and are generally small.)
The state’s college officials were cautious about a tuition cut for several months; their support was contingent on the state’s backfilling the millions of dollars in lost revenue with additional financing. But once lawmakers fulfilled that promise with $200 million in state funds over the next two years, college leaders backed the final plan, which the Legislature passed in June.
Given the increasing public attention on college affordability and student-loan debt, including in the 2016 presidential race, Washington State’s move has generated buzz among lawmakers and administrators nationwide. Still, several volatile factors had to align at once — including finances and politics — for Washington’s tuition cut to take place.
In some states grappling with budget deficits, such a reduction is probably out of reach for now, and tuition cuts might not be sustainable in Washington State or elsewhere without new taxes or an economic boom. Some observers also assert that extra state funds should be used as financial aid for low-income and middle-class students, not wealthier students who can already afford to pay.
How the Debate Was Framed
From 2008-9 to 2014-15, Washington State posted the nation’s third-biggest increase in public-college tuition in terms of inflation-adjusted dollars, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Over that time frame, Washington’s average rate statewide went up 58.6 percent, or $4,009, when adjusted for inflation, compared with a 29-percent average increase nationwide.
Keeping that trend in mind, lawmakers in both parties agreed at the start of the legislative session that they needed to make a meaningful investment in higher education, said Rep. Ross Hunter, a Democrat and chief budget writer in the state’s House of Representatives. The debate concerned what that investment might look like; the tuition-cut plan was a top priority for Republicans.
In Washington the Legislature has control over tuition levels, and the governing boards of the state’s college and universities don’t play much of a role. That structure could increase the likelihood of a tuition cut, said Thomas L. Harnisch, director of state relations and policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.
A tuition reduction is a more concrete outcome for lawmakers to tout to constituents than, for instance, improved institutional quality, he said.
Republicans introduced a bill in February to cut tuition. When college officials delivered their first legislative testimony, early in the session, they emphasized that such a cut would harm campuses unless the state made up for the lost revenue, said Chris Mulick, director of state relations for Washington State University. Administrators worked with lawmakers on the development of the tuition legislation as well as the budget bill, Mr. Mulick said, conversing regularly throughout the spring.
Democrats initially pushed back against an across-the-board cut, instead proposing to freeze tuition and increase the number of state-financed grants for less-wealthy students, Mr. Hunter said.
An early version of the Republicans’ bill would have cut tuition by 25 percent at four-year institutions but kept it flat at community colleges. GOP lawmakers eventually backed down to secure Democrats’ support for a more modest, but still significant, cut on every public campus.
The final plan requires the state to find about $200 million for public colleges, much of it to make up for lost tuition revenue. Republicans agreed to close some corporate-tax loopholes to raise the funds, Mr. Hunter said.
Doubts Remain
Sen. Andy Hill, a Republican and chief budget writer in the Senate, said he hoped higher-education investments would, in the future, become “baked into the budget” in Washington State. He expressed confidence that tying tuition to the median family income would not only control college costs but make them more predictable.
Mr. Mulick wasn’t so sure about long-term funding. He added that lawmakers have enacted higher-education policies in the past, such as a measure granting tuition-setting authority to the colleges’ governing boards, that did not persist for long.
It is difficult to predict the long-term stability of state spending on higher education given economic ups and downs, Mr. Hunter said. Also, the tuition cut was financed in large part by a one-time move to close tax loopholes, he said.
And while tying tuition to income makes sense in many ways, said Dustin Weeden, a policy specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures, it means that “wild fluctuations” in state funding could be devastating for colleges and universities.
Another lingering question for Washington, and potentially other states, concerns which students should benefit from college-affordability investments. Mr. Hunter said the funds that offset the tuition cut could have been used more effectively, to increase the number of grants given to middle-class and low-income students. A tuition freeze would have provided enough relief to students who could already afford to pay for college, he said.
The tuition cut came with a corresponding reduction in the state’s college-grant program. It made sense from a budgetary standpoint: A decline in tuition meant less money was needed to keep financial aid at the same support levels.
But similar debates about who should benefit from such measures — all students, or primarily less-affluent students — could get heated in other states, Mr. Mulick said. “We had never viewed that as an either-or type of deal,” he said.
Most states have not returned spending to prerecession levels, Mr. Weeden said, but improving economic outlooks are freeing up more funds for higher-education spending. So it is possible that other states will soon look to Washington State’s plan for inspiration, he said, adding that tying tuition to the median family income might be another policy that proves viable elsewhere.
One factor to keep in mind, he said, is that lawmakers in other states might demand that colleges absorb some or all of the costs of a tuition cut, which could be problematic.
Also, even if a state provided money to make up for lost tuition revenue from a cut, such a plan may not gain college officials’ support if lawmakers don’t provide money for other higher-education priorities, Mr. Mulick said.
If a tuition cut “crowded out other needed investments in higher education like compensation and enhancing access,” he said, “it would’ve been hard for us to swallow.”
