Over the past 20 years, as state appropriations for higher education went down,
tuition rates increased. These charts, which show funding for four-year schools, have been adjusted for
inflation and rounded to the nearest million.
Before the Great Recession, Washington’s public colleges and universities received the lion’s share
of their funding from state appropriations, which come from taxes paid by residents and businesses.
After 2008, state revenue from tax collections fell sharply, and higher education took a big cut,
as this chart shows. Then, as the economic recovery took off about five years ago, legislators started
putting more money into higher education. In recent years, they’ve also pumped more into student financial
aid, which is not shown on this chart. In FY2021, the state expects to spend $483 million on student aid.
The other major source of higher education funding is tuition. Washington colleges and universities
have steadily collected more in tuition revenue over the last 20 years, but the amount they
charged escalated sharply after the Great Recession as schools tried to make up for cuts in
state appropriations. After a few years of double-digit tuition hikes, lawmakers put the brakes
on the price of going to college in 2014, and capped the amount tuition could rise. (The numbers
in this chart also reflect an increase in full-time-equivalent enrollment of about 34% between 2000
and 2018. More students mean more tuition is collected.)
Today, tuition is a slightly larger share of higher education funding than state taxpayer dollars.
But if state legislators take a big chunk out of college funding to balance the budget, schools say
they won’t be able to make up the difference by charging higher tuition, since increases are capped
by law. And if enrollments drop, that could also worsen the crisis.
Source: Legislative Evaluation & Accountability Program Committee
Lauren Flannery / The Seattle Times