Seattle Times: Rising tuition a threat to GET program
The GET program commits Washington State to pay tuition at a state school in return for savings by the parents put into GET. In effect “we” have guaranteed parents that their investments will pay for their kids’ education. Good deal? Apparently no longer, as reported by Katherine Long in the Seattle Times.
GET WAS a good deal, as long as Washington State was committed to having a public university. “Public” meant that the state pays for the University, so a program like GET is balanced by an incentive for the State to keep the cost of attending the UW low.
But, if the State allows the UW to increase tuition, the State needs to come up with the $$$ to make up the difference, something Bernie Madoff might understand.
Washington State, between the recession and Eyman’s 1053 law, is now broke. “We” can not not pay our bills. So, in one way or another “we” will cut back on the program.
This is one more lunge toward creeping privatization .. the idea that the UW can be “saved” by shifting its costs to tuition. These plans always assert that after privitization, the difference in costs would be picked up by scholarships. This would still be a good deal because the UW is one of no more than a half dozen “public ivies,” that is state schools that rank with the great private universities.
The sad truth is that the UW is already more expensive that most of the private ivies. This fact happens because tuition is no longer a real measure of the cost of an education. The real cost, measured at the level of debt students hold on graduation, reflect financial aid. In the private prestige schools, extensive income from tax free endowments is used to reduce tuition for most students.
By this measure, the UW already ranks in expense well above many of the its private peers. Cutting GET could price the new UDub out of the reach of Washington’s middle class families. Some day only football players and rich kids may get to be Huskies.
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