State Strategies to Manage Budget Shortfalls

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Case Study: Higher Education Funding in Washington

Like most other states during the recession years of the early 1990s, Washington was faced with rapidly growing expenditures for health services, prisons and social programs for the elderly without corresponding growth in state revenues. Costs for these programs were increasing as a result of constitutional funding requirements, changing demographics, increasing caseloads, legislative policy decisions and medical inflation. These program expenses were instrumental in causing the legislature to decrease its support for higher education beginning in 1989. {Washington Office of Financial Management, State Support for Higher Education: What Is It? What Should It Be? a briefing paper prepared for the Governor's Higher Education Task Force (Olympia, November 6, 1995): 3.}

During the 1989-91 biennium, higher education accounted for 13.2 percent of Washington's budget. By the 1995-97 biennium, the share declined to 11 percent. { Ibid., 4.} All other programs, with the exception of a minor drop in K-12 education, increased their share of state general fund support during the same period.

One result of the decreased state general fund support for higher education has been large increases in tuition and fees at public colleges since 1990. Between 1990 and 1996, tuition and fees increased by 65 percent, with the increases reaching double digits in 1993 (16 percent), 1994 (11 percent) and 1995 (15 percent). For 1996, the increase is 4 percent. {Washington State Senate, Senate Ways and Means Committee, "Washington State 1995-97 Operating Budget" (Olympia, November 1995, photocopied table). }

There also have been other effects of the cuts in state general fund support for higher education. Plans were enacted to drop some academic programs at Washington State University. No payroll increases for faculty and staff were budgeted in the 1993-1995 biennium, and only a 4 percent increase for salary increases was included in the 1995-1997 biennium. Faculty and staff are looking at their first salary increase in five years as a result of the earlier cuts in the higher education budget.

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Written December 1996, posted January 2003, reviewed December 2003
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