WASHINGTON

Marcus Gaspard, Executive Director, Washington Higher Education Coordinating Board

The Challenges

Washington, like many of the states in the West, is experiencing more competition for its resources. Our population is increasing, and our citizens demand more opportunity in education. We are also hearing from our employers that we have to do a better job of training. It is comforting to know that we are not alone in facing these pressures and that we are looking at similar types of solutions.

• A Higher Education Coordinating Board survey on public expectations found that 87 percent of Washington citizens believe that education beyond high school is necessary to get along today. Over 90 percent of those with children living at home expect their children to receive some level of postsecondary education. Four in five think that by paying state taxes they are entitled to access to our colleges, and three-fourths of those parents want their children to attend school in state. Among adults planning to return to school, one-third are doing it for jobs. The public demands more accountability for scarce resources, and the public has very high expectations.

• We have also seen major increases in population, particularly in the cohort of 17-25 year olds where we expect a 44 percent increase between 1990 and 2010. Similarly, between 1995 and 2010, we project a 49 percent increase in high school graduates. Along with the population increases, we will see a different, more diverse student population.

• Demographics also show the number of families living in poverty growing dramatically. Access for these families means financial aid; Washington has been fortunate to have a number of financial aid programs strongly supported by the legislature. That support will become even more important over the years as we try to address the access issue– particularly for those living in poverty.

• The proportion of the state budget allocated to higher education has dropped from almost 17 percent in 1979 to 11 percent in 1995.

• Washington also has an expenditure limiting initiative (Initiative 601); the growth in the overall population is a factor in determining the amount of money that can be spent. However, our growth rate for the college age group (17-25) exceeds the rate of growth of the general population.

• Employers tell us we need to do a better job of educating and training for the jobs of the future; one in five employees will require retraining in the next five years just to keep their current jobs. Approximately one-half of that training will take place in college classrooms.

• The HEC Board recommended a long-term goal of increasing the participation rates, particularly for upper division and graduate/professional students, through the year 2020, while maintaining current participation rates for lower division. In the lower division (including community colleges), we rank 11th in participation rates among all states, but in upper division we rank 47th; at the graduate and professional level we rank 43rd. To accomplish this goal, we have to recognize the growth in population and the increase in the percent of population that we would like to enroll in higher education. We designed a two-phase opportunity to increase enrollments in Washington. The first phase, described here, takes us to the year 2010 and aims at reaching the national participation rate in 2010 for upper division graduate and professional students. We are currently 30 percent below the national participation rate.

• By 2010 we must accommodate another 84,100 students if we want to maintain our current lower division participation rates and improve our upper division participation rates. We anticipate that about 24,400 students can be accommodated at our community and technical colleges, with another 7,700 students in our private colleges and universities. In Washington, we look at private education as a partner in the educational opportunities we want to create for our citizens. Another 24,100 students can be accom- modated in our public four-year institutions and universities. This leaves about 27,400 students that have to be served in other ways. That is the board's challenge, and we expect the institutions to be partners in recognizing how we meet that challenge (Figure 4).

• There will be a cost associated with those 84,000 students–an estimated $470 million in additional funding. Can we afford this? We do not have any other answer but yes, we have to find a way to provide this opportunity.

Some Strategies

A sample of strategies we have recommended shows the institutions themselves have to continue to re-evaluate what they do.

Institutional restructuring plans.  It is not easy to look at restructuring, but we need to take the lessons that have worked well in the private sector and try to apply them to our educational institutions. We need to recognize that it does come up from the bottom, but there has to be strong leadership at the top.

Technology.  In the last session, with fine leadership from our governor and legislature, the state embarked on a telecommunications education network as one of the solutions to access.

Additional state funding.  We would also like the legislature to allocate funds for innovation and create incentives for institutions. We want to look at how we deliver education; technology will play a tremendous role here.

Accommodating growth is an ever-increasing task–but it is an opportunity if not a challenge. The public expects a great deal from us. At the same time, they expect us to not treat this as business as usual. We need to be accountable, but at the same time we recognize that the public has given us an opportunity because there is strong support for what we do. We cannot rest on the past laurels of higher education; the world has changed, and the economy is changing. Part of that change may not have hit higher education yet, but it will. We have an opportunity to make change ourselves; if we don't, someone else will change it for us.