Balancing the School Budget at the Expense of the Students

Most students know by now that, as a result of the global economic recession and Washington’s $8 billion deficit, Evergreen is facing the likelihood of a significant tuition hike, faculty, staff, and student employee layoffs, and other drastic measures to reduce expenses.
However, until May, it wasn’t clear where cuts would be felt the most. Even now, a lot of students are unaware of the impact budget cuts are going to have on their education, how the decisions are being made, and what alternatives we might envision as we begin to deal with the failure of a systemically flawed economy.

A brief chronology of events

Shortly after the college submitted its budget proposal for the 2009–2011 biennium to the legislature last September, the stock market plunged and the global market found itself in a state of crisis. The state and the college had to shift gears and spend the next seven months scrambling to assess the damage and plan accordingly.

In April, the legislature finalized its budget, announcing that over $14 million dollars (13.2%) would be cut from Evergreen’s state funding. To make up for the cut, our government officials allotted $2,366,000 in federal stimulus funding. They also raised the 7% cap on tuition increases to 14%, authorizing the school to increase undergraduate resident tuition by this amount each year for the next two years (28% total) in order to fill the gaping hole in the Evergreen budget.

On May 6, the administration presented the budget draft in a public forum, and on June 3, President Les Purce finalized his budget recommendations, which the Board of Trustees will approve on June 11.

The new budget for the 2009–2011 biennium is as follows: undergraduate resident tuition will increase by 14% per year. Undergraduate non-resident tuition and graduate resident tuition will increase by 5% per year. The Student Activities fee will increase by 3%, Housing rates will go up 5%, Dining plans will go up 7%, and the Health and Counseling fee will go up 25%. This will narrow the budget shortfall down to just $4.2 million.

The remaining margin will be closed by operating cuts across the board. Thirty-two jobs will be impacted, either by reduced hours or elimination, program budgets will be reduced by $51,531 (15%), study abroad funding will lose $25,000 (50%), and the Masters in Teaching/Masters in Education graduate program will lose $28,684 (10%). The centers, however, will take the hardest cuts, with the Labor Center facing a $153,009 (49%) budget reduction, and the Longhouse losing $109,519 (49%). (See the sidebar on the following page for a breakdown of some of the more drastic reductions.)

What 14% and 5% mean to your bank account

If you are a full-time resident undergrad, you paid $4,297 tuition to attend Evergreen this year. Next year you will pay $602 more, or $4,899. For the 2010–2011 school year, you will pay $686 more on top of the initial increase, or $5,585.

If you are a non-resident undergrad, you paid $15,157 to attend Evergreen full-time this year. Next year you will pay $758 more, or $15,915. For the 2010–2011 school year, you will pay $796 more on top of the initial increase, or $16,711.

If you are a resident graduate student, you paid $6,069 to attend Evergreen this year. Next year you will pay $303 more, or $6,372. For the 2010–2011 school year, you will pay $319 more on top of the initial increase, or $6,691.

If you are a non-resident graduate student, you already pay too much for your education and you will not be expected to pay even more, at least not for this biennium.

Why raising tuition is a bad idea

This is the first time in the history of Evergreen that students have been expected to pay more than 50% of the cost of their education. Right now the unemployment rate for workers with a college degree is 4.4%, twice as high as it was at this time last year. The prospect of more debt and less chance of finding a job is enough to make students consider alternatives to attending Evergreen. With this scenario everyone loses: students lose opportunities, schools lose students, and regardless of whether students choose to be degreeless or in debt, the state loses out on revenue when drop-outs/indebted graduates are unable to become the excessive consumers higher education would otherwise enable them to be.

According to the Washington Student Lobby (WSL), the median family income increase in Washington is only 2.93% per year, when adjusted for inflation. So when a public institution of higher learning jacks its tuition up 14% per year, placing a public education out of reach, it is more than anything an affront to the right of every individual to an education.

To save face, the administration has included in the budget a stipulation that 20% of the revenue from tuition increases be put toward increasing financial aid. That sounds good, but the additional financial aid only covers 80% of the neediest students. So not even the neediest students will be fully buffered from the effects of the higher tuition, much less the lower-middle class students whose families make too much money to qualify for serious aid, but cannot by any means fulfill their “expected family contribution.”

WSL also cites a document put forth by the Independent Colleges of Washington (ICW) that claims implementing a high-tuition/high-financial aid model in Washington’s universities would actually increase low-income enrollment. Their claim is based on a study of schools that have this model in ten other states.

What WSL points out that ICW fails to mention is that while low-income college enrollment is higher in each of the ten states than in Washington, state average enrollment is also higher in each state than in Washington. Proportionally, low-income enrollment is the same in Washington where there are fewer high-tuition/high-aid schools, as in the states where high-tuition/high-aid is prevalent, indicating that this model does not in fact encourage low-income enrollment.
If high-tuition/high-aid won’t help, what will?

Let’s bring it back to the state’s budget deficit that put Evergreen in this fix. In 2008, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that there are more than 130,000 households with an income of over $1 million in the state of Washington. These households do not pay income tax, nor do the companies they work for pay corporate tax. If the Washingtonians making $1 million or more were required to pay a 7% income tax, the state would make at least $9.1 billion dollars—more than enough to solve the $8 billion deficit. Instead, the state relies on the sales tax for revenue—a regressive tax that charges everyone the same, regardless of whether you make ten thousand or ten million dollars a year. While this sounds egalitarian, it of course disadvantages the working and middle class who feel the effect of that extra $16 on top of the $200 grocery bill, whereas $16 is nothing to a Microsoft or Boeing millionaire.

The argument against implementing an income or corporate tax always centers on these two behemoths, fretting that if the state were to do such a thing, the companies would leave and take with them the entire Washington economy. It’s possible. But if they wanted to escape progressive taxation, Microsoft and Boeing would only have Texas, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nevada to choose from, as those are the only other states that have neither an income nor a corporate tax.

Some belts are tighter than others

Unfortunately, in a document titled Proposed 2009–2011 Budget and Policy Highlights: Protecting Our Values During Tough Times, Governor Gregoire states, “In writing the budget for 2009–11, we began with one basic premise: Now is not the time to raise taxes on our residents and businesses. These are hard times for us all. Our families are tightening their belts, and that’s what government must do.” The governor doesn’t acknowledge the possibility of raising taxes on the 130,000 families who aren’t tightening their belts. Since economic justice isn’t one of the values Gregoire refers to in the title, let’s look at what “our” values supposedly are.

Gregoire’s proposed spending for Public Safety is $2.7 billion, with $1.3 billion funding the incarceration of the 18,000 people who currently reside in Washington’s fifteen prisons, 39% of whom are imprisoned on property and drug charges. Part of the plan is to reduce public safety spending by $200 million. How? Among other things, she proposes reducing funding for chemical dependency treatment, effectively eliminating addiction treatment for 13,000 low-income patients, and reducing detoxification therapy for another 2,700.
On top of this, Gregoire plans on cutting correction workers’ pensions and enacting measures to deport non-citizens convicted of – you guessed it – property and drug charges back to their countries of origin.

This contrasts with the proposed spending for higher education, which totals $3.6 billion – $1.5 billion funding universities that serve over 100,000 students. Reduced spending for higher education is to total $300 million, which is of course to be offset by students’ paying their own way in lieu of state support.

Maybe instead of placing the state’s financial burden on the backs of workers and students, instead of deporting immigrants, Gregoire should consider dealing with the smaller offenses committed by 7,200 of the people in Washington’s prisons in a manner other than simply locking them away for a few years during which time over $70,000 will be spent per inmate, per year. She could start by not cutting the very programs that might prevent these types of offenses from even occurring.

Evergreen’s role

Stepping back from the larger context of the budget problem, it should be said that it is not the school’s job to lobby for a change in state tax law or for prison reform – that’s all of our jobs as residents of Washington – but it is the job of the administration and the Board of Trustees to lobby on behalf of the interests of the students, faculty, and staff at Evergreen.

Some members of the faculty union, who have been negotiating with the administration throughout the process of planning the budget, feel that this has not happened. In the words of one faculty member, “There is a sense that the lobbying wing is not pushing hard enough for federal funding…or pushing against legislation that is cutting education drastically.”

Stephanie Hurlburt, one of the two members of the Student Budgetary Planning Committee, which met regularly with Steve Trotter and Wendy Endress, the administrators directly responsible for writing the budget, expressed ambiguity on the subject of administrative–legislative relations. “We would ask about the legislature and they would say, ‘We’re trying,’ but I didn’t know how to measure that.”

Hurlburt did, however, express satisfaction with the administration’s helpfulness and transparency during the planning. In other words, once the administrators made a decision, they were happy to tell people about it. This is exactly what frustrated the faculty union. According to one member, “The union should be in negotiation with the administration. Instead, information is trickling down to us.”

Some Evergreen students were also frustrated with the way information was disseminated. “The information has been out there, but I’ve had to go looking for it,” says Kate Savkovich, a student organizer at Evergreen. Savkovich was particularly angered by the May 6 “public forum,” which Les Purce planned in order to present the budget proposal, and which he publicized with an e-mail announcement sent only to faculty and staff. Savkovich found out about the forum at the last minute because Ben Anderson, the other member of the Student Budgetary Planning Committee, e-mailed some students and the message was forwarded to her. Even then, the announcement did not reach all students.

Solutions

One thing the administration has done to make the Evergreen community feel included in the budget planning has been to collect “Budget Ideas” in the form of online submissions, and create a spreadsheet of campus suggestions and responses from the administration. From “responsibly log our forests for timber sales” (not feasible – the forests are part of the college’s learning labs – phew!) to “rent out the president’s residence” (it’s currently for sale), the endeavor generated some interesting ideas and some equally interesting responses.
One suggestion involves decommissioning the police “back to Security.” The administration’s response is as follows: “Police officers bring the tools, training, and experience that best suit the needs of the college. Past incidents on campus have highlighted the need to be able to respond with commissioned officers.”

Last year, Police Services cost the school $1,190,664. That’s equal to more than one-fourth of the $4.2 million gap in Evergreen’s budget. While it may be true that there have been incidents on campus in which police officers were needed, there have also been a significant number of incidents in which police officers proved to be a problem – arresting aidentifying himself (which is not an offense in Washington state) and throwing a student on the ground for mouthing off when told to not smoke in an undesignated area are just a couple of examples.

Perhaps it would be imprudent to do away with Police Services in one fell swoop, but the fact that they cost us so much money but do not function in a way that supports the community indicates the need for some longer-term planning by the Evergreen community geared towards creating sustainable solutions to a failing economy.

The short-lived (but certainly revivable) group Students Accompanying Students sought to organize volunteers to accompany individual students around campus at night to ensure their safety. This is just one example of how community members can fill the role of the police without paying over $1 million to deal with the nasty side effect of power-tripping that comes with a uniform and gun.

Another idea that was not included on the “Budget Ideas” spreadsheet, but that has been discussed by political economy students and faculty is the possibility of creating an Evergreen Credit Union. If the school banked with the credit union, thus investing in only local projects, Evergreen would not be nearly as vulnerable to the global market. Returns would not be as high, but they would be more stable.

Again, it’s a matter of the community deciding what its priorities are.

Wanted: students with money

One of the ideas on the spreadsheet is interesting not so much in and of itself, but because of the response it received. Row 29: “Recruit more students with wealth.” Scroll over to the response column, and—nothing. No answer. This is a loud silence considering that this year the school spent $58,372 on recruiting out-of-state students, over $31,000 more than was spent on recruiting Washington high-schoolers ($16,513) and First Peoples ($10,492) combined. This brings to light how much Evergreen already quietly operates like a business—focused on increasing the profit margin—instead of a public institution of higher learning created to serve the people.

What we face is a push from the government to step up our business practices and become more profitable. What we have to decide is what our priorities are as a community and how we can directly take over the project of meeting our needs. We have to organize across the lines of students, faculty, staff, and administration to create sustainable, acceptable solutions that are not a mere re-shuffling of the same cards, but the creation of a new game where there are no winners and losers. Otherwise, we are going to have to live with the administration’s well-intentioned attempts to meet requirements mandated by the state at the expense of our right to an education.