If universities set their own tuition rates, will we need a jobs program for displaced students?

The recession and the giant hole in the state budget it has created may give the state’s public universities the opportunity they’ve been looking for – the ability to raise tuition without the Legislature’s approval.

Lawmakers have firmly held onto that power for years, against hard lobbying by university administrators. Lawmakers have rightly seen it as a way to keep tuition more affordable, particularly at the "elite" public institutions including the University of Washington.

But a proposal to allow universities to raise tuition on their own is gaining momentum, reports Nick Perry of the Seattle Times, largely because of the $2.6 billion state budget shortfall. The governor has urged “tuition flexibility,” and a UW-backed measured to allow tuition-setting authority is “gaining support of some key lawmakers.”

Sen. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, who chairs the Higher Education & Workforce Development Committee, said he expects to file a bill this week that would give the state's six universities the ability to set resident undergraduate tuition rates… A draft of Kilmer's bill would limit undergraduate tuition increases to 14 percent in any given year and to a long-term annual average of 10 percent.

Recent tuition battles in other western states have reached new heights. In California, students occupied buildings and were hauled away in handcuffs after they were arrested protesting 32 percent hikes implemented to help patch hikes in that state's budget. At the University of Oregon, tuition has climbed 15 percent in the past year.

At the same time, Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire yesterday unveiled a major jobs program as a way to right the economic ship. Is there an irony in the fact that students are being driven from institutions of higher learning because of increasingly unaffordable tuitions, and the fact that the state must also create a jobs program? Just asking.

-- Rita Hibbard