Since 2015, the Legislature has assumed how much new tuition revenue would be captured by Washington’s public institution of higher education, including WSU, to pre-spend the revenue on employee compensation and other mandatory costs to reduce the expense otherwise paid for by the state. A bill released last week looks to reverse that practice.
The so-called “fund split” methodology has resulted in WSU, during the most recent biennium, receiving a state appropriation covering 56 percent of these costs with assumed tuition revenue covering the remaining 44 percent. In the prior biennium, the split used a greater share of state dollars at 66 percent to 34 percent of tuition. Prior to 2015 the state covered all of these costs — including costs associated with benefit rate changes, minimum wage increases and self insurance premiums.
Senate Bill 6325, introduced by Senator T’wina Nobles who serves as Chair of the Senate Higher Education and Workforce Development Committee, would begin to reverse the trend towards utilizing tuition dollars to pay for these state employee’s compensation. The bill prescribes that a 10 percent increase is required each biennium, beginning in 2029-31, until the increases for these costs are again funded solely on state funds.
Funds provided by the state for compensation are first used to cover other mandatory costs for increasing minimum wage, benefit rate changes, and self insurance premiums. The remainder is available to be used for faculty and staff compensation which has resulted in percent increases that are paltry, with seven increases at WSU over the last 11 years that were no greater than 2.5 percent.
“The fund split has proven to be a spectacular failure,” said WSU during testimony supporting the bill last week. “Actual tuition revenues haven’t matched the state projections in most years, the whole mechanism has created a disincentive to increase tuition rates by anything less than the maximum allowed.”
You can watch WSU’s testimony on the bill below, starting at one hour, three minutes and 47 seconds.