Head of prepaid-tuition-program faults legislators' plan

OLYMPIA — Washington lawmakers worried that the state's prepaid-tuition program could go broke have proposed changes the program's director thinks may actually hasten its demise.

"The question I have is, 'What is the problem they are trying to solve?' " said Betty Lochner, director of the Guaranteed Education Tuition program (GET).

The bill proposed by Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown and co-sponsored by Minority Leader Mike Hewitt would establish new limits Lochner says would make the program less attractive and create a divide between new participants and existing ones.

The proposed changes, Lochner says, would effectively stop the current GET program and start a new one.

"If we're trying to solve long-term liability, the worst thing you can do is stop the program because it locks in your liability. It doesn't give you a chance to make up for bad times," she said.

Brown, D-Spokane, and Hewitt, R-Yakima, disagree. The changes would aid its long-term viability, while making the program only slightly less generous, Brown said, adding that some more pessimistic lawmakers want to end the program entirely.

"Having some tightening up on the program actually makes it stronger over the long term," said Brown, who is an associate professor at Gonzaga University's organizational-leadership program and previously was an associate professor of economics at Eastern Washington University.

As the GET program stands now, 100 prepaid units, which cost $117 apiece this year, will buy a year of tuition and state-mandated fees at the state's two most expensive public universities — the University of Washington or Washington State University — whenever they are used in the future.

Students who decide to go to another, cheaper state college or university can cash in fewer units each year to cover their tuition or use some to pay for other college expenses. For example, it costs about 75 units for full-time tuition at The Evergreen State College. Units also can be cashed in to pay for private school or out-of-state tuition.

Substitute Senate Bill 5749 would decrease the value of GET units considerably for people who buy into the program starting in August. For new investors, 100 units would be worth the average of tuition at all state institutions of higher education, weighted by the number of enrolled undergrad students, and it would cover some student fees.

The bill has passed the Senate and has been referred to the House Higher Education Committee, where the chairman, Rep. Larry Seaquist, D-Gig Harbor, said Tuesday it will get a hearing but he wasn't sure when.

The GET committee adjusts the enrollment price yearly to keep up with tuition increases and the ups and downs of the stock market.

Hewitt said another proposal before the Legislature to give state universities more autonomy over their tuition, plus Brown's and other lawmakers' spoken concerns at Ways and Means Committee meetings, got him thinking about the GET program and wondering about its future.

"The state has to pay the difference if we run into trouble," Hewitt said.

That's because Washington's prepaid-tuition program really is guaranteed, no matter how much tuition goes up or the stock or bond markets go down.

Right now, the GET program is funded at 92 percent, so if every child enrolled in the program, including preschoolers, were to go to college this fall, there wouldn't be enough money in the bank to pay their tuition.