OLYMPIA — The University of Washington has quietly met with state lawmakers and Gov. Christine Gregoire to talk about becoming more like a private university — and charging much higher tuition.

The idea would be to increase financial aid to students on a sliding scale based on income to help offset a large increase in tuition.

There are skeptics wary of such a move, but university officials pitch it as a kind of Robin Hood plan, where the families of rich students pay more to help subsidize tuition for students from middle- and low-income families.

UW will charge about $5,100 for in-state undergraduates this fall. "Going to $10,000 may not be a crazy thing to do over a period of time," UW President Mark Emmert said recently.

The goal, university officials said, is to bring in more money so UW can maintain its quality of education. The university, for example, wants to increase faculty salaries to attract and retain talented professors.

Gregoire said she's interested in the idea and plans to include it in a broader education-funding study being done by a task force she's chairing. "It's one model," Gregoire said. "It's one we ought to look at. Whether that's the right one for our state, I don't know. But it's one I think we absolutely ought to put on the table and chew on."

Washington joins states such as Virginia and Colorado in debating whether to make public universities more like private institutions, said David Wright, a senior research analyst at the State Higher Education Executive Officers, based in Denver. The trend is driven by diminishing state support for students, increasing enrollments and the rising cost of educating students, he said.

Universities are basically telling state legislatures: "We want to be able to raise the revenues, if you're not going to provide them to us, that we feel are adequate," Wright said.

Some Washington state legislators are wary of any move in that direction. And Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, said there's good reason. "Here's the ugly piece of this," he said. "You can't do this without screwing the people."

The National Center is a nonpartisan think tank funded in part by organizations such as the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Ford Foundation.

V. Lane Rawlins, president of Washington State University, would prefer to keep tuition low. "Higher tuition really does affect who goes to school and where they go," Rawlins said.

Under the current model, all Washington state colleges and universities get money to educate students through a combination of state tax dollars and tuition. The state estimates the average annual cost of educating a student. Tax dollars pay part of that cost and the rest is made up through tuition, which is set by the Legislature.

UW fears falling behind

The University of Washington has complained for years that the amount of money it gets per student is falling behind competing research institutions nationally, and that the quality of education it offers is at risk. UW is the state's flagship institution and remains one of the top research universities in the nation. Last year, the university spent $16,283 per full-time student, a figure that includes both graduate and undergraduate students.

Former Gov. Gary Locke several years ago proposed giving UW the authority to set tuition for resident undergraduate students, to help make up for gaps in state funding. And former UW President Richard McCormick sought that authority for the university as well. The state Legislature has always rejected the idea, though, fearing tuition would increase faster than financial aid and squeeze out students who can't afford the cost.

The Robin Hood concept represents a new approach.

Emmert says UW hasn't drafted a formal proposal, but envisions a plan that could double UW's current tuition over a few years. Students from wealthy families would pay the full cost. Students from middle- and low-income families would pay less based on a sliding scale.

If that happened, UW also would like more control over tuition for resident undergraduates, such as the authority to increase it up to the national average rate of tuition increases, Emmert said.

Although the approach models private colleges, Emmert dislikes the comparison. "It suggests we wouldn't be attentive to our public mission," he said. "We're the University of Washington. Our commitment is to serve the citizens of this state as effectively as we can as the state's flagship university."

Emmert and Gregoire point to the tuition policy used by Miami University in Ohio as a possible model to consider in Washington.

Miami is a public university that increased its tuition from $9,150 a year to $19,730 in 2003. It uses the income from higher tuition to provide scholarships for in-state students, with an emphasis on helping middle- and low-income families. For instance, each Ohio state student automatically receives a $5,000 scholarship. They can also qualify for more scholarship money, ranging from $5,000 to $6,200, based on financial need and merit.

"This tuition plan looks and feels like the plan private universities have where they have high tuition but they also have very generous financial aid," said James Garland, president of Miami University.

Miami officials say the approach helps buffer students from middle-class and low-income families from future tuition increases. Their tuition will still go up, but at a slower rate than for students from wealthy families.

"The basic concept — which I think is something the public sector really needs to embrace more aggressively — is asking students of different financial means to pay different prices to go to college," Garland said.

He thinks the results from the first year have been promising. In-state minority enrollment grew 20 percent, Garland said. And enrollment among students who were the first in their family to go to college increased 40 percent.

There's one hitch: Miami depends on its out-of-state students to subsidize in-state students.

"What makes the plan work is the fact that we have a significant number — about 30 percent of our student body who come from outside of Ohio — who are willing to pay the full sticker price because they see us as a good value against private universities they are considering," Garland said.

No fan of Miami model

At the University of Washington, about 20 percent of this fall's incoming freshmen are expected to come from out of state, a small increase over last year. Tuition and fees for nonresident students are expected to total $19,916 this coming school year.

Callan, with the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, said he's not a fan of the Miami model.

"Ohio has very low college going rates, and so for the Legislature to give Miami of Ohio license to go get its students from out of state I think would be a big mistake," he said.

Washington also needs to get more in-state students into four-year institutions, so again it would be a bad idea for the state to boost the number of nonresident undergraduates attending UW, he said. In 2000, the state ranked 46th in the nation in the proportion of people 17 years and older enrolled in undergraduate courses at public universities.

Callan said he's never seen a way for public universities to model themselves after private institutions "without sacrificing something else like the number of in-state students they take."

Both Gregoire and Emmert said they would not let that happen.

"There's such high demand for access to higher education in the state of Washington, the last thing you want is a model that encourages schools or requires schools to depend on out-of-state tuition," Emmert said.

That raises a series of questions: Are there enough wealthy students in Washington to pay the higher rates and help subsidize other students? And would such a change affect the Guaranteed Education Tuition (GET) program that allows Washington residents to prepay college tuition for their children?

State officials say those types of questions will be looked at by the education-funding task force.

UW is apparently the only institution in Washington that has expressed a lot of interest in going this route.

Andrew Bodman, provost at Western Washington University, said he doesn't think a Miami University-style tuition plan would work at Western. The school wants to make college more affordable, not less, Bodman said.

Rep. Phyllis Kenney, D-Seattle, head of the House Higher Education Committee, and Rep. Helen Sommers, chairwoman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, said they have concerns about the UW making such a dramatic change.

Gregoire said she knows some lawmakers are worried about the idea, but said she wouldn't endorse any approach that reduces access or hurts the middle class.

Still, something needs to be done, she said. "When I talk to companies about coming to Washington state and staying in Washington, not one of them has talked to me about the B&O [business and occupation] tax. Every employer has talked to me about education and whether the state is committed to education.

"We can't allow budgets that are being consumed by skyrocketing health-care costs and unfunded mandates to lead our institutions to mediocrity. That's what I see, stepping back, is happening."

Andrew Garber: 360-943-9882 or agarber@seattletimes.com

Sharon Pian Chan: 206-464-2958 or schan@seattletimes.com