Gov. Bob Ferguson’s proposed 3% cut to all four-year higher education institutions would significantly strain Western Washington University, which is already undergoing budget cuts and lobbying the state for more funding.
Ferguson’s recommendation to the Legislature identifies $7.47 million in cuts to Western’s funding allocation in the 2025-27 budget, including a reduction in compensation support and in goods and services. Ferguson’s plan, presented on Thursday, Feb. 27, also includes 6% cuts to most state agencies, saving the state approximately $4 billion. The state faces a projected $15 billion budget shortfall over the next four years.
Ferguson requested a 3% cut from four-year higher education institutions in January. The Office of Financial Management asked all agencies, and urged higher education institutions, to identify and propose spending reductions to the office by Feb. 6.
The House and Senate will release their draft budgets next month, and the budget will be finalized in April, when it is passed to Ferguson to sign or veto.
President Sabah Randhawa wrote in a letter to OFM on Feb. 5. that “adding an additional three percent reduction in state funding to Western’s existing budget challenges would compromise the future of the University in significant ways.”
The university’s budget has been challenging for several years, and cuts could “significantly worsen [Western’s] already challenging financial situation,” said Jonathan Higgins, director of communications. Officials are working to reduce Western’s operating budget by $18 million. That includes eliminating 55 positions over the next two academic years to overcome a deficit — the result of enrollment declines due to COVID-19 and insufficient state funding.
“The continued underfunding of compensation by the state … and our inability to move tuition above state-mandated levels, combined with a COVID hit to enrollments, has caused us to have to repeatedly dip into the university’s reserves,” said Faith Pettis, the chair of Western’s Board of Trustees, at a Feb. 14 meeting.
Western headed into this year's Legislative session with a specific ask: more per-student funding. The university currently receives the lowest per-student funding of any four- or two-year college in the state.
Director of Government Relations Nora Selander told the Board that she’s still pushing the Legislature to stop the growth of the budget disparity between Western and other colleges in the state.
Board member Chase Franklin said in the Feb. 14 meeting that the board is urging “President Randhawa to move quickly and aggressively to prepare the university for what we expect to be a pretty precipitous downturn in state funding support.”
He added that Western is “better prepared” than many of its peers for the state’s budget crisis due to years of “pragmatic forecasting and conservative budgeting.”
“Nonetheless, it’s going to be bumpy over the next few years from a budgeting standpoint,” Franklin said.
Bill Lyne, a Western professor and president of the United Faculty of Washington State, sent a letter to the Legislature on Feb. 14, arguing against the proposed cuts. He specifically criticized the governor for singling out four-year higher education, while not including cuts for community and technical colleges.
In the letter, Lyne cited a study from the Washington Business Roundtable’s Partnership for Learning that found the state will have 600,000 new jobs in the next decade, and more than half of them will require a baccalaureate degree or more.
“If we want those jobs to go to the children of Washington, we must do more to support our four-year public universities,” he said.
The impact on Western could be “devastating,” the professor of 30 years told Cascadia Daily News.
Declining physical and personnel infrastructure means “morale among faculty, students and staff has never been lower," Lyne wrote in his letter. "A cut to university funding will only make things irretrievably worse.”
Students also rallied in Red Square on Feb. 21 against the governor's proposed cuts, and the proposed federal cuts to the U.S. Department of Education.
Charlotte Alden is CDN’s general assignment/enterprise reporter; reach her at charlottealden@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 123.
