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Loan transparency bill still in committee after public hearing and executive action

The state Senate held a public hearing for the student loan transparency bill on Monday in Olympia.

The bill is intended to increase student awareness about the cost of loans. In Washington, the average student loan debt is $24,804, which is below the national average of $30,100 according to the Institute of College Access and Success.

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“We are trying to make the costs of higher education more transparent and have more students understand the financial obligation as they accumulate it, rather than wait until graduation day to figure out how much they owe,” Bill 5022 Sponsor Sen. Barbara Bailey (R) said at the hearing.

To do this, the bill proposes that schools sends either a written or electronic notification to students any time something new happens with their financial aid. It would also provide the amount a student has borrowed with an estimate of how long it will take to pay the debt.

The costs of the bill were $429,000 to get started, followed by $112,000 per year after that. The money will be paying for the state schools to get the resources together to make the notifications happen, Clint McCarthy, coordinator and analyst for the Senate Higher Education Committee, said at the hearing.

The bill is still in committee and was in executive session on Thursday. If the bill passes it will be put into effect Jan. 1, 2018.

Reporting by Danny Lochridge

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State representatives debate bill to reduce state grants for private school students

The state Senate Higher Education Committee held a public hearing Tuesday for a bill regarding the reduction of state grant money for private school institutions.

The bill proposes taking away state-need grants from private school students and giving it to public school students that need it more. State-need grants are the largest form of financial aid the state can offer, according to the bill’s analysis.

“We can give more money to the wealthiest kids that go to the most expensive colleges, or we can give more money to the poorest kids going to the less expensive schools,” Rep. Matt Manweller (R), the bill’s main sponsor, said at the hearing.

The plan would not affect the state budget and, with the restructuring, it would allow 500 more public school students who need the funds to actually get them. Right now, there are more kids applying for the grants than what the state can provide, Manweller said.

“This bill makes it more fair to the poor and middle classes,” he said.

Two other committees were at the public hearing; one was for the bill and one was against it.

“Anything that expands access to the state-need grant will expand access to the state schools,” Joann Taricani said, a faculty representative from the University of Washington.

Part of the argument against the bill is that the private school students who receive the grants still qualify for them. According to the current state laws, any student attending a four-year institution that has financial need can receive the grant.

“Affordability is the number one barrier for low-income households and the state-need grants make that easier,” said Rachelle Sharpe, the senior director for Student Financial Aid and Support Services at the College Success Foundation.

Sharpe was part of the opposition to the bill.

“We believe students should enroll in the institutions that best support their goals,” she said.

The bill will have the unintended consequence of driving more students to the public university system, St. Martin’s University President Roy Heynderickx said.

For fiscal year 2017, five percent of the students receiving state-need grants are attending private schools. From 2015-2016, roughly 69,000 students received state-need grants and 24,000 students qualified but did not receive any grant money, according to the bill analysis.

The Washington Student Achievement Council estimates that the bill will save $8 million and will have $4.8 million put back toward the state-need grants for the students going unserved, according to the bill’s fiscal report.

The bill is still in committee and has not yet been moved to the floor for a vote.

Reporting by Danny Lochridge

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House bill would create new tenure-track positions for four-year public institutions

House Bill 1238, which provides funding for more tenure-track positions within the state’s public four-year universities, remains under discussion in the Higher Education Committee.

WSU stated the potential fiscal impact of the bill, estimated as the difference between the amount of funding received per tenure-track position from the program and the costs associated with creating a new tenure-track faculty position, which varies between $97,600 to $145,600.

The bill would create a voluntary program providing $100,000 for every two full-time tenure-track positions created at a four-year public institution, to fund a third full-time tenure track position. The prerequisites for funding are that the positions are new, that they did not exist prior to the fall of 2017 and that they did not become vacant due to attrition or retirement.

The bill applies to the 2017-2019 and 2019-2021 bienniums. Within each two-year period, this program can provide as much as $500,000 for up to five tenure-track positions.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Gerry Pollet (D), said the full-time faculty-to-student ratio has gone down in Washington. Full-time faculty and tenure-track faculty have more time to develop curriculum, and are more accessible to the students, Pollet said. They also have more time to mentor students, and work on committees within their department, he said.

“It is definitely an incentive,” Pollet said. “We know your schools are strapped right now, and you can create a third when you only thought you had two positions.”

There is a correlation between the lack of full-time tenure positions and budget cuts, he said, because it is cheaper to have part-time faculty.

In the bill analysis, the Legislature stated “student completion and success may be improved by increasing the percent of full-time tenure track faculty.”

In a fiscal note published on Jan. 23, WSU and UW estimated the total cost of new faculty positions would exceed the amount provided by the bill. Pollet was not available for comment on how this might affect the bill’s progress through the Legislature.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 496 out of 1,878, or 26 percent, of WSU’s instructional faculty taught part-time in 2015. At UW, 11 percent of the 4,559 instructional faculty at the time were part-time.

Rates at Western, Central and Eastern Washington University were higher, with more than half of their instructional faculty teaching part-time.

Reporting by Jessica Zhou

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Bill protecting student journalists’ rights currently under discussion

In conversations across the aisle, members of the Senate Committee on Early Learning and K-12 Education are currently discussing concerns they have with a bill, which, if passed, would provide student journalists with full free-speech rights.

“It is too early to tell, but we are staying optimistic about getting support,” Senator Joe Fain (R) said.

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Bill 5064 would provide all students, including high school and college students, the ability to exercise their right to freedom of speech and press in any school-sponsored media outlet.

Kathy Schrier, the executive director of the Washington Journalism Education Association (WJEA), said she believes that Bill 5064 is key to protecting student journalists not only in Washington, but across the country.

“It’s important now, more than ever, for states to pass this legislation,” Schrier said. “Once it’s in place, it’s in place and students will be protected.”

She said she believes that now, more than ever, students shouldn’t be graduating from high school or college believing they don’t have a voice.

“We’ll have kids thinking that it’s okay to be told what or what not to think,” Schrier said.

Schrier said the bill is a win-win for both students and school administrators – students would be given the responsibility to report on what is really going on in schools, while administrators would be free from legal responsibility.

Fain believes that the bill is not only about students’ constitutional rights, but about the American culture and for what it stands.

“We need to protect the culture here and uphold laws that promote the free exercise of speech and press,” he said. “All of this is put into peril if society doesn’t respect these values.”

One way he believes society can respect the freedom of speech and press is if they are enshrined in education.

If Bill 5064 passes, Washington will be the 11th state to pass legislation fully protecting student journalists’ rights.

Reporting by Danielle Chiriguayo