January 13, 2012
For Employment and Earnings, Major Matters
The Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce issued a new report, Hard Times, which focuses once again on why a college education is so important to employment and earnings in the US economy. While persistent critics of the value of higher education point to the recently rising unemployment rate for new college graduates, 8.9…
Online Learning Still Plagued by Uncertainty
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute published an interesting paper recently called Creating Sound Policy for Digital Learning. While primarily focused on the role of technology in K-12 education, the paper provides perspective for higher education as well. This topic is especially important as the economic crisis continues to push universities to produce more with less…
January 10, 2012
Yes, College is Still Worth It
The New York Times Economix blog has some recent posts discussing new data that continue to illustrate the economic benefits of a college education. Check out all Economix posts that have been tagged with the topic Is College Worth it. These data and conclusions align with our recent OPB brief, Is Undergraduate Education America’s Next…
December 28, 2011
Tax Benefits Increasingly Key to College Affordability
Note that the report summarized in this post reflects data through 2007-08. We know from more recent data that 2009’s expansion of the American Opportunity Tax Credit (formerly the Hope tax credit) has more than doubled both benefit and participation rates, so we anticipate future reports to reflect similar but magnified findings. In its latest…
December 16, 2011
Higher Ed News Roundup
With the special legislative session wrapped up here in Washington, and regular session not set to begin until January 9th, here is some of what has been happening in higher education elsewhere. Federal Budget Agreement Preserves but Alters Pell Grants: It appears that a last minute FY2012 budget agreement in Washington DC will avert a…
December 14, 2011
Higher Education Steering Committee Report Released
Last year, Washington State Senate Bill 5182 abolished the Higher Education Coordinating Board and created a Higher Education Steering Committee to assess the state’s need for a redesigned statewide coordinating agency for education. The 13 person Committee met four times and was chaired by Governor Gregoire, and also included UW President Michael Young. The Final…
House Passes Early Action Savings Bill
In short order, the House of Representatives introduced, passed out of committee, and passed out of their chamber, an early action savings bill nearly identical to the Senate bill we covered earlier. Note that there are no material changes for higher education (including the UW) in the House version of the bill. It is largely…
December 12, 2011
Legislature Poised to Take Early Action to Achieve Limited Cuts
At 3:30 PM today, the Senate Ways & Means Committee will hear an early action bill addressing 25% of the current $2 billion deficit in the form of $323 million in budget cuts and $106 million in fund transfers. Both chambers are expected to move legislation forward quickly in order to sine die at the…
November 29, 2011
New OPB Website!
We’ve been a bit quiet on the blog front lately. Mainly due to our focus on redesigning the OPB website, which has just gone live! In particular, we have: Created a new office directory that allows the user to search for staff by content area. Created multiple ways to identify or locate the content you…
November 21, 2011
Governor Cuts UW Funding by $37M, Proposes Offsetting Tax Increase
The Governor’s budget office released the first supplemental budget proposal today, further reducing state expenditures for the 2011-13 biennium by $1.7 billion. All told, higher education institutions would absorb about nine percent of the total cut. Under the Governor’s proposal, each of the state’s six baccalaureate institutions would receive 16-17 percent cuts in state funding for…