Like all who rely on state funding to serve the needs of our citizens, we are deeply concerned about the impacts of the governor’s supplemental budget proposal on our state and, most importantly, our students. Just when you think things can’t get worse, they do.
Losing half of our state’s nationally-recognized need-grant program will shut out thousands of our state’s finest students from a chance at a college degree and a better future.
Without the state need-grant program, Husky Promise scholarships would be severely curtailed, and the 7,000 students who are able to attend the UW because of these scholarships would be unable to continue. Higher education would become a luxury only the well-to-do could afford.
The further erosion of state support for the UW will make it even harder for us to meet the educational needs of our students. No one—the governor, the Legislature or the University—can control the economy. But we also cannot afford to decimate critical programs and opportunities for our state’s students.
Even during a long, hard winter you can’t eat your seed corn. It is time for the Legislature and the governor to look for additional revenue sources to help moderate these unacceptable impacts on our state’s citizens.