Public higher education also lacks adequate funding, leaders testify

Photo credit: Linda Woo/WEA WEA Higher Education Board Director Ruth Windhover (left) and AFT Washington President Sandra Schroeder (right) chat with a member of the Washington Learns commission.

The lack of adequate funding and compensation in Washington’s K-12 schools has long dominated the public debate about education funding.

But as WEA embarks on its Take the lead campaign to increase school funding at all levels, the financial needs of the state's public colleges and universities are becoming equally apparent.

WEA Higher Education Board Director Ruth Windhover and United Faculty of Washington State leader Bill Lyne recently testified about funding and compensation before Gov. Chris Gregoire's Washington Learns commission. Washington Learns is the governor’s yearlong effort to study early childhood, K-12 and higher education systems and funding.

Lyne is an English professor at Western Washington University in Bellingham and a United Faculty of Western union leader. He used charts to show how faculty salaries at the state's public universities lag behind comparable schools.

"The average salaries at Washington's public comprehensive universities are anywhere between $5,000 and $15,000 lower than the average salaries at peer institutions across the country," Lyne said. "The faculty salaries at Eastern, Western and Central Washington universities all rank in the bottom quartile when compared to their respective peer institutions.

"This salary crisis is making it harder and harder to recruit and retain the faculty needed to ensure that Washington's comprehensive universities are providing the world-class education needed to meet local needs."

Windhover teaches humanities and literature at Highline Community College in Des Moines. She shared similar statistics about salaries for instructors at the state's community and technical colleges. She emphasized the need to pay part-time faculty members fairly and suggested giving colleges more flexibility to negotiate higher salaries with faculty unions.

"The state must increase funding for community and technical college faculty salaries to make them competitive with the peer state colleges so that colleges can recruit and retain the high-quality faculty that our students need and deserve," Windhover told the commission.

WEA and AFT Washington represent the faculty at the state's community and technical colleges. The United Faculty of Washington State, the statewide organization for university faculty members, is affiliated with both WEA and AFT Washington.

Along with Lyne and Windhover, AFT Washington President Sandra Schroeder also testified at Washington Learns last month. Washington Learns is scheduled to release its final school funding recommendations in November. WEA members expect the report to show that both K-12 and higher education are underfunded by millions, if not billions, of dollars.

Higher ed poll

Between now and July, WEA will be conducting a statewide voter poll to get an idea of where the public stands on higher education, including issues surrounding private versus public learning institutions, where the public stands when it comes to quality, access, cost, quality of faculty, etc. Pollsters also will test messages so that the Association can begin to incorporate higher education into the Take the lead campaign.

Reach WEA Editor Linda Woo at lwoo@WashingtonEA.org, via postal mail at WEA, PO Box 9100, Federal Way, WA 98063-9100; phone 253-765-7027 (or toll-free outside Seattle-Tacoma: 800-622-3393 ext. 7027); or fax 253-946-7612. We welcome story ideas, letters to the editor and suggestions for improving WE-Washington Education, or WEA Online.