A Washington lawmaker is raising alarms over skyrocketing administrative costs at the state’s public colleges-even as student enrollment continues to fall.
State Representative Travis Couture, a Republican from Allyn, says the numbers don’t add up. Since 2008, enrollment has dropped by 11 percent, but administrative staffing has grown more than 50 percent:
“With Evergreen, it’s actually the worst – a four-to-one staff-to-student ratio. It is wildly out of control. We’re serving less and less students than ever before, and we have this growing bureaucracy that’s costing taxpayers and students a lot of money.”
Couture has introduced legislation to roll back staffing levels to 2018 benchmarks, which he says could save hundreds of millions of dollars over a four-year budget cycle. He argues unchecked growth in college bureaucracy is driving tuition pressure and fueling calls for higher taxes.
The debate is expected to heat up when lawmakers return to Olympia in January.
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