By all accounts, Julie Perrigo is a successful student.
She was Kamiak High School’s Girl of the Year, senior class president, lettered in softball and cheerleading, and has earned all kinds of awards.
So she assumed she would follow in the footsteps of her parents and grandparents and take her rightful place as a Husky at the University of Washington.
She was wrong.
Like many others, Perrigo found that a solid grade-point average with a rigorous class load and a good SAT score wasn’t enough. Now she’s packing her belongings and her many scholarships and heading to the University of Colorado.
Perrigo’s story is a prime example of an unfolding crisis in Washington’s universities: There are too many students with glowing transcripts trying to get into an overloaded system.
Tuition costs are rising and the state is challenged to sustain – much less expand – the funding needed to meet the growing demand and maintain quality.
There’s little anyone can do about it, and it will only get worse.
The problem is a combination of the “baby boom echo” – which is expected to peak with a record number of high school graduates in 2010 – and the state’s predicted $1 billion shortfall. There just isn’t enough money to enroll more students, officials say.
The number of high school graduates in Washington is expected to climb 40 percent from 1996 through 2009, reaching 66,792. While university branch campuses such as UW-Bothell and other strategies chip away at the problem, the state isn’t keeping up with the rising numbers.
Washington’s top research universities say they’re already taking more incoming freshmen than they can handle.
The UW and Washington State University recently agreed to cut the number of new admissions over the next few years because the state isn’t fully paying its share of the tab. They say they have enrolled 1,700 more students combined than the state funds. The state is supposed to fund an average of $5,000 per student.
As good students are turned away from the UW, the competition for slots is getting fiercer at Western Washington University in Bellingham. And Central Washington University in Ellensburg closed admissions for freshmen this month for the first time since 1987.
At the same time, community college transfers are lining up at a door that is getting smaller and closing faster. UW’s long-held admission guarantee to students with a 2.75 grade-point average and a transfer degree is going away this fall, in favor of a more competitive process.
This year, UW deferred enrollment for 1,500 transfers, delaying when admitted students can start for up to two quarters and putting their lives on hold.
Bill Marler sits on the WSU Board of Regents. He graduated with three bachelor’s degrees before beginning a law practice in Seattle, where he’s won multi-million-dollar settlements in food-borne illness cases. Despite his success, his high school grade-point average in 1976 was not as good as many students getting rejection notices today.
“I might not get in,” Marler said. “From a societal point of view, that’s insane.”
Perrigo, 18, thought she’d played the game just right. She was an athlete, a student leader, a freshmen mentor and went on a church mission to Mexico.
She took at least two advanced-placement or honors classes every year of high school, posted a 3.53 grade-point average and scored 1150 on her SAT. She even turned in her application early, but the UW still turned her down.
“Who does get to go there?” she wondered. “All along, they tell you if you want to get into college you have to be involved (in school activities) and take challenging classes.”
Barbara Erickson, Perrigo’s counselor at Kamiak and a UW alumna, is just as mystified.
“This is our most respected, most rigorous university in the state,” Erickson said. “Julie is somebody we should have there.”
Perrigo’s rejection ends a Husky family tradition that includes her mother, father, nearly 10 aunts and uncles and her grandparents.
“We’re frustrated and pretty angry about it,” said Richard Perrigo, Julie’s father. “We’re frustrated with the fact that local kids who are good, qualified kids can’t seem to get into their local university that’s tax-supported.”
Tim Washburn, UW’s assistant vice president for enrollment services, recognizes that admission to the university is more competitive than ever.
“It is particularly difficult for us in the admissions office where there has been a long family relationship with the university,” Washburn said. “That’s probably the most difficult conversation to have.”
Times have changed.
Washburn recently pulled an old book off a shelf in his office labeled “1960.” In it, he read that the university was then discussing raising the minimum GPA for admission from 2.0 to 2.5.
Washburn joined the UW admissions office in 1975, around the time it was becoming clear that it couldn’t accept every student who met the minimum requirements.
A numeric ranking policy was enacted, based on GPA and test scores. In addition, a new program began with the goal of enrolling ethnic minorities and low-income, first-generation white students. The university also started scrutinizing the rigor of some students’ high school class loads.
By the late 1990s, all of these admissions practices were folded into one that includes an admissions index. The index, used at all the state’s public universities, is a number that comes out of the combination of a student’s GPA and college entrance that test scores.
Washburn points out the problem of highly qualified students being turned away has much to do with grade inflation, which some officials say gives students artificially higher grades than they would have received in the past.
“Their (parents) are thinking their children are doing so much better than they did,” Washburn said. “But, in fact, so many more students have a 3.5 (today) that it’s making it appear more selective than it really is.”
UW’s average incoming GPA this year was 3.67 and the average SAT score was 1180. At WWU, the average GPA was 3.6 and SAT 1130.
Erickson is convinced that if Perrigo had taken easier classes and posted a higher GPA, she’d have been accepted at the UW.
“But I can’t counsel that way,” she said. “The more rigorous classes you take … you’ll be more prepared to go to college. I could be inclined to say, ‘Maybe you shouldn’t take AP classes.’ But if you have a 3.8 GPA and all you’ve taken are easy classes, you’re going to flunk out of the UW anyway.”
Edmonds Community College President Jack Oharah is bracing for the fallout.
While the UW and WSU are limiting enrollments for incoming freshmen, EdCC will continue to throw out an academic life ring to anyone wanting an education.
That’s the law and the mission of the state’s 34 community and technical colleges, and the reason EdCC enrolls 800 more students than it receives state money for.
Statewide, colleges and universities have admitted an estimated 13,000 students without state aid, a process known as overenrollment. By 2010, that number is expected to reach 33,500.
“The pressure is coming forward in terms of number of students and lack of capacity,” he said. “That’s a train wreck waiting to happen, and we can see the train coming.”
Oharah’s big concern with the overload is that students will not always be able to take the courses they need when they need them.
Behind the scenes, community colleges and universities are working on ways to get students through school quicker. Agreements are in the works for students to take more credits within their majors at community colleges. Universities also are expanding course offerings at community colleges.
In an effort to curb “lingering” students who take up valuable spaces, lawmakers are considering cutting off financial aid for those who take more than three years to get through community college or five years to get through a university.
Other plans also could speed up the process. The state Higher Education Coordinating Board is considering whether Washington should fund its public universities based on the number of students who receive degrees rather than the number who enroll.
It is also suggesting a pilot project to promote three-year bachelor degrees. That would open up spaces for more students.
There is also periodic talk of building a new university. The Evergreen State College in Olympia, which opened in 1967, is the only public four-year school to open in the state since WWU in 1899.
Marler, the WSU regent, has grown weary of the slow movement in Olympia, waiting for the Legislature to fix the ills of higher education. In the past six years, he has approved tuition increases of 43 percent. All the while, he has feared that the quality of education could be hurt by accepting more students than the state is paying for. That’s why WSU and UW agreed to cap enrollment.
“We made the decision that if we keep diluting the soup, the soup is not very satisfying,” he said. “…(It) is just a situation where students deserve to get the kind of quality education they are paying more and more for.”
Some believe the solution lies with Washington voters and not lawmakers.
“It is a crisis of access,” said state Sen. Don Carlson, R-Vancouver, chairman of the Senate Higher Education Committee. “The question is, ‘What are we, the citizens of this state, going to do about it?’”
Marler and Carlson both support Initiative 884, which would add a 1-cent increase to the state sales tax to improve education. Part of the money would increase college enrollment by 32,000 slots by 2008. So far, the initiative has received mixed reviews from lawmakers and educators.
“If they don’t pass the 1-cent sales tax, we have to be honest,” Carlson said. “In higher education, we will have no choice. There will have to be substantial increases in tuition. It’s one way or the other.”
A question of prestige
David Longanecker is executive director of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education in Boulder, Colo. He’s watching similar access issues unfold throughout the West. He sees universities such as the UW and WWU becoming more selective.
Universities often want to be perceived as more prestigious than they are, Longanecker said. Prestige is sometimes measured by how hard it is to get into a university and not how well students are educated, he added.
“It is tough; there’s a lot of status with where you go to college,” he said.
UW’s Washburn said public universities don’t set out to become more exclusive. The crunch is simply a matter of space, supply and demand.
“The publishing of national rankings has made university admissions officers more aware of the decisions they make and how it might affect their … rankings,” Washburn said. “But this university has made the decision that access and diversity is more important than national ranking.”
Students should move away from choosing their colleges based on name and cachet, says Erik Olson of The Princeton Review, a company that guides students, parents and educators through the competitive world of college admission.
Olson gives presentations across the nation. He said most students are pinning their hopes on the same 35 or so institutions in America – most notably the Ivy League schools, prestigious private universities, and various flagship public institutions like UW.
Students should look instead for a school that is a better fit for them, including private universities and those further from home, he said.
“It’s hard for students who have been told for four years that they have to go to UW, Stanford, or an Ivy League school if they want to get a good job,” Olson said. “There are plenty of schools where you’re going to get a great education, enjoy yourself, meet lifelong friends, and get a very marketable degree.”
As for Perrigo, one trip to University of Colorado convinced her that she’d taken the right path, even if it wasn’t her first choice.
“Maybe UW was almost like a cop-out because I was scared to leave,” Perrigo said. “I’ve gone through in my mind what I would have done differently, and I don’t think I would want to do anything differently just to get into college.”
Reporter Jerry Cornfield contributed to this story.
Reporter Victor Balta: 425-339-3455 or vbalta@heraldnet.com.
Reporter Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446 or stevick@heraldnet.com.
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