With Washington state facing a $3 billion budget deficit and the United States facing an economic downturn, lack of funding for higher education — as well as increases in tuition rates — are causing some concern for students who wish to pursue a graduate or professional degree.

This January, local control, the ability of the Board of Regents instead of the Washington Legislature to set tuition rates, will once again be addressed. For the past six years, the Legislature has allowed the Board of Regents to set all but resident undergraduate tuition rates at the UW. This year, they will be asking for this power again.

“Our ability to manage differential tuition levels for the various graduate and professional education programs would diminish, as the Legislature tends to take a more of a ‘one-size fits all’ approach to setting tuition,” wrote Randy Hodgins, UW’s director of state relations, in an e-mail. “The Regents can customize tuitions to various programs and assign a fairer price to the more expensive programs and a lesser price to the less expensive.”

Hodgins said the best people to make decisions about tuition are those closest to the students, and not necessarily the state Legislature

In the past, students have expressed concern over local control.

This year, UW’s Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS), has shifted some of this focus away from who is setting tuition and more to what the tuition rates actually are.

“At the end of the day, we trust the Board of Regents to set tuition as much as we trust the Legislature because the Regents have a fiduciary duty to represent the best interest of the University,” said GPSS president Jake Faleschini. “But what’s really important, and the main issue for us, is ensuring reasonable, affordable and predictable tuition rates.”

According to the UW’s Office of Planning and Budgeting, in times of economic instability, such as the recession in the early ’80s, tuition rates have increased as much as 35.9 percent for some students, depending on resident standing and the graduate program. While there is currently a 7 percent cap for tuition increases for resident undergraduates, there is no set limit for the other students.

The weighted average increase since 2003 for graduate and professional students has been about 8 percent per year. However, increases for different programs has ranged anywhere from 6 percent to 17 percent.

Since graduate and professional students have dedicated three to four years of their life to the UW, there is a hope that the school won’t increase tuition at unpredictable rates unexpectedly, Faleschini said. Instead, predictable tuition increases are needed.

“As far as we can tell, a majority of the Legislature currently supports local control since [the] Board of Regents have done a superb job managing the school over the last decade,” Faleschini said.

With rising tuition rates, GPSS would like to see a correlation between an increase in tuition and the quality of education and social services. An increase in the amount of financial aid available must also be on par with the rate at which tuition increases.

“It is my duty as GPSS president to ensure that the amount graduate and professional students pay in tuition never hinders their dreams and ambitions,” Faleschini said. “If there is an increase in tuition for graduate and professional students, then we need to increase financial aid as well so that we are not diminishing access to higher education.”

The Legislature pays for less than half of the actual cost to educate the average college student — which is the lowest it’s been since the ’60s. While students do appreciate what the Legislature contributes, higher education has been underfunded for almost three decades.

“I hope that students continue to pressure the Legislature to increase funding for higher education,” Faleschini said.

To maintain the UW’s standing as one of the nation’s top universities, it is difficult to reduce or slow down tuition increases, Hodgins said.

“The best way is for the governor and the Legislature to increase the amount of state support it provides for all of higher education, including graduate programs,” Hodgins said. “The pressure on costs is in a continual mode of escalation.”

The higher tuition model is progressive if financial aid is also increased commensurately, allowing people who can afford it to still attend, but providing aid for those who can’t, and one of the reasons that the UW attracts a lot of students is its lower tuition, Faleschini said.

Faleschini and GPSS hope to keep it that way.

Reach reporter Doris Wu at news@dailyuw.com.