Ellington

The Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) wants its members to get involved in the conversation about higher-education aid and funding, a topic that doesn’t just affect undergraduates.

Student debt, federal aid, and the future of Washington state public institutions were all topics covered at the fifth annual Higher Education Summit hosted by GPSS Friday morning.

State legislators, administrators, and community executives sat on three panels to discuss the issues, along with other qualms presented by the panel moderators and the audience.

“We wanted to be more ambitious in terms of the program compared to last year, and we wanted to bring more people in,” said Aaron Naumann, outgoing president of GPSS. “So this reached out to the graduate school in a way that we haven’t really done before. We had kind of an external focus and then an internal focus and then a top-level administrative focus and then a student focus, which I think gives everybody a nice broad perspective of really what the context of the university is all about.”

Aaron Lykken, a first-year graduate student in the Evans School of Public Affairs who attended the summit, said he was impressed with the variety of sources GPSS brought in, and he is hoping to use what he learned at the summit to reach others.

“Being on campus here surrounded by students, obviously there are a lot of like-minded people in support of higher education,” Lykken said. “But I want to become more of an informed advocate for higher ed for people who maybe haven’t heard that message yet.”

The theme of the summit was “On Whose Shoulders: Who Pays For Higher Education in Uncertain Economic Times?” In the first discussion, panelists spoke about the present situation of federal assistance in funding public universities.

State Representative Reuven Carlyle, who sat on this panel, explained that the situation came down to what he referred to as a “scope problem.”

“Basically, we have a one third, one third, one third problem, where one third of your students, on many levels, are going to have a really good chance of success, one third are in the middle, and then one third are really going to struggle,” Carlyle said. “The issue is that we, as a state, do very, very well at that first third. We are efficient; we do spend our dollars wisely, it is well-run. … Two thirds of the folks … we are not reaching. So we have a scope problem.”

The second panel reviewed how the decrease in assistance from the state will affect the future of public universities. Doug Wadden, the interim provost and executive vice president in the UW Office of the Provost, said he believes the state doesn’t fully understand the value of post-secondary education compared to secondary education. Panelists agreed that a call to action is a necessary step to preserve federal assistance. “We are indeed in a crisis — the legislature has a host of unpopular choices that must and should be made,” said Elson Floyd, president of Washington State University. “We, here on this panel and in this audience, must talk to the Legislature, help them to understand what the consequences are if we no longer invest in our education at the levels in which we must and should do.”

The student debt involved with attaining an advanced degree was the topic of the final panel. UW administrators and David Parsons, the president of UAW 4121 (the Union for Academic Student Employees at the UW), spoke on how students are currently paying for their graduate-school education.

Recent decisions by Congress to eliminate the subsidy of federal Stafford loans for graduate students next year will further increase the amount of debt these students face.

Kay Lewis, the director of UW Student Financial Aid, said a student who takes out an $8,500 loan — the typical subsidized Stafford loan for graduate students — will have to pay around $1,600 to $1,700 extra in interest with the elimination of federal aid.

As federal assistance for graduate students continues to decrease, Naumann said it’s important to carry on the conversation with the legislators and the community.

“We’re thinking that maybe we should have an all-campus forum and see if we can’t help continue educating people,” Naumann said. “I think that we heard a pretty good resignation of that sort of message over the course of the day, which was: If we are going to make any sort of end roads with the legislator with any sort of policy changes or adaptions, then we have to widen the conversation.”

Reach reporter Jillian Stampher at news@dailyuw.com.