As the president of WSU’s Board of Regents, I’m seeing first hand the damage being done by the current college funding crisis. As school budgets are cut, qualified students are turned away.

As Jake Ellison of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported today in his article College crisis puts potential students at risk, colleges in this state already have nearly 16,000 more students than they receive state money for. In the last legislative session, $112 million was cut from the higher ed system, and community colleges took a $12 million hit.

University and college officials, business leaders, state lawmakers and leading citizens have all used the word to describe the perfect storm converging on the system.

“We are headed into a situation where we’re using the blunt instrument of GPAs and SATs to deny admissions at a time when more people are wanting in and more need more education,” said Bill Marler, president of Washington State University’s Board of Regents.

“I didn’t sign up to be a regent to create a college environment where only students with straight A’s and high SATs get to go to college,” he said. “It’s beyond me why we as a public are allowing this to occur.”