Pre-pay college tuition program GET could be meeting its end

Washington’s popular program for parents to pre-pay for college tuition could be coming to an end.

The Legislative Advisory Committee says the Guaranteed Education Tuition Program (GET) is underfunded by $631 million.

On Wednesday, the committee will recommend shutting the fund down to new members, according to the Seattle Times, and closing the program altogether once the current accounts are payed out.

There are currently about 120,000 active accounts and about $2 billion in assets, making it the second-largest prepaid tuition program in the country.

Part of the problem, though, is the possibility of differential tuition at Washington universities. That’s an idea that has already come up in the House Higher Education Committee on the first full day of this legislative session.

“Unlike the past where we tried to incent institutions to offer high demand degrees, you’ve got creative ways for us to incent students into high demand degrees because we’ve never used pricing the way we probably should to get students in the degrees we want,” explained Representative Chris Reykdal of Tumwater

The Legislative Advisory Committee is also expected to recommend differential tuition be allowed at all state colleges and universities, except the University of Washington. The UW already charges the highest tuition in the state.

GET has a released a statement in response to questions they’ve received since announcing the recommendation to shut the program down.