By Sen. Barbara Bailey

As parents send their kids off to college this fall, many are enjoying something that hasn’t happened in more than 30 years: the first two-year state college-tuition freeze in Washington since 1981.

As chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee, I believe that keeping tuition costs down is the single greatest legislative action we can do to create more career and job opportunities for young people. However, the work we’ve done over the past two years is now in jeopardy.

Recently, Gov. Jay Inslee asked all state agencies, including our institutions of higher learning, to prepare for 15 percent budget cuts.

The reality of the cuts is that state universities could be forced to raise tuition costs to offset reductions in funding from Olympia.

This is unacceptable, which is why I will call on the governor to hold the line on funding for our state’s institutions of higher education in his 2015-2017 budget proposal.

For too long, higher education budgets have been used as a piggy bank to fund other government programs. The next state budget may prove to be no different.

Every time there has been a shortfall in the state’s budget, money has been taken from higher education to backfill the shortage.

The proposed cut in higher-education budgets by the governor could trigger as much as a 26-percent increase in tuition over the next two years.

That’s an average of $3,000 more per student to attend our state’s research institutions. This, in effect, would act like a tax increase on working families and students already struggling with debt.

Nationally, college debt is at a staggering $1 trillion with far-reaching consequences on our economy. The age of a first-time homebuyer continues to increase, now at 31 years old.

Home ownership among people younger than 35 has fallen to the lowest level in more than 30 years, to only 36.2 percent.

This isn’t due to a lack of desire for home ownership, rather the financial realities of dedicating a significant portion of their incomes to paying off student loans. In some cases, student-loan payments can be more than a mortgage, pushing the prospect of home ownership out of reach.

A recent report by the University of Pennsylvania is very revealing about college affordability.

The report concludes that state political leaders have “abdicated their role in higher education,” leaving students to bear the brunt of rising tuition and mounting student debt. According to the U.S. Department of Education, tuition at the University of Washington’s Seattle campus increased 42 percent from 2010 to 2013.

In 2013, that all changed when the Senate Majority Coalition took control of our state Senate. We saw an opportunity to freeze tuition for the first time in 27 years. This year, House leaders attempted to resume annual tuition hikes; fortunately, the Senate majority’s position prevailed, freezing tuition again for the 2014-2015 school year.

While keeping tuition costs down, we also invested nearly another $70 million in our college students this year.

This is in addition to 2013’s investment of more than $300 million into higher education and demonstrates our continued commitment to an affordable college education.

Recently, our state’s colleges were ranked highly by Washington Monthly in their “Best Bang for the Buck” list. That’s good news and one more reason why keeping state college tuition affordable must be a top priority for the Legislature.

We need to explore every policy that will give students access to a quality and affordable post-secondary education.

As Dr. Rodolfo Arévalo, former president of Eastern Washington University, stated, “It is my strong belief that holding down the cost of tuition is the best financial aid we can give students. This will allow students to achieve their academic goals while reducing their student debt.”

Let us hope that Gov. Inslee and House leaders have gotten the message.

Sen. Barbara Bailey, R-Oak Harbor, is the chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee.