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In Washington, higher-education funding is (or at least should be) a bipartisan touchstone, a leg up for poor and middle-class students and a spur to a high-tech and manufacturing-centric economy. Year after year in Olympia, higher ed was cast as a core service, as integral to the state's economic and social fabric as transportation and human services. 

But a funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century. In the miasma of the Great Recession, austerity became the new normal, with tuition hikes a partial backfill for draconian funding cuts. Since the 2005-07 biennium, tuition at Washington's research universities has soared 118 percent, with a corresponding decline in state funding of 36 percent (read: less for more.) We countenance the decline at our own peril.