President Wohlpart shared enrollment data at the national and state level. Since 2022, there has been a significant decline in students graduating from high school. In the State of Washington, there has been a slight increase in high school graduation rate, but the number of students who will graduate from high school is going to trend downwards for the next 10-15 years. Washington has always been low in post-secondary enrollment. We were at our peak in 2009 at 63 percent. After the pandemic, it dropped down to about 51 percent. We have just ticked up to about 52-53 percent. The Washington Roundtable projects that there will be 1.5 million new jobs in the next 10 years, 75 percent of which will need some kind of post- secondary credential and 45 percent of which will need a bachelor's degree. Due to the state budget deficit, the new governor is asking all state agencies to prepare for a cut. General state agencies are being asked to prepare for a six percent cut and higher education has been asked to prepare for a three percent cut. Governor Ferguson’s budget priorities for state agencies for 2025-2027 include: • Consolidate management positions (10 to 25 percent). • Reduce (10 to 25 percent) administrative, executive, and externally focused positions that are not essential to the delivery of government services. • Pause all possible legislative reports and make appropriate reductions in personnel or service contracts to reflect this reduction in workload. • Restrict equipment purchases; and • Reduce out-of-state travel by at least 50 percent and reduce in-state travel by at least 25 percent. Governor Ferguson’s budget priorities for capital funding will focus on affordable housing in the state, so this will impact our capital funding and the ability to build new buildings. Our guiding principles moving forward with the development of our budget will include: • Living into our Vision, Mission, Values, and Strategic Plan. • Approaching this as an adaptive challenge: investigate and change our beliefs, perceptions, and values. • Considering both short-term and long-term reductions.
• Building capacity for investments in our future. • Elevating and clarifying shared governance.
Divisions will hold budget presentations and have conversations. On April 22, the President’s Budget Advisory Committee will meet to discuss the budget. The Executive Leadership Team will review the budget April 30, a draft budget will be shared with the Board in May and July, and the final budget will be shared in October when we have our enrollment numbers. This past fall, one of the things that the entire campus took on was to increase our retention rate of our new freshmen from Fall to Winter. This was an all-hands-on deck project. Institutional Effectiveness did a fantastic job of sharing weekly data on First Time in College (FTIC) students. Several awareness campaigns were held for winter quarter registration to make
3 Board of Trustees Minutes February 20, 2025
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