Title: An act relating to tuition waivers for community college apprenticeship programs.

Brief Description: Authorizing community colleges to deduct certain payments from tuition waivers.

Sponsors: Senators Berkey, Schmidt, Keiser, Roach, Kohl-Welles, Fairley, Pridemore, Oke and McAuliffe.

Brief History:

Committee Activity: Early Learning, K-12 & Higher Education: 2/9/05, 2/21/05 [DP].

SENATE COMMITTEE ON EARLY LEARNING, K-12 & HIGHER EDUCATION

Majority Report: Do pass.Signed by Senators McAuliffe, Chair; Pridemore, Vice Chair; Weinstein, Vice Chair; Schmidt, Ranking Minority Member; Benton, Berkey, Carrell, Delvin, Eide, Kohl-Welles, Pflug, Rasmussen, Rockefeller, Schoesler and Shin.

Staff: Heather Lewis-Lechner (786-7448)

Background: Under current statutory law, community and technical colleges have the authority to offer both graded and ungraded courses in order to meet the needs of the communities and students they serve. The State Board for Community and Technical Colleges has established rules regarding ungraded courses including what qualifications the ungraded courses must meet and the amount of tuition and fees the colleges may waive for certain types of ungraded courses. Under those rules colleges may waive one-half of the standard per credit tuition and fees for the ungraded courses offered for the purpose of satisfying related or supplemental educational requirements for apprentices.

Community colleges may contract with private entities to provide the supplemental education requirements for apprentices. When the college contracts for these courses, the state funding for the courses is sent by the college to the apprenticeship trust to pay for the instruction of the students. The trust pays, on behalf of the student, the tuition owed by the student back to the community college. Under current regulations, the college may not deduct the tuition owed by the student from the funds it is sending to the apprenticeship trust.

Summary of Bill: Community and technical colleges are allowed to deduct the tuition owed from the funds they are sending the trust under the training contract with the apprentice organizations.

Appropriation: None.

Fiscal Note: Not requested.

Committee/Commission/Task Force Created: No.

Effective Date: Ninety days after adjournment of session in which bill is passed.

Testimony For: This bill will simplify the accounting process and improve efficiency for colleges and the apprenticeship program. The intent of this bill is to simplify the current process which will result in a cost savings to both the college and the apprenticeship trust. The State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) supports this change. When this rule was originally created, colleges did not have the types of automated accounting programs and systems that they do now. Under statute, colleges have to set aside 3.5 percent of tuition for student loan funds. Historically colleges needed to clearly flag the tuition amounts coming and going so it could isolate that amount but now there are automated programs that are sophisticated enough to do that so changing the rules are not a problem.

Testimony Against: None.

Who Testified: PRO: Senator Berkey, prime sponsor; Ed Triezenberg, Carpenters Union; Chris Reykdal, SBCTC.