Help Washington Live up to the Higher Education Promise It Made to Students from Low-Income Families

Remind your legislators that funding need-based financial aid helps reduce barriers to postsecondary education.

Washington first established the State Need Grant fifty years ago as an innovative program to help address barriers to postsecondary attendance for students from low-income families by providing tuition assistance for qualifying students. In the decades since, Washington has partially funded the program, but has fallen short of making it available to all eligible students. Currently, over 18,000 students are eligible to receive the State Need Grant, but because of insufficient funding, aren’t able to receive a grant award for which they are eligible.

As the cost to attend college grows with every year, it becomes more and more of a barrier for students, especially students from low-income families. About 50% of students receiving need-based financial aid through the State Need Grant take out student loans to cover the costs of college the State Need Grant doesn’t cover. Students who do not receive the financial aid they are eligible to receive face even more significant barriers to attendance by needing to take out even more money in student loans to be able to enroll in postsecondary education.

If you believe that the state needs to live into the promises it has made and reduce barriers to postsecondary attendance for students from low-income families, tell your legislators to support Senate Bill 5393. SB 5393 helps Washington live into the promise it has made by updating the State Need Grant program through the creation of a new need-based financial aid program in its place, the Washington Promise Scholarship Program. This will ensure that need-based financial aid will be fully funded starting in the 2021-22 academic year and make it an entitlement program. This will make funding for need-based aid more stable and reliable for students and will help to protect it in future years.

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