Now may not be the time to quit your day job. Oh, and you might want to start saving for next year: Higher tuition is a strong possibility for all Washington state college students by Fall 2009.

Washington state's budget is in crisis. To help make up the $5.2 billion shortfall in the budget beginning in July, universities and colleges across the state are preparing for massive cuts.

Aside from raising tuition, other ideas for closing the gap include reducing the number of courses offered, disallowing waitlists, cutting evening or weekend classes, closing campuses Friday through Sunday, suspending summer quarter and increasing the number of online offerings.

State college officials repeatedly make one thing clear: All of the above and other cost-saving measures are only ideas at this point.

What does this mean for students? It's unclear, but things are going to change if EvCC has to cut a projected $5 million from its 2009-2011 budget.

"There might be an increase in tuition. It could be double digits. [Some students] couldn't afford it, which would limit enrollment for tuition paying students," said Dottie Krzyzanoski, the interim vice president of Student Services.

Another change that would affect students is a possibly smaller work force. This would mean fewer faculty members, which would ultimately result in fewer sections of some courses.

"We will look at every vacant position and see what they provide and how critical their position is. We are not hoping for any layoffs," Krzyzanoski said, in reference to staff and faculty jobs.

What's a biennium?

The state budget is written every two years with the current biennium (a two-year budget cycle) ending on June 30. The next cycle starts on July 1.

The current budget is about $413 million short and the projections for the next biennium show a $5.2 billion deficit, according to the state Office of Financial Management' Website. Gov. Chris Gregoire has said the shortfall could increase to as much as $6 billion as incoming tax revenues continue to decrease.

The governor will release her budget proposal in mid-December; the Legislature convenes in January to hammer out the budget during its 105-day session. They expect to finalize the budget around April or May.

EvCC's budget in recent years has been about $40-45 million with the state contributing $25 million of that. The remainder comes from tuition and other sources.

EvCC has been enacting and planning for cuts to the current budget. In the fall, campus officials were told they had to cut one percent from the current budget; that has increased to five percent as revenue has continued to decrease.

According to EvCC President David Beyer, the guiding principles of the budget cuts this year have been "to protect the cost to students, maintain schedule and programs and no involuntary reductions."

In order to help meet the five percent cut, which represents about $1 million EvCC's budget, college officials are not currently hiring for vacant administration positions. Officials have also worked to conserve energy, and out-of-state travel has been frozen. These measures, however, do not get EvCC to the five percent cut.

How to cut $5 million?

Gregoire has asked for higher education officials to cut 20 percent in funding for the next budget, which for community colleges translates into $600 million over the next two years. That means EvCC would need to cut $5 million.

This is where the higher tuition and other ideas come in. In an email, Tom Gaskin, history instructor and president of the teacher's union on campus, outlined some of the other possibilities.

"Ideas that have been mentioned by the administration are restructuring the administration to reduce the number of vice presidents, eliminating expense (FIX) vocational programs, freezing new hires for next academic year, raising tuition, and charging tuition for Running Start students to cover the true cost of educating these students, and reducing the number of faculty and staff," he wrote.

"None of these ideas are more than ideas at this moment."

Though layoffs are not currently expected, new hires for the current and upcoming year may be frozen. This means that positions that are currently vacant may stay that way in order to cut down the number of paid EvCC staff and faculty.

Student clubs and organizations are funded by S&A Fees, which are outside of the college budget. That means student activities won't be directly affected, though if there are fewer students on campus, there will be less money to spend on student activities.

"Everything is in flux," said Krzyzanoski. "We are looking at every possible solution to make sure that we try not to impact student's abilities to complete their degrees."