This is an updated post

Gov. Chris Gregoire wants to let four-year universities increase tuition by 14 percent a year for the next two years.

She also proposed letting two-year institutions increase tuition by 7 percent a year.

The move comes in response to deep cuts in the higher education budgets proposed by the state House and Senate. The Legislature is looking for ways to reduce state spending by nearly $4 billion because of declining tax revenue amid the ongoing recession.

Currently, state law caps tuition increases at 7 percent at both four-year and two-year colleges.

"My goal is to make sure that those doors remain open and we don't sacrifice the quality of education," Gregoire said.

"It takes years to assemble a talented workforce at these colleges and universities," she said. "Higher education is not something where we can just turn the tap off today and put it back on after the recession. It would take us years to return to where we are. So I'm asking our families and our students to sacrifice a little bit."

The governor said tuition increases would be offset to a certain extent by increased higher education tax credits recently approved by Congress as part of the federal stimilus package, as well as beefed-up Pell grants.

Gregoire said she doesn't expect the proposal to harm the state's Guaranteed Education Tuition (GET) program. About 100,000 people have invested in the program, which lets parents prepay tuition at today's rates, plus a small premium, and then use it for a child's education later.

"For doing what we want to do over the next two years ... nobody tells me, who is involved with hte GET program that we should worry about the tuition," Gregoire said.

The proposed tuition increases would bring in about $190 million for the four-year universities over the next two years and $48 million for the community and technical colleges.

The University of Washington would collect an additional $58 million in undergraduate tuition over the next two years. Even with that additional money, the university would still face significant cuts under the current budget proposals, said Randy Hodgins, UW's director of state relations.

It's not clear how the proposal will fare in the House and Senate. Gregoire said she's already pitched the idea to leadership. "It wasn't automatically shut down. It wasn't cheered," she said.

Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown was noncommittal. "It's subject to a negotiation. We're happy to work with the governor and the House but it's not a decision that has been made yet."

The original 11:15 a.m. post is below