The Seattle Times has a piece today noting that despite a 32 percent increase in the State Need Grant, the state's largest grant program for low-income college students, the fund will still only "help about 70,000 students, the same number as last year."

And about 22,000 students who qualified for State Need Grant money last year didn't receive it, because the state ran out of money. It's possible that the same number — or even more — may qualify again for state financial aid and receive nothing.

The article goes on to note another series of holes in scholarship funding, including work study funding for only 2,500 out of 7,600 eligible students and no checks for recipients of the Washington Scholars grant, which goes to the top one percent of graduating high school seniors.

In the Times piece, Mike Bogatay, director of the Washington Student Association, confirms what we've also noted during the 2011 session all along: "I would say students definitely lost, in a lot of ways."

Yesterday, Jolt took aim at Microsoft for opposing last year's education initiative, I-1098, that would have brought in $3 billion a year for education. Microsoft's pledge of $25 million to higher education over five years made them look like heroes on Monday, but the $5 million a year pales in comparison to the huge funding boost 1098 would have provided.