Substitute Senate Bill 6209 changes Washington student financial aid law by amending RCW 28B.92.030, reenacting and amending RCW 28B.118.010, and adding a new section to chapter 28B.92 RCW. The bill sets definitions and formulas for the “maximum Washington college grant” by institution type, specifies baseline dollar amounts for the 2019–20 academic year, limits annual increases through 2025–26 to a defined “tuition growth factor,” and phases in new award rules beginning in 2026–27 that tie certain private institution awards to percentages (generally 50%) of average awards at Washington public research universities or to public two‑year maximums. It also sets specified award amounts and phased changes for Western Governors University–Washington and for approved apprenticeship programs. The bill directs the Office of Student Financial Assistance to align the Washington College Bound Scholarship with the Washington College Grant, requires automatic enrollment of eligible students, sets notification and data‑sharing duties for the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Department of Children, Youth, and Families, and spells out eligibility and award calculation rules (including residency, a family income cap of 65 percent of state median family income at graduation, no felony convictions, an academic standard for direct admission for students first enrolling in 2023–24, and award formulas for public, private, and apprenticeship attendance). It establishes that scholarship recipients have a property right in awarded tuition units while the state retains legal ownership, requires tuition units be used within six years, and provides that unused units revert to the scholarship account. The bill adds a procedural regulatory requirement that an unnamed office adopt a gainful employment standard for private for‑profit two‑ and four‑year institutions that wish to participate in the Washington College Grant and College Bound Scholarship; the standard must at minimum limit graduate debt payments to no more than 8 percent of annual earnings or 20 percent of discretionary earnings (defined in the bill), and the office must consider program completion and work with the Education Research and Data Center on measures. The text provided is incomplete in places (several subsections end mid‑clause, cross‑references such as “section 3 of this act” are not included here, and the specific office required to adopt gainful employment rules is not named), so some implementation details and the full set of provisions for certain private for‑profit institutions are unspecified in the extracted facts.

If enacted, eligible students who attend private colleges would see their Washington college grant or college bound scholarship amounts follow fixed 2019–20 baselines with only small annual increases through 2025–26 and then, for many private four‑ and two‑year schools, shift to awards that are set at 50 percent of average awards at Washington public research or two‑year institutions in later years. That change, plus specific dollar caps for Western Governors University–Washington and changes for apprenticeship funding, means students at many private schools will likely get less state grant aid relative to private tuition than they do now, increasing the chance they must cover more costs themselves, take on loans, or rely on other aid. Eligible students are automatically enrolled, must receive other need‑ and merit‑based aid first, have a property right in tuition units that must be used within six years, and face eligibility rules tied to residency, income, GPA, and felony status. The office that runs student aid and the superintendent’s and child welfare agencies will take on new responsibilities to auto‑enroll students, share eligibility lists, notify families, and write rules; an unnamed office must also create a gainful‑employment test for for‑profit schools that ties allowable student debt to earnings, which could exclude some for‑profit programs from participation and shift their students’ options. Key implementation details are missing from the extracted text—most notably the full requirements in the bill’s section 3 and which specific office must adopt the gainful‑employment rules—so how some institutions qualify and how awards will be adjusted in practice remains uncertain.