This may be the worst year for Washington parents looking to buy prepaid tuition credits for their children.

If a Republican-led coalition has its way, lawmakers would spend the next couple months developing a plan to scrap the Guaranteed Education Tuition program altogether. Some Democrats, meanwhile, are looking put enough money into higher education that the price of prepaid tuition could plummet in the coming years.

The Legislature has left itself few options for the GET program after years of cutting state support for universities, pushing tuition rates up dramatically and the GET program into a financial hole. Just four years ago, parents used to be able to prepay a year's worth of tuition for $7,600. That has more than doubled.

People can now reserve a year's worth of tuition by investing $17,200 in the GET program - a hefty premium on today's tuition prices.