An email is making the rounds of UW faculty warning of a 20-percent cut in state funding, and an “unsympathetic” and “hard-edged tone” coming from state legislators. The email points to Austin Jenkins’ TVW interview with Rep. Deb Wallace (D-Vancouver), Chair of the House Higher Education Committee, and Rep. Glenn Anderson (R-Fall City), the committee’s ranking Republican… and it’s the kinda interview that explains why so many people just hate politicians.
Wallace and Anderson are in fact unsympathetic and hard-edged (and at times, clueless), and for all their repetitive talk about reform and efficiency, they offer few if any specifics. Both Wallace and Anderson affirm that our state colleges and universities should be bracing themselves for cuts in “the neighborhood of 20-percent,” yet both are equally adamant in their opposition to lifting the current 7-percent tuition increase cap. And in the face of steep funding cuts, both legislators insist that school administrators minimize the impact to student enrollment while maintaining quality, or else, in the words of Anderson, the legislature will “come in with fixes that complicate their lives.”
I guess threats like that are what Anderson means when he talks about the need for everybody to “work together.”
So where’s the fat? Wallace repeatedly points to a five-year BA/MA program as a model of efficiency (as if five-year BA/MA programs are anything new) while touting the thousands of community college students who now take classes online… even going so far as bizarrely mentioning the in-class nervous breakdown of one of her college professors as an example of the downsides of the traditional classroom environment. But perhaps the stupidest and most revealing moment of the interview comes from Anderson, who favorably points to the newspaper industry for chrissakes as a positive model for using new technologies to transform our colleges and universities!
Yeah, that’s the ticket… model reforms on the brilliant newspaper industry business model. If only we could break the unions, fire the professors, and shut down all the campuses, we could finally get skyrocketing higher education costs under control. What a maroon.
And Wallace doesn’t come across much better when she argues for maintaining the 7-percent tuition increase cap by pointing to our current low rate of consumer price inflation:
“What do we say to families? Well, we’re going to raise your tuition beyond 7-percent even though inflation is 1.6? The question is, well, why are we going to do that?”
Um… maybe… because you’ve cut higher education funding by 20-percent?
Wallace insists on making a rhetorical argument in response to a policy question, and that doesn’t bode well for those hoping to have a responsible debate on education funding. Likewise both her and Anderson’s knee-jerk rejection of a high-tuition/high-aid model—she, supposedly because “the math doesn’t work,” he because “well, we’re not a class society”—belies their stated goal of exploring real reform.
If I were a college administrator/instructor/student I’d come away from this interview disappointed, offended and awfully damn wary about the ability of this committee to lead our higher education system through these tough economic times. In fact, I don’t see Wallace or Anderson offering much leadership at all, apart from warning administrators to do more with less… or else.
Perhaps that makes for good politics in their home districts. I dunno. But it also pretty much guarantees a second-rate college and university system that ultimately balances its budget by exporting our best and our brightest.
Inflation is 1.6%? Where, in la-la-land? A 6.5 oz. can of tunafish that used to cost 69 cents is now a 5 oz. can that costs 89 cents. That isn’t any 1.6%, it’s more like 70%!!
Republican Economic Recovery Plan
The rich get tax cuts, the working class gets inflation, and China gets jobs.
Republicans have spent decades eliminating unions, beating down wages, and offshoring jobs. Guess what happens when consumers have no income? Business has no sales or profits!
Publick Notice
Roger Rabbit is taking a vacation for a few days. Fun in the sun! I’m gonna lollygag on the beach and live it up on my depression-proof gummint pension while you Republicans watch your stock portfolios and REITs melt like butter on a hot day. Hey neocon traitors! I’ll see you when I see you, unless they hang you first.
TX Goldy.
This is all to typical of the relationshipm of the UW to the legislators. They understand two things:
1. football
2. numbers of diplomas.
The idea that a WA state kid benefits form having access to a great football tema is .. well it is great.
The idea that a WA state kid benefits form having access to a great professor of comp asci or english … not so important.
It’s expected of Wallace. Look who lives and blogs on HA from the area. Puddy is dismayed about Anderson playing follow the leader. Friends who live there say he’s a level headed individual.
BTW a 20% tuition increase will be upsetting to Puddy. That’s a lot of money.
I’m still waiting for insiders like SJ to begin serious lobbying for the specific cuts he strutted around his Blog and HA….pretending he really wanted a more cost-effective Higher Ed System.
SJ, enjoy the white wine and Brie cheese while the Public…Hell with them, let them eat cake!
If these Legislators do not understand all the nuances and elitist Higher Ed jargon, the people to blame are the Massive Bureaucracy that is responsible to educate them!
How ironic.
Deb Wallace is Chair of the Higher Ed Committee.
That is where all the power is.
Dragging in Glenn Anderson and cherry-picking what Glenn said to make him look bad is typical…trying to somehow cover for the Chair.
BTW, Wallace received her degree from
CENTRAL WASHINGTON!!
You KLOWNS ought to look before you leap!
@7: Obviously cynical is upset again – I guess all that talk about college bothers him/her since cynical is still living in the third grade.
Good article Goldy. Basically, the legislature has no idea what the Universities do and how they operate. Quality education takes money. Trying to get the same number of degrees and the same amount of classroom access on less money is just plain stoooopid.
Something will have to give. I agree that tution hikes hurt students and families. But current students may not even be able to get the classes they need to graduate – at the 20% cut level. Some of these idiots (like cynical) forget that there were cuts just 7 years ago and theat the schools still have not recovered from those cuts.
I urge everyone to watch the clip. It is every bit as chilling as Goldy suggests.
To summarize, Wallace says we will somehow add 40,000 students and cuts costs 20% without any loss of quality.
There is only one way to accomplish this … diploma mills. What is a diploma mill? It is a system that measures is efficacy by how many kids get degrees independently of how many of these kids get the education implied by the degree. Listening t her the obvious response is to let Berlitz, cable news, and Kinko’s replace the class room.
As for Mr. Cynical’s blather, he should listen to the video as well. One of the things these legislators talk about is the inefficiency of Tacoma and Bothell. Why are these places inefficient .. because, she says, of the “brand.” In other words these branch campuses offer an expensive diploma without offering a real UW experience. Her answer,would be to replace the brand!
I can see it now .. “Mr Ical, tell me where you got your CS degree?” “Oh, I bought it at degrees are us.”
Quite a way to assure that WAstate … home of Boeing, Amazon, MS, etc. turn itself into Mississippi.
Is it just me, or does Cynical seem to be losing what little grip he had on reality? His rants seem more disjointed, more angry, more incoherent than usual. Perhaps he’s increased his alcohol intake?
Meanwhile, we’ll no doubt be hearing more and more propaganda from Redmond to the effect that all we need to do to fix education is to apply more technology, because who needs teachers if you have enough computers?
Goldy’s got a piece in the HuffPo!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....70256.html
YLB-@13
It was obviously a slow SMUT day!
The UW College of Engineering actually has a pseudo-online class system called EDGE (http://www.engr.washington.edu/EDGE/). Every lecture is recorded and made available as a streaming online or downloadable video. I took a class that used it last fall and it was pretty convenient. The only problem is that it seemed to encourage people to skip the lectures. Attendance dropped about 75% by the end of the quarter.
@12 and 15
There are well proven tools, from Powerpoint to programmed instruction that we know work.
Unfortunately, that is NOT the issue here. In a weird way the issue is also NOT the cut in budget.The real issue is the willingness to lie about the effects of these budget cuts. Wallace makes it sound as if we can have our cake, and our ice cream, and admire them without eating them up. 40,000 new students plus a 20% budget cut is simply impossible.
We would all be better off if this “liberal” would just be effin honest. Take a lesson form Obama .. tell the truth. Then …
when Mr. Parent sees that a decent private school os going to cost him 50 grand/year perhaps taxes will lok better?
or perhaps when Boeing says, “What the F, we can move the plant to Alabama .. lower taxes and schools as bad as those in WAstate!
Sadly, I ‘spect the only thing that will get Rep Wallace’ attention is if we dress the Huskies in rags from Goodwill.
Hey SJ–
Did you miss it??
Wallace was educated by YOUR beloved Higher Ed System!
I think that is hysterical…flunking someone for a lack of knowledge about higher ed when she graduated from that very system.
Have you not even a teeny-tiny sense of humor for the sheer irony??
I guess guys like you are so busy slopping at the trough, you have no time for humor.
Oh so serious.
Takes a lot of slop to feed your conscience.
But go ahead SJ…talk like a mouse in the corner about what is wrong with the system and where savings could be easily had….but keep slurpin’ up the tax dollars big boy!
The problem has been typically that of conflicting goals and egos.
On the one hand, the state legislature has tried very hard to ensure that public access to the state schools was as affordable as possible. On the other, they’ve hated to fund the system fully to account for graduate programs in the past, and are now willing to demand “more efficiency” to undergraduate programs presently.
As for the UW, they’ve resented the public funding they’ve had to work with (which is one reason they fight very hard for any outside funding they can get, be it from the Feds or from industry), especially since they are typically rated nationally as a top-25 liberal arts school, and a chunk of education spending going to the community colleges instead of to their own coffers has never sat well with them.
The legislature has typically loved the community colleges because it means money and, more importantly, jobs going directly to their districts. The UW has used “convenience” as the base of their reasoning to build their Tacoma and Bothell campuses, but in truth, it’s been a vain attempt to pull potential community college students away. (That might be a clue as to why you see some resentment as stated in this piece by the legislators.)
Given the constrained economic situation, I think we need to fess up to what we as a state are willing to spend on public college education and how. I think it would be a good idea to have UW and WSU (and perhaps other schools) not take in Freshmen or Sophmores except under special circumstances, leaving the job to the community colleges. Then take the existing funding for UW and WSU and leave it where it is, leaving them with more funding for upperclassmen and graduate students.
Given the present popularity of Running Start, we could, as a state, accomplish such a task with relative ease since a lot of the infrastructure is in place. There would be both increased costs and increased efficiencies, but if the benefits are seen as more local to the average taxpayer (as it was with the roads bill Gregoire sheltered through 2006-7), then the additional costs would be more acceptable over the long run.
My two bits…
17 cynical…
Did you attend college? Apparently you missed out on the logic class.
To tell the truth I find your lack of interest in meaningful discussion boring. There are better places I can go if I am interested in masturbation.
@18 palamedes ,,,
good post but some of your facts are wrong.
Bothel and Tacoma enhance not compete with the community oclleges. These are two year schools very much in the model you propose.
Unfortunately they offer the worst of both worlds. Kids who go to community colleges do nto have access to the resources needed to take real advantage of a research university, then if they get their degree from Bothell or Tacoma the last two years do not offer the research community anyhow.
Currently the UW is committed tot aking 30% of its students fm CC. In my opinion this si a terrible waste of state $$. We would be better off sending those kids to the state colelges except for the few who really can use the UW. For those few, however, we should address the question of why are they in CC rather than on campus?
A better solution, in my opinion, would be to restructure our system so that FEWER students matriculate at UW/WSU and more attend the state colleges or some form of extended CC. This, however, would create a conundrum … fewer students sharing the exiosting resources at UW would mean a large increase in cost per student.
IMHO, the final answer is to make better use of ALL our facilities to enhance opportunities in the regional state colleges. One friend of mine teaches a 500 student lecture course in biochemistry. There is no obvious reason his course could not be shared with kids in Bellingham while using the local faculty to deal with the small goups that make B’ham such a great place.
Many faculty oppose such an approach because it is anti jobs. They are correct but this approach is good for assuring that the students who need contact with me can get it while enhancing what can be offered at Bellingham.
The rub is still $$. We simply do not have the resources for distance education that we need. Do you know the UW does not even support go-to-meeting or live meeting?
Finally, Wallace seems blissfully unware of the legalities. Our state colleges are now ALL unionized, mostly be a rather aggressive branch of the Teamsters! DOES HE WANT TO DEAL WITH A tEAMSTER STRIKE?
For its part, the UW does not (yet) have a union BUT the Faculty Code is not only state law it is federal law as well since the UW is a chartered entity under the feds. In other states where the legislature tried to make cuts of this size, the issue ended up in court and the state lost.
Bottom line .. the only out for the State may be the same as for Chrysler. ..BANKRUPTCY!
Out. Of. Touch.
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SJ wrote:
SeattleJew: Wow, no wonder about the UW IT. Who sets their policies?
SJ, maybe Wallace will call Captain Planet to solve the problem.
They are stupid, idiot assholes. Why are the dumbest people in the legislature always put in charge of higher education?
These morons have been making sure Washington State ranks right up there with Alabama in educational achievement. Do more with less, or, or else. Or else what? Or else,this state creates more citizens incapable of getting a job at Microsoft? Boeing? Starbucks? Or else companies finallly move out of this backwater hill whomper hell hole and leave it to hayseeds from Vancouver.
I don’t see any reason why the UW and other state higher education institutions can’t cut their budgets by 20% and maintain enrollment. The cost of running universities has far outpaced inflation over the last 30 years or so. The per student cost of running a university in 2009 has to be far more than 20% higher — after adjusting for inflation — than it was in 1979.
There is certainly a lot of value to society when higher education has luxurious funding. But when times are hard, when we are in a depression, we have to cut back and fund universities at a level that we can afford.
Right now at the University of Washington, they have a president who makes roughly a million dollars a year, depending on which bonuses and perks that you count, and a football coach who makes even more than that. There are hundreds of professors and administrators who earn more money every year than Governor Christine Gregoire.
I read a story a couple of months ago about a mid-level student housing administrator at the University of Washington who was earning $140,000 per year. That fellow has been reassigned to some mostly do-nothing job, earning the same obscene $140,000 salary, after being “disciplined” for sexual harassment.
I see our good friend SeattleJew (aka Professor Stephen M. Schwartz) howling about the proposed budget cuts. I looked Prof. Schwartz up on http://www.lbloom.net (a website maintained by a fellow dedicated to public disclosure of public salaries). Turns out that Prof. Schwartz was earning a salary of $13,104 per month from the UW in 2007.
True enough, the taxpayers can easily afford to pay Prof. Schwartz $13,104 per month (or even more) when economic times are really good. But when hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost in this state, and tens of thousands of folks who were making $100K a year are lucky to make $9 to $12 per hour, how can we maintain the really nice salaries for folks like Prof. Schwartz?
At least Prof. Schwartz can take comfort that he will still be making far more money than the Governor of Mississippi, even if his pay is cut by 20% …
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Richard Pope, not every higher education institution is the UW or WSU. The kinds of salaries you like to cherry pick don’t exist at the other colleges and universities.
State support covers roughly 1/2 the costs of operating a college or university. With less public money, the only response is to raise tuition to resemble the private education for which you and Wallace argue. Cut funding to points that threaten accreditation at the smaller regional institutions and still serve the same number of students. Sorry, but at 20% then you are cutting staff to the bone and also faculty. It becomes impossible to serve the same number of students.
Cutting 20% while only cutting community colleges by 6% assures that more and more students will do nothing more than earn associate degrees because access to the 4 year institutions will be harder to come by. Colleges and universities will turn to non-residents to bridge budget gaps not to run things as usual but simply to survive.
Cherry pick your favorite targets all you like, but that is not the reality at least at my institution. Console yourself that those who work in higher education are living high off the hog. We aren’t. Shave 20% and Washington gets what it richly deserves.
Richard Pope @ 26,
Ummm…what you are missing is that very little (if any) of SJ’s salary comes from the state. As a leading researcher in his field, SJ is paid market rate. But it doesn’t cost the state squat. He pulls in most of his salary through grants. In fact, I would go as far to suggest that SJ brings in more research grant money EACH quarter than the University pays him in a decade.
Can we, please, kick Deb Wallace out of the party?
Lauramae @ 28
That is precisely why they are proposing to cut universities by 20% and community colleges by only 6%. Community colleges are already run much more leanly than universities, and instructors at community colleges make significantly less than those at universities. In fact, at a cut of only 6%, community colleges are taking a much smaller hit than the state budget as a whole (which is being reduced by a good bit more than 6%).
I can certainly sympathize that WWU, CWU, and EWU are run at a considerably lower cost than UW and WSU. I would be sympathetic to cutting UW and WSU by more than 20%, and WWW, CWU and EWU by less than 20%.
At some point, we have to be practical with the state budget. Governor Gregoire and the vast majority of DEMOCRATS in the legislature realize that significant cuts need to be made in higher education in these tough economic times.
It is all a matter of prioritizing. There are hundreds of thousands of state residents who are worse off than even the lowest paid higher education employees. There are a LOT of human needs in this state that are more pressing than higher education, and these are also taking large cuts.
@26 Richard Pope
The trouble with folks like you is that you actually think that a research university is some sort of service shop where students go to have their spark plugs upgraded and get a new muffler. By your reasoning we could save a LOT of money by simply replacing universities and colleges entirely by diploma mills.
Of course a l;ack of high level academic centers this would leave our state without a competitive intellectual environment but heh .. just think how much more fun the Northwest would be without Microsoft, Amgen, Amazon, Boeing, the Hutch, ?????
Do you really think high tech industries are looking for places without research universities?
BTW, Darrel is correct .. I have brought in a lot more money than my spay for many years but it is a mistake to only look at folks like me. Microsoft needs the bright kid who majors in English under some underpaid Prof of Shakespeare as much as it does the Comp Sci majors. Do you really think creativity comes from taking Berlitz classes or following the study guide provided by the Teaching Company?
Of course, the well off who still live in this low tech rain forest could send their kids to private universities .. except the Northwest does not have any major private schools! What the hell, the kid could get to see Chapel Hill or New Haven. If they are bright enough maybe they could get into U. Tokyo! All it would take is money!
What a great idea! Without the burden of high level schools, WAstate, like the Seattle Public Schools, can specialize in educating those too poor, too unmotivated, or too limited by their gifts to compete to get into or to afford a private school!
I have an even better idea! Maybe we could close all these schools and offer vouchers! The we could privatize the UW and let it compete for students with the University of Phoenix and that art study school you see on the match books.
@31 Pope
You obviously have no idea of the reason we have UW or WSU.
What makes you think WWU, CWU, EWU or Evergreen do the same thing as the UW???
Would you send some kid gifted in physics to Bellingham? What sort of academic collaborations do you suppose might exist between WA state vintners and Ellensberg? Do you think biotech companies would come here to be near Seattle Pacific University?
Or maybe you think UW Medical School should be downgraded to the level or Oral Roberts?
Let me give you a concrete example of something going on behind the scenes as we speak. Scientists at the Hutch and UW developed new tools that let us use genetics to figure out the pathways that control most ocmplex diseases. Those tools led to a company. Rosetta, that has pioneered new directions that now are essential to drug research. Work at Rosetta, funded by industry, is now returning to the academic fold to develop a new level of tools. A number of us are hoping to create a new genetics institute in Seattle.
Let me try to give you a flavor of what academic environment is needed to support the new institute. Addressing these problems will require several kinds of input:
a. theorteical physicisists who already understand strings.
b. genetic counselors .. trained largely in the social sciences so they can explain the science to patients and study subjects.
c. nano engineers able to devise new machines to lower the costs of mass screening.
d. information theorists, some trained in math or philosophy, to deal with the new kinds of data.
e. pathologists (eg me) who understand enough math and biology to figure out how best to use this resource.
Where do students fit into all this?
While I do sometimes teach conventional classes. most of my students begin by working for a buck in the lab. We discuss experiments. I advise them on courses to take and papers to read. When writing and thinking skills are not up to the task I urge them to take courses in literature. Some go on to grad school and beyond.
Can this be done at Bellingham?
ctd ..
Perhaps it will help Richard if I finish with a specific example of how a researchn university owrks at the teaching level..
As DL regulars know, I am active working with minority kids to introduce them to science. I am hoever, opposed to racial quotas. Recently a young white lady from a poor family challenged the UW definition of minority by being accepted into the summer program. She had no science background and had grown up in a very fundamentalist home opposed to evloution et al.
This lady mixed with my fellows and other summer students. I think this was her first experience meeting black kids and it certainly was the first time she had worked with aetheists, hindus, etc. Stll, she just blossomed.
As part of her summer she had to present her project. That was a success and she worked part time in the lab over the next year. In addition to taking a much different range of courses than she might have chosen, the student found faculty she could discuss ideas about. One of these, who became a mentor and friend, is a devout Christian as well as a very good scientist.
I ma oproud to say this lady graduated and went to work for a local proteomics firm. She intends to work a while before returning to earn her MD or PhD.
I can assure you that this story is very, very normal. Every lab I know has such students at all times.
@23 Puddy
IT things are changing for the better here under Emmert. A lot of wasteful central computing has gone away and there is a real effort to bring MS and Google into the administrative side of things just as they have long been present at the intellectual level of comp sci and EE. I understand that we may even get campus wide Exchange!
One of the biggest problems is in your area. We have a cacophonous set of databases that I believe runs under the Babble OS. Over the last three years a real effort has begin to address this but .. and here is the rub, it costs $$ to save $$ after you have wasted $$ on dumb things!
As one example, there is a large investment in video. It can easily cost hundreds of $$ to remote a seminar that could be done for a Lincoln or so with Powerpoint/Sharepoint, etc.
Thanks for responding SJ.
19. SeattleJew spews:
SJ-
I’m sure it is painful for you to have some Conservative call bullshit on your “pretend to care about the cost of higher education.”
For a guy who considers himself to be scholarly & intellectual…you have a very hard time taking your thoughts and putting them into action.
You are a fat ass gasbag SJ.
Now is the time for A-C-T-I-O-N!
You have the knowledge & insight…but obviously lack the will and COURAGE to really make a difference.
Like most University types, you enjoy listening to yourself talk about change and reading your own musings must swell you up with pride.
But it ends there.
So keep wasting your time SJ!
You should be ashamed.
A pontificating GASBAG!
Richard-
I think you struck a nerve with SJ.
I’ll bet he makes a lot more than just the UW salary.
Darryl jumps in to try & justify the salary because of “freemoney” grants SJ brings in.
Anyone working anywhere can figure out someway to justify themselves.
The problem I have with SJ is his gasbagging & ponitificating about ways the Higher Ed System can be more cost effestive and DOING NOTHING in terms of action to change it.
With his salary & benefits (if Richard is right, after 30 years SJ will have a $100,000/yr PENSION courtesy of our broke State Pension Fund so taxpayers will have to pay him)…SJ can afford to be a standup guy for real change…rather than cower in the corner and spew endless ideas he has no intention of moving forward.
SJ==GASBAG
People always make the mistake of assuming that the only education worth saving is what happens directly in the classroom. Critical thinking skills—those required for successful integration into productive work life like creative problem-solving, and a “teamwork” mindset are formulated in the whole experience of going to a university or a college. Feeding your intellectual life makes you a better citizen, a better worker, more flexible in economic downturns. You are a better asset to your employers for all sorts of reasons that SJ has already spelled out.
Cutting higher education to the bone isn’t about eliminating luxurious add-ons. It is about sapping the life out of our institutions and simply making them the equivalent experience of a 4 year community college education. High school, for 4 more years. It assures that for decades, Washington will have successfully destroyed any competitive edge it might have had in attracting and retaining the kind of business and industry that will sustain it through the years. Why? Because we will see that creativity and innovation is angrily denounced as unnecessary fluff.
Who do you think invests in overpriced Seattle real estate? Who buys big commercial real estate? Who builds your Northwest style homes and cooks your NW cuisine? Loggers?
Concrete will be more than just a town, it will be a state of mind. However, there’s plenty of evidence already that many people don’t recall what constitutes an educated person.
Cynical ..
You have not answered the question about who you are but anonymnity is a wonderful thing isn’t it?
As for my own interests in keeping costs as low as they can, I too ama tax payer and I certainlty have made consistent efforts to reduce costs and raise quality.
Just in case you aheve any interest in a real discussion, these are issues I have worked on:
1. I have opposed the branch campuses because they are expensive and do not function as true universities.
If you really do care about something beside smelling your own hot air, this is a very real issue we could discuss.
2. I have advocated the use of programmed instruction. As part of that I created the original distance learning program for WAMI’s pathology program at Pullman, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska.
Again, the use of programmed instruction and distance learning is very worth discussing.
3. I have worked with Morehouse and Tugalloo to encourage UW exchanges with these outstanding traditionally black schools. In that cpacity I also chaored a manpower committee for the NIH.
I am very concerned that “excellence” no mean we serve only the rich .. how about you?
4. I have worked, so far unsuccessfully, to open the UW to public discourse.
5. I have mentored a very large number of students outside of my formal job description. A very large number of these have gone on to be physicians and scientists.
What have you done?
There is more but somehow, I suspect you would rather not discuss anything meaningful.
@38 ..pensions ..,
As far as I know faculty’s only pensions are their TIAA Cref and 401k. If you know of something else please let me know!
@39 Lauramae
Good post.
The big problem with Wallace and Cynical is that they have no understanding of waht a univeristy actually does.
I blame this on the UW. Our efforts at community involvement are horrid.
@37;
Cycnical – you are tooooo funny. You are calling SJ a gasbag. This is from someone who has been posting incessantly on here and has YET to come up with a single original idea.
How many times ahve we shown that cynical knows NOTHING about what he/she claims to be talking about?
How many times has the patheitcally stooopid cynical posted arguments right from some right wing site – that have proven to be false?
Let’s see, just recently cyncial posted on the supposed 8 billion dollar train from LA to Vegas allegedly put in by Harry Reid – that was false.
so was the Nancy Pelosi mouse story – false.
For simple-minded people like cynical – it is an effective argument to just mention names of people that they don’t like – who cares about the actual facts? Democrats MUST be bad because they are socialists….and socialists are bad because….yup, this is the extent of their sorry logic.
that is what a third grade education will get – an inability to put together a logical argument.
Yet cynical (over-sized ego that it has), insists that higher ed and SJ are gasbags.
Hmmm, I wonder who I would trust. All of SJ’s ideas are not good – but at least he has ideas and can construct an argument.
You, cynical, have no ideas and cannot contruct a logical argument.
cnr–
My job is to keep you KLOWNS from falling off the Left side of the Earth.
So far, I have been successful.
You should be grateful.
A group of Lefty’s in full group masterbation is a horrid thing.
I am challenging SJ. Obviously he knows more about the Higher Ed System than any of us.
The system has created a snobbish aura of elitism that immediately circles the wagons justifying the massive cost increases and woeful lack of accountability over the years.
I think SJ would agree with that.
I never said the system is without BENEFITS to society. It certainly is.
I question the Cost-Benefit.
Whenever a bureaucracy goes thru a period of unbridled growth with little accountability but “internal”, there is room for improvement…in this case plenty.
And yes SJ, the Higher Ed System has itself to blame for attitudes like mine. Not only poor community outreach, but plenty of questionable programs & spending…some of which you pointed out.
Hey SJ..I’m trying to challenge you to “NUT UP” man. We are in a horrible economic time.
True leaders will find ways to make a difference.
Go along, get along with mild protest is not the answer.
Good luck SJ.
For starters, they can abolish Evergreen State College and sell the land and facilities. Students don’t learn there and teachers don’t teach there. They just suck dollars out of the budget.
John425@45, don’t be so cynical. They learn all things bright and Democratic there. Rachel Corrie learned her skillz there sad as it is about her death.
Having incredibly stupid people in your classroom will do that.
Cynical…do you really think the earth is flat?
Because most of humankind has known otherwise for millennia. Just sayin’.
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So I really don’t get why conservatives would be opposed to running the state’s 4 year more like private universities. Let them set tuition as they see fit, admissions policy, student count, etc. Make up the difference by taking the per-student money currently going to the schools and putting it into the state need based aid pool. When the budget gets tight cut the aid pool and not the school budgets.
As a further suggestion I’d cut the branch campuses away from the UW and WSU. Make a single system out of CWU, EWU, and WWU and add the branch campuses to that system. I’m thinking something along the lines of the CSU system. The mission would be to focus on undergrad instruction and especially year 3 and 4 in partnership with the Community and Technical College system.
The focus of the UW would be to be a top-25 research institution and a top-5 or 10 institution in the programs where the UW is particularly strong. The focus of WSU would be to be a top-100 research institution and again a top-5 or 10 institution in programs where WSU is particularly strong.
@ 50
Right on! That makes real sense and is what we need.
Bothel should become Cascades State College. Bellevue should form another State College. Tacoma should either become part of Evergreen or a new school.
Everett does need a campus, but that should be a work-study polytechnical model building on the Navy and Boeing.
UW and WSU should have the resources to make as much of our offerings available state wide as possible.
As for tuition, I really do not see much difference between capitation (the state pays a semi-private school a fee per student) and our current model.
What we MUST avoid is thew middle class/upper class flight system that is destroying the public schools. All WA citizens have a stake in our schools and we will all be hurt if we try to have one system for the poor an another for the (shrinking) upper classes.
@44 Cybical and do you get paid for holding the Earth from tilting?
For anyone who wants, Mark Emmert, UW Prexy will be online in six minutes …
52. Seattle Jew, a true liberal spews:
Nope, absolutely free of charge.
Ever hear about Deathbed Regrets SJ??
I don’t want to have your demise from your falling off the Left Side of the Earth on me when I know there is something I can do about it.
Cynical ..
aha .. so you are on welfare!
Actually SJ. I’m providing welfare (mercy posting) for KLOWNS like you!
You are the recipient of my charitiable giving which allows you to spew and not fall off the LEFT side of the Earth.
You’re welcome SJ.