While the UW is joining the PAC 16, Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the Georgetown center, has written a report that addresses the central question of why we, that is the State of Washington, need to have a premier research university:

from Inside Higher Ed: report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce .

The colleges that most students attend “need to streamline their programs, so they emphasize employability,” said Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the Georgetown center.
Carnevale acknowledged that such a shift would accept “a dual system” in which a select few receive an “academic” college education and most students receive a college education that is career preparation. “We are all offended by tracking,” he said. But the reality, Carnevale said, is that the current system doesn’t do a good job with the career-oriented track, in part by letting many of the colleges on that track “aspire to be Harvard.” He said that educators have a choice: “to be loyal to the purity of your ideas and refuse to build a selective dual system, or make people better off.”

This seems to me go be a message for the UW … but maybe not a message for an ever expanding educational emporium. The core function of the UW should be .. and for the sake of the State’s future .. had better be ..competing with the best academic centers … Boston, San Francisco, Oxbridge, the Research Triangle, as well as the growing strength of Beijing.

Another way of stating Mr. Carnevales’ point is that he US system is wasteful. Everyone in wants a prestigious diploma, but not every student wants or needs to aim for high levels of achievement. For every concert pianist, biotech founder, or great architect the UW can produce, the state needs to be able to train 100 people to code software, grow grapes, and provide nursing care with Courses similar to the nursing Diploma in Australia, for example.

Part of the system in Washington already responds to the Georgetown report. Washington has excellent community colleges and our state college system is ranked among the nation’s best.

The endangered part of this mix are the research campuses, UW and WSU. These institutions are endangered not only by the economic pressure of the post Bush/Clinton era but by a confused mission that sets priorities on how many diplomas we can award and on our ability to field football teams competitive with those of much bigger states.

Rather than focus on the educational opportunities offered by WSU and UW we have gone to a system that requires 30% of all UW students take their general education courses at the community colleges. IF we can educate freshman and sophomores that cheaply, some say we either do not need the research schools or that we should restrict the UW ans WSU to being two year, post community college institutions.

So, where am I going? I believe the UW and WSU should be smaller. Rather than ever expanding the size of the student body to support legislators who see us as a diploma mills or as big state campuses that justify big state football teams, I believe we should encourage growth of the state colleges.

One way to achieve smaller cmapuses on Montake and in Pullman might be to award the coveted UW or WSU degrees to ALL grads of Evergreen, Bellingham and Eastern. At the same time we could convert Tacoma and Bothell into state colleges and direct most students from community colleges to the state college campuses.

This smaller UW/WSU model would mean a UW or WSU degree would be more expensive to the taxpayers, however the average cost of a college education per Washington student would not change because it is much less expensive to spend four years at Bellingham that its along Montlake . Moreover, if the UW/WSU are as competitive as I believe they could be, these smaller schools might well attract full tuition paying students from outside of the state. These selected students would increase the opportunities for Washington sate kids to study with the best.

This smaller UW/WSU model also raise questions about football. The current model for big college athletics is that the schools supporting the teams are able to offer athletes a satisfactory but rarely excellent education. If the schools focus more an academic excellence this would force us to choose one of two alternatives: either we recognize that pro-level athletic education IS a valid major or we drop down a notch and compete in a league where athletics is a secondary aspect of tyhe student athletes lives.

Back along Montlake and at Pullman, this smaller UW/WSU would mean four things:

1. Much smaller entry level classes. Getting into the UW would be much harder but the students who do get in would be very well prepared for courses competitive with comparable courses at other elite universities.

2. “Distance education,” provided by the Montlake and Pullman campuses would strengthen offerings at the state colleges. All courses at the state colleges would meet standards so that students who needed to transfer to the UW or WSU for specific course work or for their last two years could do so. This concept of distance education implies a collaboration between faculty at the universities and colleges. Some of us have already done this, hosting Evergreen students whose programs in Olympia involve work with UW faculty.

3. Baccalaureate professional programs … nursing, engineering, business, education, would be moved as much as possible to the state colleges. “As much as possible” means that a focus of all WSU/UW programs would be on post baccalaureate achievement .. not just graduate school, but any career that requires ongoing intellectual effort at a high level.

4. The Tacoma and Bothell campuses would either fuse with existing state colleges or found new ones. This model would also serve the expected need for a new institution in Everett with a “polytechnical” orientation.

5. Hopefully, a re-educated populace and legislature would see the value in using state funds not just for mass education but to support centers of excellence that would attract and keep jobs in Seattle the way similar institutions, public and private, work elsewhere.

Or … we could compete with Baylor, Oklahoma, USC, and Florida to be the nation’s number one home for a football team.

UPDATE

Education Commission Asks Colleges to Improve Remedial Instruction and Assessment

The Education Commission of the States released a report on Wednesday that asks states and colleges to carefully examine their remedial-education practices. In the report, “Rebuilding the Remedial Education Bridge to College Success,” the commission says it will study various policies that have facilitated or impeded the successful delivery of remedial courses