Category: From the VP

The 2019 state legislative session began on Monday, January 14 and in the spirit of “wasting no time” to make our case for increased state funding, I had the pleasure of joining President Cauce in Olympia all day yesterday to meet with state legislators about our biennial operating and capital budget requests (read that here). We also stopped by TVW, where Ana Mari appeared with WSU President Kirk Schulz on TVW program “The Impact” to discuss our joint “Yes, It’s Possible” campaign.

During the course of our day, we heard a lot about the state’s structural budget challenges.  What this means is that despite robust revenue growth, prior budgets were balanced using too many one-time fixes and a persistent gap between revenue and spending remains unresolved. Tack on spending needs for behavioral health, some additional K-12 costs, health care and other social services and of course the needs of the UW and all of public higher education and the $4 billion deficit that legislators talk about begins to make some sense.

Governor Jay Inslee’s budget proposal addresses the state’s budget gap through proposals to raise significant revenue with a new tax on capital gains and an increase in the state’s business and occupation tax on certain businesses.  His proposed $26 million in “foundational support” for the UW’s core operating budget is critical to correcting several years of over reliance on tuition revenue to fund compensation and other core educational functions. The good news from our many legislative meetings yesterday was that virtually all members were aware of our request for foundational budget support and felt like we were doing a good job of making a strong case for the investment. The less good news was that the legislature doesn’t know yet how they are going to balance this budget and address all the other competing budget priorities.  That’s totally to be expected since we are less than 10 days into the 105 day session.

All in all a good day of advocacy for UW and public higher education priorities.  President Cauce plans to make three additional trips to Olympia during the session and our Regents, students, faculty and alumni have several additional lobbying days planned in the next couple of months. More to come as the session continues.

Note: The Impact airs each Wednesday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. on TVW and repeats Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 7 p.m. and airs on KSPS Public Television in Spokane and KSTW TV in Seattle. More information is online from TVW. 

I was interested to see the story from KNKX radio in yesterday’s news clips that showed that the University of Washington has the lowest “net” price for families of any university in the state according to The Hechinger Report and Education Writers Association.  This study lets consumers see the sticker price and then the net price that students and families actually pay once all financial aid and scholarships are factored in.  This low net price is a testament both to our state legislature which has been relentlessly focused on keeping college tuition affordable since the end of the Great Recession and the thousands of generous UW donors who have contributed towards student scholarships during our current Be Boundless capital campaign.

While low tuition is a good deal for students and families, it remains also a huge part of the funding that keeps the UW and other four year institutional operating budgets afloat.  That’s why if a state is going to go the route of keeping tuition low, it’s critical that state funding make up the difference.  Most of the UW’s competitive peers around the nation who have low tuition for resident undergraduates enjoy relative high levels of state funding per student.

The funding crisis that the UW faces as we head into the 2019 state legislative session is that this situation is not the case for our university. In her annual address to the campus last Tuesday, President Cauce displayed a series of charts that show while the UW ranks near the bottom in terms of our tuition price, it also ranks third from the bottom of our 25 public peer group in state funding per student – about $5200 per student compared to $14,000 to $24,000 per student for the four universities who also rank low on tuition per student.

As the saying goes, “this is no way to run a railroad!”  It simply isn’t sustainable for a large flagship university to rank low in both state funding and tuition revenue per student.  Given the recent rapid rise in the cost of living in the Seattle metropolitan area, it’s also a recipe for long term disaster.  These are the stakes as we head into what some legislators have hopefully called “the year for higher education.”  We hope so too.

I’ve been thinking a lot about college majors recently.  No, I’m not planning to go back to school for another degree (although the idea of being a Triple Dawg has some appeal).  No, I’m thinking about majors because my daughter is a sophomore this year at the UW and is in the process of trying to sort out her academic future for the next three years.

There’s been a lot of negative attention on four year degrees in the last couple of years, particularly bachelor’s degrees in the liberal arts which many feel do not lead directly to a good paying job.  Certainly universities nationwide have seen a slow migration away from the liberal arts for many years.  For example, in 1998, the top five undergraduate majors here on the UW Seattle campus were Business, Biology, Political Science, English and Sociology.  In 2017, the top five were Computer Science, Psychology, Business, Biochemistry and Electrical Engineering – a pretty good reflection of the significant changes that have occurred in the regional economy during this time.  In case our elected officials were wondering, many of our students seem to have gotten the “STEM” message.

But that does not mean that a liberal arts degree has no value and in fact, according to a recent survey commissioned by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, while the general public remains skeptical of their value, executives and hiring managers in the business community not only have confidence in universities and colleges, they value those skills that are generally taught as part of a liberal arts education.

The survey covered 500 private sector business executives and 500 managers whose duties included recruiting and hiring new employees.  More than 60% of those surveyed expressed a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in U.S. colleges and universities and between 75 and 80% of the same group who think completing a college education is very important or absolutely essential in today’s workplace.

More importantly, when it comes to skills necessary to succeed in today’s workplace, business executives and hiring managers value more generalized skills that aren’t specific to certain majors such as oral communication and critical thinking.  And while these skills are highly valued, less than 50% of the same group believe students are well prepared in this regard.

So, let’s hold off on the requiem for the liberal arts for the time being.  Sure, computer science and engineering are still going to be both popular with students and necessary given the direction of the economy.  But it seems that there is still a viable place in the workplace for the humanities.

I’m off to Washington DC later this week to meet with staff to our congressional delegation about two critical issues facing the UW and other higher education institutions in the United States.

First, the House version of the Higher Education Reauthorization Act known as “PROSPER” is slowly working its way to the floor of the chamber, although as of today there are still not enough votes to pass the measure.  Authored by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina) with little input from the broader higher education community, the measure would make higher education more expensive for millions of students and families by eliminating in-school interest subsidies for undergraduates, the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant program, and loan forgiveness and other benefits currently available in federal student loan programs.  Graduate students would also be hit hard by the measure by limiting federal loans forcing them to borrow at higher costs and fewer protections in the private market.

The UW’s letter of concerns with the PROSPER act can be found here.

The other issue on our advocacy radar screen in the nation’s capital are the increasing attacks on international students, particularly those coming from China.  While we share everyone’s interest in insuring our nation’s national and economic security, we must ensure that any changes to our visa system don’t negatively impact our ability to continue research and develop cures and technologies that drive our economy.

Over the past few weeks, a number of proposals have been floated in the administration as well as Congress that would place severe limits on how long students from China could study in the U.S. as well as making it harder to be granted a visa in the first place.  We believe that student-visa policies for Chinese citizens to protect against security concerns should be much more narrowly tailored to ensure they don’t needlessly deter the brightest students from studying in our nation’s top research universities.

For more up to date information on these and other critical federal issues, make sure you check the Federal Relations Blog on a regularly basis.