Opinion - Our View

POSTED: Saturday, Sep. 26, 2009

Western on right track, despite cuts and tuition increases

Students who started the new school year at Western Washington University last week will have noticed some changes.

Their tuition bills are higher - a 14 percent increase that gets the total to close to $5,000 a year, not counting room and board and books and other living expenses.

And there are fewer courses to choose from. Between 10 percent and 15 percent of the class sections at the university were done away with as part of cost-cutting forced by the state's economic woes.

The university has laid off or not filled 164 jobs it had last year.

And for the first time in decades, there is no university football team playing.

As hard as that all may be on the students and their parents, we applaud the university's administrators - especially President Bruce Shepard - for his work streamlining the university in the face of more than $40 million in budget cuts.

For example, while there are fewer courses in the catalog for students to choose from, there are still the same number of seats offered in classrooms. Call it a more focused curriculum - difficult for the professor and 10 students who wanted a specific small course, but better for the whole of the student body and the whole of the faculty with more room in the more in-demand courses.

Shepard met with our editorial board Wednesday, Sept. 23, not long after he delivered his opening speeches - one to new students, one to faculty and staff - and the first classes started.

He was quick to point out that the cuts visited upon the university were tough to take and have created a risk to the quality of education. Among the risks are that with fewer courses available, it will take students longer to graduate. Shepard also worries that cuts to the counseling programs will make it harder on students and create dangers no one can predict.

Shepard calls the cuts at Western last year "extreme." The state now contributes 43 percent of the university's operating budget, down from 60 percent last year.

But Shepard is also a realist. He knows that things are not going to get better anytime soon, and he won't waste his breath in upcoming lobbying efforts with legislators talking about how much more money is needed. Instead he hopes to convince legislators not to cut too much more. He says that is a taller order than he once imagined.

"When we talk to people in Olympia we are being told that their constituents say we are not relevant, and that we are arrogant," Shepard told us.

The idea that university educations are not relevant to the citizens of Washington is ridiculous. Our state has long gained economic advantage by capitalizing on a smart, innovative workforce. There is a direct economic correlation between how much you learn and how much you earn. And our entire state will suffer, over the long run, if higher education becomes unattainable - either through lack of available courses and space on campuses, or through prices too expensive for most families to pay.

As for arrogance, Shepard promises to continue to make efforts to talk to citizens and reach out to the community as a way to break down the walls between town and gown. He has also talked to his faculty and staff about how they must change in the face of the changing world around them, learning to be more efficient and challenging each other to come up with new, innovative ways to educate on campus and communicate with those off campus.

We find the current approach at Western refreshing and we hope it will lead to a more stable future on campus. It's important to our community that the university be a thriving, growing concern that educates our children and the children of other Washingtonians at the highest levels.

Good luck to all of the students in 2009-2010 year.