Washington State's Interesting Budget Plan

Parents Forum
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<p>Local</a> News | WSU bucks trend, loads up on freshmen | Seattle Times Newspaper</p>

<p>"WSU, which last year reduced the number of freshmen admitted as a result of budget cuts, is now doing the opposite: It is growing the size of the school, with an emphasis on bringing in Washington state students. The school expects to have 1,100 more in-state freshman at the Pullman campus than it did last year.</p>

<p>That's a contrast to almost every other four-year public college in Washington, where the number of freshmen is holding steady or even shrinking. Only the University of Washington is expecting a bigger freshman class, but the increase is coming from out-of-state: The UW's in-state freshman enrollment is expected to be smaller than last year's by about 150 students.</p>

<p>WSU is attracting more students by recruiting heavily in high schools, encouraging minority students to apply and wooing top-ranked students with extra attention, easy admission and scholarships. But it's also benefiting from the UW's decision to let in fewer in-state students."</p>

<p>I saw this article on the front page of the Seattle Times this morning and I think that Washington State University really deserves praise for giving more in-state students opportunities during this budget cut crisis as opposed to cutting opportunities for in-state students in favor of full pay out of state kids like all of Washington's other public universities. It may not be as strong of a school as UW but I think WSU has a great future ahead of it and I commend WSU for remembering that as a state school, it is supposed to serve the students of the state that supports it.</p>

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<p>I second the praising of Wazzu. The education there has always been very good, but UW-Seattle has always enjoyed an advantage in the popular imagination. Wazzu seems to be doing a much better job these days of marketing itself west of the Cascades. Wasn’t always that way.</p>

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<p>Well, an obvious strategic/politcal ploy that worked in garnering public support. Wonder how they are going to ship all those adjuncts out to Pullman–not like the place is overflowing with enemployed PhDs like Seattle. When you are a distant second you have to throw the long ball.</p>

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[quote]
Wonder how they are going to ship all those adjuncts out to Pullman<a href=“much”>/quote</a> Larger class sizes?</p>

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<p>@Erin’s Dad: In the article it says they are hiring many new full time and part time professors to deal with the larger student body, so I don’t think there will be any drastic increase in class sizes but there probably will be at least some increase</p>

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<p>I’m a proud Texas Aggie and know that huge classes can be effective. My freshman chem class was 300+ but it came with lots of support material at the library and TA’s who were trained to help freshmen through the labs and exams. I actually recall a fair amount of what I learned in that class. </p>

<p>Sure, I think small classes are generally better (particularly in grade school) but if WSU is getting more kids an education, I’d cut them some slack on class size.</p>