It has been a while since we heard anything about the effort to site the University of Washington branch campus in Snohomish County. I have always been an advocate of working on controversial issues when the heat is focused somewhere else. I hope the decision makers are as well.
Since I have been a strong advocate for the Marysville site, I look at the process they used to make the selection and am still perplexed that they could choose Everett Station. I was not invited to participate when they did the initial go-round so they are not really interested in what I think. That has never been a deterrent to me offering my opinion anyway.
If you read the Revised Code of Washington RCW 28B.50.020 Sec. 7, you see that Community Colleges are supposed to be independent institutions, not a part of any other educational institution. At the same time, you can go to the UW Bothell campus and find that Cascadia Community College shares the site with the Branch campus. Other community colleges in our area also offer undergraduate degrees through branch affiliations with Western and Central Washington State Universities.
I am not trying to undermine the mission of the Everett Community College, but the only way I could imagine siting the UW Snohomish County in Everett would be if it piggy backed on the ECC campus. If you look at the size of the ECC campus, you can understand why the Everett Station site is totally unsuited for the needs of the new university.
The argument I hear in favor of Everett over Marysville is the proximity to transit in Everett. I do think the new train station is much better than the old one, but I don’t think of the train will be a significant factor in bringing students to the campus from the target market to the north. Regardless of what the politicians say, the students that will attend this university will take busses or drive in their cars from their homes and jobs in northern Snohomish and Skagit County. Certainly there will be a draw from the south if the focus of the school is of a technical nature, but with a UW in Bothell, putting one in Everett doesn’t make much sense.
I know a University branch campus is not a high school, but today’s standards for new high schools recommends that a high school be a minimum of five acres plus one additional acre for each 100 students. So a high school with a student population of 2000 would require a minimum of 25 acres. I would imagine that a branch campus for a university would use similar criteria to establish size requirements. I would also imagine that a branch campus would expect a student population of more than 2000 so the site should be large enough to accommodate growth. Maybe a long term enrollment of 10,000 students would require a site of 100 acres or more. If the campus was to include student housing, the number of acres would increase significantly. The point of this thought is to demonstrate that the Everett site is hardly suitable for minimum enrollment let alone the thousands we all expect.
If the process for siting UW Snohomish County has a site-size criteria, Everett loses every time.
If you consider the general area around the university that will develop in conjunction with the school, Marysville has many more possibilities.
In spite of the fact that the analysis suggests almost any site is better than Everett, shoe-horning the UW Snohomish County into a tiny site on the wrong side of the tracks in Everett is a distinct possibility since politicians are involved and that changes everything. Spending a fortune on the wrong thing would be no surprise since it is just public money and everyone knows we all have more than we can handle.
This whole Everett infatuation thing reminds me of a parent with an unattractive child describing how beautiful their baby is.
Posted on October 20, 2008 at 7:02 am in Political commentary, Snohomish County Political Commentary | RSS feed
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No Loss for Words
University of Washington – MARYSVILLE
by Steve DanaIt has been a while since we heard anything about the effort to site the University of Washington branch campus in Snohomish County. I have always been an advocate of working on controversial issues when the heat is focused somewhere else. I hope the decision makers are as well.
Since I have been a strong advocate for the Marysville site, I look at the process they used to make the selection and am still perplexed that they could choose Everett Station. I was not invited to participate when they did the initial go-round so they are not really interested in what I think. That has never been a deterrent to me offering my opinion anyway.
If you read the Revised Code of Washington RCW 28B.50.020 Sec. 7, you see that Community Colleges are supposed to be independent institutions, not a part of any other educational institution. At the same time, you can go to the UW Bothell campus and find that Cascadia Community College shares the site with the Branch campus. Other community colleges in our area also offer undergraduate degrees through branch affiliations with Western and Central Washington State Universities.
I am not trying to undermine the mission of the Everett Community College, but the only way I could imagine siting the UW Snohomish County in Everett would be if it piggy backed on the ECC campus. If you look at the size of the ECC campus, you can understand why the Everett Station site is totally unsuited for the needs of the new university.
The argument I hear in favor of Everett over Marysville is the proximity to transit in Everett. I do think the new train station is much better than the old one, but I don’t think of the train will be a significant factor in bringing students to the campus from the target market to the north. Regardless of what the politicians say, the students that will attend this university will take busses or drive in their cars from their homes and jobs in northern Snohomish and Skagit County. Certainly there will be a draw from the south if the focus of the school is of a technical nature, but with a UW in Bothell, putting one in Everett doesn’t make much sense.
I know a University branch campus is not a high school, but today’s standards for new high schools recommends that a high school be a minimum of five acres plus one additional acre for each 100 students. So a high school with a student population of 2000 would require a minimum of 25 acres. I would imagine that a branch campus for a university would use similar criteria to establish size requirements. I would also imagine that a branch campus would expect a student population of more than 2000 so the site should be large enough to accommodate growth. Maybe a long term enrollment of 10,000 students would require a site of 100 acres or more. If the campus was to include student housing, the number of acres would increase significantly. The point of this thought is to demonstrate that the Everett site is hardly suitable for minimum enrollment let alone the thousands we all expect.
If the process for siting UW Snohomish County has a site-size criteria, Everett loses every time.
If you consider the general area around the university that will develop in conjunction with the school, Marysville has many more possibilities.
In spite of the fact that the analysis suggests almost any site is better than Everett, shoe-horning the UW Snohomish County into a tiny site on the wrong side of the tracks in Everett is a distinct possibility since politicians are involved and that changes everything. Spending a fortune on the wrong thing would be no surprise since it is just public money and everyone knows we all have more than we can handle.
This whole Everett infatuation thing reminds me of a parent with an unattractive child describing how beautiful their baby is.
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Posted on October 20, 2008 at 7:02 am in Political commentary, Snohomish County Political Commentary | RSS feed | Reply | Trackback URL
2 Comments to “University of Washington – MARYSVILLE”
October 21, 2008 at 7:26 am
When I go to Everett Station to use Amtrak’s service, I look around and wonder how on EARTH they’d cram a full-sized university on that site. Of course, if it has an engineering school (not a given now that they’re offering those classes at the Bothell campus), at least the students would be able to wander over to Lowe’s to grab cool stuff to play with.
Seriously, I agree with you on this… how did the consultant choose Everett’s site over Marysville? Did silver cross someone’s palm or what?
November 25, 2008 at 10:07 pm
With the budget gap that has opened up since your original post I suppose that a discussion of campus locations is moot, but I’d like to toss in my two cents anyway. I am against the campus regardless of the site.
It has been a foregone conclusion since the very beginning that a campus is the solution to our problems, regradless of the problems. The only question is where we put the darn thing. I disagre. We aren’t looking at the changing face of the student population (that ain’t all 19 years old) and their educational needs. I’ve talked about it more at my No Sno U and Advisory Bored blogs, but I can sum it up this way: the number one challenge facing students of all ages is cost, not location, and spending a billion dollars on a new location just makes the cost situation worse.
Hopefully, as our economy comes back to life, we can continue this the discussion. I’m just glad to see there are some other Snohomish county-based bloggers out there talking about the important topics of the day.