Rep. Dan Kristiansen recently raised questions about siting a new UW branch campus in Everett. I respect his points and the broader view of taking a close look at the cost effectiveness of the proposed project. Nonetheless, the supporters have the better argument, summarized nicely by the Everett Herald on today's editorial page.
Posted by Eric Earling at November 21, 2007 07:19 AM | Email ThisHowever, the reasons the Herald gave seems to suggest the recommended site in Everett is the worst of the four. If the burgeoning population and need for higher education is so great, then why pick the smallest site? If there will be such a demand, don't you think the site that has the most ability to expand be the logical choice?
I wonder if the lefties in this state had something to do with the selection. They seem to think a small transit station at a four year college would make it more advantageous. You know - get everyone out of their cars.
Posted by: swatter on November 21, 2007 07:51 AMTo me it seems a waste of taxpayer money to have all these burueacratic kingdom's within the higher education system. I do agree with having state run four year and two year colleges and universities spread out through the state. It provides better opportunity for students to pursue higher education opportunities.
Posted by: tc on November 21, 2007 10:35 AMThat is the rationale for almost every expansion of state authority these days, even if it winds up actually making our children worse off.
Look, private Universities ARE BETTER, on average than government ones! Not only that, but if you include all of the costs to both taxpayer and tuition payer, PRIVATE SCHOOLS ARE CHEAPER on average!
We need a separation of education and state.
The only possible exception I would make to this would be means-tested tuition vouchers for the poor only. Let educational institutions run themselves as private organizations, and let taxpayers fund vouchers for the poor to provide more equality of opportunity.
But even this is welfare to the future rich and middle class. College graduates are destined for the middle class at least. Giving them a taxpayer subsidy is welfare to the middle class. This should be funded by private charities. But I'll compromise here for the short run...
The government tends to do a crappy job of running schools. The private sector tends to do a good job. Allowing the government to subsidize the government schools so that the bad schools have a price/tuition advantage over the good private schools just reduces the overall quality of educational achievement among our children in this state.
Like "bad money drives out good," bad, subsidized colleges drive out good. If you want educational improvement in this state, you want LESS funding for government schools at all levels. In the long run, this will be best for the children.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 21, 2007 10:59 AMLet's look at a few:
1. Private Schools are cheaper - On what basis? What costs and revenues do you include or not include? Is the comparison undergraduate oriented university versus undergraduate oriented unversity, or are you mixing research institutions versus a private undergraduate university that does offer some master's programs? For example, stack PLU, or Whitworth's or another undergraduate based university costs against UW-Platteville, or UW-Eau Claire.
2. Private Universities are run better - Again who are you comparing? Are you talking about Washington state run public higher education institutions, or the best run state institutions? Just because this state is doing a poor job, doesn't equate to the argument that public run institutions, in general are poorer than private. One would need to look at what are the best run private institutions and best run public institutions that offer similar focus and programs to see which is a better operating model. Don't assume Washington state's running of higher education is the best model. As I stated in my previous post, there is a lot of inefficiency with the way it being run, starting with each major university spawning and running their own branches.
It is the same argument with primary and secondary education. People against public education will state that private is cheaper, however they are not comparing apples to apples. For example, if one looked at the total cost to run a school district divided by number of students (refer to Evergreen Foundation's website which has the reports), one will see that some public school districts cost approximately 8500-9000 per year, while others (poorly run districts), like Seattle run over 11000 per year. If one compares this with (say) Kings Schools, their tuition runs from 7700-8800 (aprox.), but doesn't include transportation. Transportation is another 1100-1500 additional. Bellermine Prep costs around 10,000 per year and state that tution covers only 70% of their costs. The other 30% is covered through endowments. This cost also doesn't include transportation.
To better argue your statements, it would help with some actual comparisons. What are the facts, or are your statements soley opinions based on the institutions your have been involved with? I am not saying I am right. It is just my experience growing up in a state that prided itself on public education that I come from an opinion that public education can make a difference and be cost effective.
Posted by: tc on November 21, 2007 12:00 PMI just know that, in general, overall, monopolies have less incentive to improve service quality or cost efficiency. I'm sure that some government schools do a decent job, but my argument is that we would almost certainly have better educational outcomes overall, on average, with a totally private system and taxpayer-funded vouchers for only the poor.
It is my bias that in general, government programs are less efficient and lower quality than private programs. I doubt this is controversial to most people.
You can call my position biased, but my guess is that it is the opinion of most of the people on this forum.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 21, 2007 02:56 PM"tc, you are right, I have no data to back up my assertions."
Is that why you are backing Ron Paul/Hugo Chavez/Robert Mugabe. No facts, just opinion, right?
Everyone have a wonderful Thanksgiving. The Paul loons will still be here when we get back.
Posted by: WVH on November 21, 2007 03:33 PMMy general opinion about government is that it is beneficial when it serves the public's best interest. For example, government running a fire department, or police department is better for the public than individuals attempting to do this positions themselves. Managing a public infrastructure, like streets and roads, that help businesses an individuals (free movement of people and goods), is also something government can better provide. Education, to me, is also a beneficial government entity. To me, having an educated workforce and society benefits us all. To leave education to corporate profit-driven culture would be to shut out parts of society. I think however, we can demand government be effective (do the right things) in its services. I applaud the independent auditing function of government. Where I see waste is when governments try to expand to perform services that don't need to be performed by government and bureaucrats creating waste to protect their turf (e.g., King County, Seattle). With regards to K-12 education, if one looks at the EFF data, there is a wide varience in the cost per student per district (3000-5000 gap). One has to ask the question why? many times to dig at the root of this issue. For small rural districts, it is understandable due to transportation requirements and inefficiency in size, but for districts like Tacoma and Seattle, one has to wonder. Is it that the school districts are too big (i.e., is there an optimal size to a school district, e.g., around 10000 students), or is it their poor management? For higher education, what I see is a lack of alternatives for high school students to seek degrees. The state doesn't adequately have enough institutions to cover its population base and the largest ones are shut out for the normal white, middle-class average student (i.e., unless they are a targeted miniority or have a very high GPA, they can forget about UW). One of Wisconsin's higher education measures is the percentage of high school students that attend state public colleges and universities. Their goal is 38%. What is Washington's number? Does it have enough openings across the state to allow this to occur? Many middle-class families make too much for financial aid, but don't make enough to afford private universities. Public universities are the only affordable option for them.
Posted by: tc on November 21, 2007 04:14 PMThe problem with this view is that under it, government is unlimited. There is no mention of individual rights. For instance, what if it were in the interest of all that no one eat red meat? Then the government can ban it. How 'bout pornography, obeisity, smoking, gambling, drinking... This definition of government is the road to an Orwellian nightmare. Your definition can be termed "liberal" or "progressive" and not conservative.
Society has no interests. It has no rights. Only individuals can enjoy or percieve things. Only individuals can benefit, not groups. Groups can have no rights. It is liberal to suppose that they do. Imagine if the right to free speech were a group right instead of an individual right. Then each group would get to say what the opinion of all members was, and any minority view within the group would get squelched. Conservative blacks would have no right to free speech. No, all rights, including life, liberty and property are fundamentally individual, not collective.
Society has no rights, only individuals do. So when people argue that something is in the best interests of society, they are talking about an illusion. There is no coherant thing as the interests of society. There is only a set of diverse interests of all individuals, and most of these interests are incompatible, and not summable. Only the defense of our equal, individual rights to life, liberty and property are common to all of us, and this is why the role of government must be limited to defending these things.
You see, the problem is that power corrupts. A lot of the inefficiency you mention above is caused by power and it's misuse. The founders realized that in order to preserve our freedom, we had to limit government to only it's essential function. And that is: "to defend our equal, individual rights to life, liberty and property." Government is by far the greatest threat to our liberty because it is close to us. It is right here, where we live.
Individuals can seldom cause near the damage that governments can. Even corporations have competitors, and have to make good products at reasonable prices in order to gain power. Then they lose it again as soon as they lose sight of this. But governments are monopolies. There is no alternative, and they use force to maintain that power.
This monopoly status is a key reason why governments tend to do everything less efficiently and with lower quality levels.
This is the reason why all the best Universities are private. It is why UPS and FED-Ex counters never have long lines, but the Post Office always has a dozen people ahead of you. It is why getting your drivers' liscence renewed is a pain in the butt, but getting a credit card is easy.
I am a high school math and physics teacher, so I am sympathetic to the arguments about "an educated populace being necessary to the maintenance of a free country," but it should be clear to all that even in Wisconsin, education should be contracted out at the least, even if you then provide vouchers to all.
Privatization can help government provide better quality services, even if it is still funded by the government.
It may be necessary for the government to provide roads and bridges, but people should pay for these things in proportion to how much they use them. Roads should be paid for by tolls and gas taxes, not general sales taxes, income taxes or property taxes. If you live out in the country, and farm all your own food so you don't get goods that come in on trucks, and you don't own a car or bicycle, you should not pay for roads at all. And shouldn't real estate developers build the local roads within subdivisions? Shouldn't they have to pay for the additional services their development requires so that this cost is passed on to the new homeowners?
I think that the only things that government can do that we can't do ourselves is:
National Defense
Police
Courts
For all the rest, I think the private sector can do it better. And by the way, there are more private security rent-a-cops than there are municipal or county or state cops! Rich people buy security systems and walls around their houses because they know they can not depend on cops. Some live in gated communities. These represent partial privatizations of the police function. And arbitrage agreements are a privatization some of the criminal justice system...
George Washington said that government is not fine speeches, government is like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearsome enemy. Well, the Constitution is like a fireplace. Just as fire that stays in the fireplace is good and useful, but fire that gets out of the fireplace and ignites the drapes is a disaster, government that stays within the limits of the constitution is good government, but when government gets in to every area of society, it is as bad as a forest fire in residential areas of California.
Well, the drapes are on fire. The rafters have caught as well. Power corrupts, and most of our politicians are reprehensible blobs of humanity, with no regard for their oaths of office. Ron Paul is a notable exception.
If we don't get control once more, we are headed for a major disaster. It may be too late already. I think that the government is fast becoming our greatest threat, instead of the greatest defender of our liberty that it was meant to be. This liberal view of unlimited government is at the root of our problem.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 21, 2007 09:08 PMAs far as disaster preparedness is concerned, after Katrina I would guess that few have any illusions that the government does a good job with these. Most of the good that was done in New Orleans, was done by private individuals, charities and corporations. Can government disaster preparedness be reformed? I'm not sure.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 22, 2007 12:16 PMFor example, you state that the best universities are private. First, this depends on your definition of "best" and "private." In my home state, and in the Big Ten states, in general, the best overall universities (from a research standpoint) are state owned (e.g., University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Michigan, Ohio State University, University of Iowa, University of Minnesota, etc.). Even here in Washington State, there would be no general argument against stating that UW and WSU are the top state schools. As far as undergraduate schools, for example, the university I went to (UW-Platteville) ranks very high in the midwest with regards to engineering graduates (high test scores on EIT, high placement rates for graduates within their field of study, etc.). The problem with the top-notched "private" university (I am thinking Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc.) is they are out of reach for the normal middle class high-school graduate. Unless you have the "daddy" or "mommy" connection (i.e., aristocracy), have perfect high-school grades, are a targeted minoirity (with near perfect grades), or an athlete, you can't get in. It is either that or money, as in endowments. They have become aristocracy run institutions that do not meet the general populace and their needs.
You state that there is no society, it is just individuals. How unfortunate for you that you grew up with this view. I grew up in the midwest, in a time when neighbor still helped neighbor, and neighbor knew neighbor. There was community. There was community-pride. You saw that in the parades, community-events, and Friday-night football games. If you broke down on the side of a road, someone would stop to help you and you didn't have to worry about that person. To state that their is no society, only individuals is to doom us to everyone seeking their own best interests (i.e., a selfish society). There still will be a society, but it will be own that is even more "turf" protection and whats-in-it-for-me mentality. It will not progress. For example, it would be the difference between the early communal indian tribes that lived peacefully, and the tribes that developed later on that were warrior tribes, rampaging terrioritory (e.g., Potlach, or effigy-mound based tribes (see early Mississipi river tribes), versus the Iroquios, Souix, etc.).
Posted by: tc on November 23, 2007 10:58 AMtc, I also grew up in the Midwest. Michigan and Chicago suburbs. I never said there was no society. You misunderstand my position. What I said was, society has no interests and no rights. Individuals have interests, but if you try to add them all up in to "the interests of society" what you get is gobbledy-gook. It is like trying to add apples and oranges.
I value all these goods of society that you mention in your second paragraph. I also notice that NONE of the social goods you mention are created or provided by government. None of them is forced, and all of them are voluntary. We libertarians are totally in favor of voluntary community, of civil society. What we are opposed to is FORCED community, or INvoluntary society. These are contradictions in terms. These are what liberals advocate when they seek to force people to be in a community.
I am a HUGE fan of the voluntary forms of community and society that you mention above. I oppose attempts by the left to conflate society with government, and who tell us that if we oppose raising taxes, we must be anti-community. Well, none of the neighborliness, good samaritanship, Friday night football games or parades you mention need to be forced on people. None of them need government to happen. In fact, when government gets in and tries to force these things, usually so that politicians can control them and take credit for them, the government tends to destroy them, and suck all the passion out of them.
No, I favor voluntary community. I am a voluntary communitarian! Liberals and progressives tend to be forced or involuntary communitarians.
Any society that does not respect the rights of individuals is no just society.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 23, 2007 01:52 PMYesterday was Thanksgiving, a wonderful celebration of abundance and productivity. The first Thanksgiving was also a diplomatic feast with the local tribes around Plymouth.
When the pilgrims came to the new world, they arranged agriculture communally. There was no private land. Each was expected to contribute according to his or her ability, and each was to get food and supplies according to need.
The result was famine, and near-total disaster. At least half of the settlement died in the first two winters, as I recall.
To save themselves, they changed their system. Land was apportioned to individual families, who were responsible for planting and harvesting, and who enjoyed the fruits of their own labor. You would describbe this as:
"...to doom us to everyone seeking their own best interests (i.e., a selfish society). There still will be a society, but it will be own (sic) that is even more "turf" protection and whats-in-it-for-me mentality."
Well, the result of this "selfish" reform was that production went up, famine was averted, and the crop was so good that they could invite the local rivals and potential threats; the indians, to come to a feast to diffuse tensions.
Self interest leads to peace and prosperity. Adam Smith noted that back in 1776.
Socialism and other forms of forced community lead to war and poverty.
You just have to look at Cuba, the former USSR, N Korea, Venezuela under Chavez, etc. to see this is true. The poor are better off in free market, "selfish, individualistic" societies than they are in socialistic ones.
It is totally obvious. So, do you really care about the poor? Or do you want them to die younger, more ignorant and in deeper poverty? Socialism and involuntary communitarianism and government schools are a good path, if that is your goal.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on November 23, 2007 02:50 PMhe main UW campus is underfunded so now we are adding an expensive branch campus that will cost more per student than a new sate college would cost.
Universities are very expensive because they offer and need to offer a lot of highly trained faculty that would cost to much to duplicate everywhere.
It would make a lot more sense to develop a college campus at Everett, perhaps one with a focus on technology. As time passss this might grow into a university. ,
Posted by: SeattleJew on November 23, 2007 11:39 PMGrowing up, we were all about the Indians and Pilgrims.
And just thought I'd mention that my memories of this wonderful event from history will be forever slightly tarnished because a group of idiots -- mostly Indians -- likes to picket Plymouth Rock every year.
Enjoy the rest of your Thanksgiving weekend!
Posted by: pudge on November 24, 2007 10:48 PM