Move it along, prospective UW students. There’s nothing to learn here.
Let's talk about other ways UW can make their business work!
As you know, the University of Washington is rapidly becoming the University of Elsewhere, all because they're allowed to charge higher out-of-state tuition, and they desperately need the extra money, because we taxpayers won't give them ours.
As an alumnus, there is nothing I'd like better than for the UW to be a going concern so they could stop sending me bad deals on expensive tours to Portugal to try to raise cash. I mean, OK, I got a bachelor's degree at their school once, 40 years ago. Now it's over. Time to move on.
Just kidding. I like the glossy brochures. But I'm not paying to go to Portugal. The point is the U needs to find other ways to scrape by. Let's help.
Charging high prices for spectator sports hasn't been working. It turns out the sports program just sucks up all the income from the ticket sales. Funding a college with a sports program turns out to be a lot like buying a case of canned beer for the change you can make off the empties when you take them to the recycler.
On the other hand, giving preference to out-of-state students who pay three times the tuition is a good start. Let's think about where that's trending.
It used to be, the purpose of having a state university paid for by taxes raised from the residents of a state was to provide the children of those residents a place to get a higher education. Clearly, if my children are going to be passed over for rich kids from Central Lower Slobbovia whose parents don't pay taxes here, we've compromised said purpose. Why not put it completely out of its misery?
Nobody in this state needs an education in our modern economy. Thanks to outsourcing, our businesses don't ever need our citizens to be educated.
What's that, you say? "But, Wes, how will our citizens make enough to be customers to our businesses?" No problem, we can outsource our residency!
By "outsource" residents, I really mean, "export" them. As soon as they're gone from here, we can stop caring whether they have money. It will be somebody else's problem. Plus, we won't need to pay to provide them services. And we'd be doing them a favor. By being exported out of state, they'll have a better chance of getting into the UW!
The idea is really just an extension of the "move along" philosophy we apply to homeless people. Say someone born and raised in Seattle becomes homeless. It happens. Homeless people have to be from somewhere. It shouldn't surprise you that some of them are from here. But, even so, we define them as "transient," to send them the message that we don't care about them anymore, and we want them to "move along."
Instead of applying "move along" to just homeless people, we can apply it to anybody who can't get an upper management job at a firm that only uses labor in Saipan. And instead of just sending the message "move along," we actually move them along. It's what trains and luggage are for.
With fewer but wealthier state residents, the UW's problems will ease, because the school will be able to scale down. The same percentage of residents can be admitted with fewer professors. School equipment can be sold off to other, better, schools, in better states, to make some extra change.
The goal will be to reshape the demographics of Washington State to make it the next best thing to the Cayman Islands, where there are more registered businesses than people. People are too much trouble. They're expensive and filthy.
When all we have here are a few bed and breakfasts for the passing corporate executives, Washington State will be a paradise for those we allow to remain, where anyone left can get an advanced degree in the one remaining UW College of Hotel Administration.