WSU is headed in the wrong direction

Washington State University is facing problems with longer-term ramifications than the demise of the Pac-12. Its national ranking among public universities has declined from 71st in 2016 to 96th in 2023; faculty numbers have dropped by 11% since 2019; and total enrollment on all five WSU campuses has decreased by 16.2% over the same period. Fall 2023 freshman enrollment at the Everett campus was only nine students. 

In the same period, enrollment at Washington’s other four-year public universities is unchanged, while enrollment at the University of Washington and Oregon State University increased 3.2% and 15.5%, respectively, in the same period. The University of Idaho’s freshman enrollment rose 17.6% in 2022-23. 

Washington State University is suffering a failure of leadership from the president and provost and the Board of Regents. While higher education is facing enrollment challenges nationally, many peers are successfully navigating these issues.  Meanwhile, in the face of its problems, the WSU leadership built a system structure that has expanded administration at all campuses by about 18% with no apparent added value. This administrative expansion includes creating the Pullman Chancellor’s Office at an undisclosed cost, that duplicates duties previously performed by the president.

WSU is experiencing resignations of faculty and staff, plummeting morale and marked shortfalls in resources available for teaching students. Instead of being strategically managed to address the realities of the future, WSU has successively cut budgets across the board:

• 10% in 2020-21;
• 7.5% in 2021-22;
• 2.5% in 2022-23;
• 6% in 2023-24.

Recently, college leadership issued instructions to prepare for a cut of up to as much as 6% in 2024-25. 

This means some programs that serve WSU’s core education and research missions are approaching unsustainability. Moreover, recent decisions to limit the number of teaching assistants hired to support teaching the 100- and 200-level introductory science lecture and laboratory classes threaten to significantly decrease the availability of classes that most freshmen and sophomore students take; this will increase how long it takes to graduate.  Many prominent faculty members have unsuccessfully sought to prompt the Board of Regents to take action.

These missteps are reflected in the evaluations of WSU’s senior administration in three recent surveys. The evaluations were deeply critical of the leadership and operations, emphasizing the lack of strategic governance of the university and the disengagement of the president and provost. Takeaways from these surveys include:

•  A minuscule 4% of faculty and 2% of staff fully agree that WSU is an efficiently run organization; only 6% of faculty and 8% of staff believe WSU’s overall reputation is excellent (2023 survey by independent market analysis firm BVK).

• Only 25% of WSU faculty were satisfied or very satisfied with senior leadership. This was 15% below the national average (the 2022 national COACHE survey of more than 300 universities and colleges, housed at Harvard University).

• Just 18% of faculty and one-third of staff felt “heard” by system leadership and that decision-making by leadership was transparent (2023 internal WSU Human Resource Services employee engagement survey).

In terms of broader service to the state, WSU reportedly no longer contributes to statewide thought leadership regarding higher education public policy — this is key to its mission as a land-grant school and one of the state’s two research institutions. Meanwhile, the involvement of UW, other regional universities and community colleges has continued or increased.

We, the authors, served as three of the five permanent or interim provosts and chief academic officers at WSU from 2008-20. We weathered the repeated economic/budget crises of those years and believe we know what it takes to make WSU operationally and sustainably successful. It saddens us to see the university headed in the wrong direction. It is time for a change at WSU.