WSU in Everett is a serious momentum builder

Washington State University’s recent announcement that it is opening in Everett comes on the heels of Providence Regional Medical Center’s new medical tower opening, helping boost momentum in the north end of town.

Investors are paying attention. Colleges do things in cities that

can change them forever. How WSU does in Everett will say as much about Everett as a community as it does about WSU and that is what has piqued investor interest.

Backed by a legislative mandate, WSU will take over a program run by Everett Community College that serves about 500 students through a consortium of five other public and two private four-year universities and colleges. It’s a modest start. But it is significant for what it could become.

That’s because WSU is the big time. The Wall Street Journal ranks WSU as one of the top 25 “recruiter picks” in the nation. It packs a strong reputation as a research-level institution. In the game of attracting and retaining the best and brightest high school graduates, brand matters.

On raw numbers, it looks like a good business decision for WSU. Everett’s historic mill-town roots and labor-intensive Boeing assembly line need mostly skilled labor. None of the mission-backed communities that settled in the West and seeded colleges and universities planted deep roots in the north Puget Sound. So Everett never got a Gonzaga or a Pacific Lutheran University of its own. As a result, Snohomish County remains one of the most populated counties in the country without a four-year college or university within its boundaries.

Most of Snohomish County’s local school districts are strong, though, helping the region produce a good pool of high-achieving high school graduates every year. From a pure supply and demand standpoint, WSU choosing to locate where there’s an abundance of potential customers makes sense.

This is where the brand piece comes in. Colleges and universities earn their brand in academia by delivering the goods to students and then winning high rankings with recruiters. While there can be many factors that determine where a high school graduate might go to college, the top students from the best high schools have scholarship offers and acceptance letters that give them lots of choices. They tend to be the ones who draw to the top-brand colleges and universities.

The strength of the WSU brand with this pool of future leaders can be tested by examining the choices they make. One good place to apply this test is local college prep high schools. In that regard, WSU is doing very well. For the first time in its roughly 20-year history, Archbishop Murphy High School — the largest college prep school in Snohomish County and one of the state’s top high schools — is sending more of this year’s graduating class to Washington State University than any other college or university.

The real prize for Everett is what happens after the students graduate from college. Colleges incubate and innovate ideas, spawn new businesses, attract angel investors, house professors and invent processes that support existing businesses. Graduates from top colleges push optimism, energy and ambition into the communities where they find work and choose to live. It’s just a beginning. But if WSU thrives in Everett, it may very well change the city in ways not contemplated today.

Everett will have to earn those benefits, though. Success of a college in any town is a two-way street. How WSU fares in Everett will depend on how the private sector and local community step in and support it and how it initially feathers its goals with the other colleges and universities that built the base of students it now has the privilege of serving.

That places a challenge in front of Everett: One of the best universities in the nation just showed up. Now the community needs to prove it is worthy by helping it succeed in Everett.

Tom Hoban is co-owner of Everett-based Coast group of commercial real estate companies. Contact him at tomhoban@coastmgt.com or 425-339-3638.