The revised proposal to eventually turn the University of Washington’s Bothell campus into a four-year site no longer mentions merging it with Cascadia Community College.
Even so, officials there aren’t breathing any easier.
A House bill originally called for combining the two schools, which have shared their 120-acre campus in Bothell since 2000, and turning them into a new Cascadia State University. Under criticism, it was amended to take out any reference to Cascadia.
But that’s not good enough.
“We would assume that if UW-Bothell becomes a four-year, they’d have to grow, they’d need more space and more buildings,” said Suzanne Ames, a Cascadia spokeswoman. “How do they grow on our campus while maintaining Cascadia’s 3,000 students?”
The bill was passed Feb. 10 to the House Rules Committee and is likely headed for a vote on the House floor.
On top of simple space concerns, and wondering whether Cascadia would eventually be shipped off to a business park somewhere, Ames said the new proposal disregards the intent of the shared campus in the first place – only four years after it started.
The branch campus mission was to serve primarily community college transfer students from Cascadia, Edmonds, Everett and Bellevue, Ames said. They could probably still transfer to the new four-year campus, but would not get preference over other transfer students.
“We think there will be the same problem students have when they try to transfer to UW in Seattle right now,” Ames said. “Then you have to look at the important role that community colleges serve of open access (to education), worker assistance and training, and professional and technical programs – all the things that the four-years do not do.”
Rep. Helen Sommers, D-Seattle, said the move is an attempt to fill a void in Washington’s higher education system.
“We have a very large community college system and a fairly large research university system,” she said. “But we’re very low on that middle group (of regional universities), and we’re being told that by businesses and others.
“We’ve known that for some time, and I believe that we should move and take a step.”
The state hasn’t established a new four-year university since 1899, when the first 88 students enrolled at New Whatcom Normal School, which eventually became Western Washington University. The Evergreen State College, established in 1967, is a liberal arts college in Olympia.
About 2,800 students attended Cascadia last fall, many of them part-time, while more than 1,600 attended UW-Bothell, most of them full-time. More than 25 percent of UW-Bothell’s students were from Snohomish County. Cascadia officials didn’t have a breakdown available of its students.
Victor Balta is a reporter with The Herald in Everett.
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