University of Washington (Seattle) reputation?

Speaking as someone who earned two degrees from the UW, and has lectured at both branch campuses, there is no practical difference, in terms of academic quality or rigor, between the main and the branches.

The branch campuses offer a smaller number of upper-division programs geared primarily for the working adult, but in many cases, the teaching staff merely commute from one campus to the other. For purposes of any tier rankings, the University is treated as a whole.

Any degree earned just says 'University of Washington' with no geographical distinction upon it. All graduation ceremonies are conducted in either Hec Ed pavilion or Husky stadium, depending upon the weather.

The opening of the branch campuses was designed primarily to address the shortage of available university slots in the Puget Sound area, and for the UW to make some money. Again, this is why many of the degree programs are in the evening or for the working adult, such as business, nursing, computer science and the like. Some of those programs do require that you also attend things like lab classes, clinicals and the like on the main campus, since it would be needlessly expensive or impossible to duplicate those capabilities at the branch campuses.

Central Washington University also has an upper-division branch campus in Lynnwood and I think Vancouver and Washington State University has branch campuses in Spokane and another place in eastern Washington.

The Bothell campus (I ride my bicycle past it all the time) is co-located with a community college, so someone can finish the first two years before moving to the UW Bothell branch campus to finish a program. Again, to increase access, there is talk of having some programs at the branch campuses have both lower and upper division classes, so an entire program can be completed there. Most of the local community colleges are against this, however.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: University of Washington (Seattle) reputation?

The Northwest Commission of Colleges and Universities only accredits one University of Washington. If it's good enough for them...

That sounds like attending CSU East Bay's Contra Costa campus or CSU San Bernardino's Palm Desert operation. People put CSUEB or CSUSB on their resumes.

But if it's really a worry, just take a few classes in Seattle and then if somebody asks, say you took classes both places.

The US News rankings don't even include Bothell and Tacoma, do they? I don't want to get into fights with our Washingtonians, but I don't think that these are separate universities like UCLA and Berkeley are. They are satellite campuses.

It's an interesting question though. If you really want to get confused, look at Arizona State University. They have satellite campuses that have grown to mega-size and have separate accreditations and everything. But they still use names like Arizona State University - West and they are still Sun Devils in the Pac-10.

So when do satellites finally spin-off into space? And what happens if the parent school is much more prestigious than the satellite campus would be on its own? Would the satellite really want to leave?

 

As well they should be

Hi, Michael. I'll tell you, the community colleges that are located in the south sound are against this. My wife is tenured faculty at Pierce College, and with the overall numbers as low as they are, they simply see the UW as the big, arrogant juggernaut that they clumsily try to pretend they are not.

Why in the world was a UW campus needed in an area that is within a 10-30 minute drive from:

Saint Martins College (3 campuses)
Chapman University (2 campuses)
Troy University (2 campuses)
Central Washington University (2 campuses)
City University (several campuses)
University of Phoenix (several campuses)
Evergreen State College (2 campuses)
Pacific Luthern University
University of Puget Sound
Embry-Riddle branch campus
Devry University


And now they are abusing their power, going back on the agreements they made with the CC's in the south sound and trying to get the first two years as well. They will pay their professors twice as much as a CC, offer the exact same education (though not nearly as personalized as the CC's), and make education in the south sound that much more difficult to obtain.

It would be one thing if this were a simple competetive argument, but it is not. The UW has a LOT of money and influence. The CC's are the red-headed step children of the educational system here. If the UW wants something, it gets it. I don't like to see my tax money squandered in this way by that organization, and by further diluting the FTE counts at all of the schools offering the first two years of college courses, that is exactly what will happen.

 

I didn't believe it until I checked it myself, but "The University of Washington" really is one great big degree-granting institution, although I am sure it is the Seattle campus most of us are thinking of when we are so impressed (UW-Seattle really has a great rep, as even my Jesuit friends at Seattle University reluctantly admit!). I am much more accustomed to the California/Illinois, separate-institution format. In Illinois, if you say you went to "The University of Illinois," you had better be referring to "at Urbana-Champaign," and not "at Chicago" or "at Springfield." I second the notion of taking a few classes at Seattle for the ambience, and then becoming very proud of my "University of Washington" degree no matter what campus I was on for the final class.

 

Not quite. In Washington few employers really care whether a UW degree was earned in at the lovely Tacoma campus or Seattle, except for small talk. All the resumes I review pretty much list University of Washington and a date.
Unlike, say, New York where there is a large state university that integrates research universities, colleges, and community colleges, Washington public institutions are mostly independent. A degree from the University of Washington is distinct from one earned at Central Washington University. Even credits earned at community colleges don't automatically transfer as a whole to the four-year schools. And all the schools seem to compete for public funds before the legislature.
I think a fairly strong argument can be made for a unified state university but out here in the northwest we have our traditions. A few years ago I was at a friend's 50th birthday party and somehow got into a really fun and challenging argument about this very point with an energetic man who said he never would have supported such a centralized entity. After a few rounds we formally introduced ourselves and I plotzed: turns out that he was a former majority leader in the state senate, a former attorney general, and at the time served as a sitting state supreme court justice! Anyway, we had a couple of more beers and laughs and talked Mariners baseball for another hour. Seattle can still be a big small town.