With a growing state deficit, now estimated to be $5.2 billion in the 2011-2013 biennium, there are no good options and very painful choices will be made.  In these difficult economic times every area of the budget will be cut.  Many student aid programs have been suspended or significantly reduced so that the Governor and the legislature could focus priority funding on the primary student aid program for State Need Grant.  Independent Colleges of Washington has supported those decisions.

But the recently introduced House budget goes too far.  While the budget increases the maximum grant for State Need Grant for students at public colleges, it cuts the grant by 30% from current policy for students attending private non-profit colleges.

In addition, the bill suspends the State Work Study program. In addition to cutting opportunity and work experience for students, the elimination of work study funding will dramatically impact non-profit organizations and businesses across the state who rely on college students to help them carry out their mission.

We’ve written about budget considerations here and here.

Helping Washington residents attend an independent college is the state’s least expensive way to provide opportunity.  We are concerned that students and families will reconsider college if they see a 30% drop in their grant from current policy.  We need all the educated citizens in our state we can possibly prepare.

These cuts break the trust with students and shifts the longstanding policy of empowering student to choose the college that fits them best.  It will add pressure to the public colleges, meaning even fewer Washington residents will attend college, or attend college in state.

The Senate is poised to introduce its bill, and we hope it will restore funding for Washington residents attending private non-profit colleges.

We received a note today from the Higher Education Coordinating Board announcing that it has joined the blogosphere. HECBlog actually made its first post Dec. 1, and now they’re ready for a full roll-out with today’s synopsis of the work of the governor’s Higher Education Funding Task Force.

It is with some irony that this note arrived on the same day that word came out that the governor has proposed elimination of the HEC Board, part of a government streamlining plan that would lump all of “P-20″ education under a cabinet-level Department of Education, led by a secretary appointed by the governor. The new department would take over the responsibilities of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the state Department of Early Learning, the HEC Board, the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, and a number of other agencies dealing with education. In addition to cost savings, the goal would be to better coordinate the state’s educational efforts at all levels and ensure progress toward a common goal. The new department secretary would be advised by a P-20 education council and a K-12 education ombudsman, both appointed by the governor.

The governor’s office issued a policy brief with details of the proposal, and SeattlePI.com has a story about it.

Eliminating the HEC Board isn’t a new idea. Three bills were introduced last year that would have done just that, though none of them received a hearing. With the state’s continuing budget woes, it is possible the idea will get more traction during the legislative session that begins Monday.

We wrote Wednesday about Gov. Chris Gregoire’s proposed budget for the 2011-13 biennium. We found it to be mostly good news. Independent Colleges of Washington is pleased with the governor’s solid support, in fact an increase, for the State Need Grant Program, but disappointed in cuts to State Work Study and suspension of many smaller financial aid programs. Overall, a good budget under difficult circumstances.

Sen. Lisa Brown

Now what? The Legislature ultimately writes the budget, and will take it up in earnest when they convene Jan. 10 for the 2011 session. Some call the governor’s budget a “rough draft” that will change significantly by the time a final vote is taken in late April.

The chit-chat has already begun. Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown of Spokane blogged that, “the service cuts Gov. Gregoire has proposed are numerous, deep and are painful.

“Her list shows the enormity of our task, and I commend the Governor for her first step in tackling this latest hurdle we face as a state,” Brown continued. “Our challenge isn’t just a math problem. We must keep in mind that the education we provide to our young people represents their opportunity for their future.”

Rep. Reuven Carlyle

State Rep. Reuven Carlyle is probably the most prolific blogger in the Legislature. In his post about the budget he expressed some disappointment that the governor didn’t come up with any bold, structural proposals for funding higher education, and outlined some goals of his own.

“The Governor’s budget proposal–creative in some areas but unimaginative in others– simply continues the unrelenting 15 year trend of reducing state spending for higher education while shifting the burden of costs to students. This trend is on a march that we will regret for generations. The base proposal to increase tuition by 9, 10 and 11 percent at our various institutions is not the answer in that it fails to include a way to ensure that students are paying for more than the status quo. I would only support increased tuition as part of a plan to pay for outcomes instead of inputs.

“The plan to stand by the State Need Grant is a critical step in protecting student access, but eliminating Work Study and all of the smaller scholarship programs–including the Passport to College Promise Program for foster youth–is simply unacceptable. And I’ll work hard to find the money to restore those programs.”

We appreciate Carlyle’s commitment to financial aid, and believe that, especially when revenue is tight, it makes sense to focus those resources on the areas of greatest need.

George Bridges

George Bridges, president at Whitman College, has been opining often of late on the need to re-think the way public higher education is funded. The Seattle Times published an op-ed by Bridges Wednesday, a piece that was similar to one the Oregonian ran in Portland earlier this year. Bridges advocates for a system that charges tuition based on the cost of education, with significant investment in financial aid for low- and middle-income students. He also reiterates one of the primary goals of our association, and that is greater collaboration between private and public colleges in Washington.

“Whereas our institutions differ in focus and scope, together we provide thousands of Washingtonians with exceptional educational experiences each year. Any new paradigm for supporting higher education must draw fully upon the resources of every institution and reform must focus on how we can serve students better.

“We must commit to ensuring that they can attend the college or university — public or private — in which they are most likely to thrive intellectually and develop the capacities they will need to succeed in their professional and civic lives. Our state’s future depends upon it.”

We’re looking forward to the on-going discussion of the budget and higher education funding as we work to create opportunity, choice, and success for Washington college students.

Financial aid has been in the news the last couple of days, and the outcomes are, on the whole, positive.

Gov. Gregoire proposes increasing funding for the State Need Grant program by $91 million, while making cuts in most other state financial aid programs for college students.

We were most worried about what would happen to state financial aid programs, given that Washington was looking at a $4.6 billion shortfall for the next two years. But Gov. Chris Gregoire went public today with her proposed 2011-13 biennial budget, and suggested a $91 million increase in funding for the State Need Grant Program, the state’s bread-and-butter, need-based aid program for college students.

On the minus side, the governor’s budget cuts about $21 million out of the State Work Study Program, which means there will be about 2,800 fewer recipients. And it suspends most other smaller aid programs, such as WAVE and Washington Scholars. Current recipients of those will continue to receive grants, but no new awards will be made.

The governor has clearly recognized what we have been saying, that in times of limited resources it makes sense to focus on areas of greatest need. Certainly state financial aid helps some 70,000 students get the education they need to be part of the solution to our state’s economic problems instead of consumers of state services. It’s also a nod to reality; the governor’s budget also includes double-digit tuition hikes at public colleges and universities to help compensate for reductions in direct state support, and few low-income students could shoulder that without assistance.

Kudos to Gov. Gregoire. We think she made a good call on student aid.

We had worries on the federal level, too, as the Pell Grant program was facing a $5.7 billion deficit. But as the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities reported on its blog yesterday, a new U.S. Senate bill includes funding to cover that gap and keep Pell Grants at their current levels. It’s not reality yet, but there could be votes on that in the Senate by this weekend.

Here’s coverage of the governor’s proposed budget from the Seattle Times, the News Tribune, SeattlePI.com, the Olympian, and the Spokesman-Review. For budget junkies, the governor’s website has a news release about her budget and links to lots of other budget documents.

The various college ranking efforts are sort of like car wrecks. You almost have to look.

The emphasis is on teaching at Washington's private, nonprofit colleges and universities. Photo: Whitworth University.

Yesterday Lynn O’Shaughnessy reported in The College Solution blog on CBS Moneywatch about new lists of the U.S. colleges with the best and worst professors. The ratings were cooked up by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, which crunched numbers from RateMyProfessors.com, so if you own a salt mine you might want to gulp a shovel-full with these ratings. (At the annual conference of The Communications Network earlier this fall we learned just enough about crowdsourcing to be dangerous; students aren’t exactly an unbiased group when it comes to evaluating the faculty.)

For what it’s worth, Independent Colleges of Washington member Whitworth University ranked number 16 in the country for best professors, the only Washington college to make the top-25 list. What we especially liked, though, was a bit of O’Shaughnessy’s analysis of the rankings:

What do the colleges on this list share in common? All of them are small private institutions. Most of the schools are liberal arts colleges with student bodies well under 4,000 students. And that’s not surprising since liberal arts colleges tend to offer smaller classes and the prime focus of professors at these schools is teaching not research.

Indeed, small classes led by dedicated teaching professors are strong points of private, nonprofit colleges such as our membership. We share a commitment to high-quality, academically rigorous learning, and to an education that emphasizes critical thinking, lifelong learning, ethics, leadership, and community service.

We’re thankful no Washington colleges made the worst-professors list. In fact, no schools in the West did. For some reason the students in the Midwest and East seem more grumpy about their professors, at least on the RateMyProfessors website.

Mike Veseth, the Robert G. Albertson Professor of International Political Economy at the University of Puget Sound, was recognized as Washington State Professor of the Year at a ceremony today in Washington, D.C. The award is sponsored by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

University of Puget Sound Prof. Mike Veseth has been named Washington Professor of the Year. Photo: University of Puget Sound.

CASE started the awards program in 1981, recognizing a national professor of the year, and expanded it in 1985 to include a professor of the year from each state. Of 26 Washington professors to win the state award, 12 have taught at Independent Colleges of Washington members. Puget Sound has the most of any college in Washington with six, including three of the last four.

We think those numbers are a reflection of the commitment to outstanding teaching shared by our member colleges, which offer broad-based, academically rigorous liberal arts education that emphasizes critical thinking, lifelong learning, ethics, leadership, and community service. That’s essentially what University of Puget Sound President Ronald R. Thomas said in describing Veseth:

“Mike Veseth is a teacher for a lifetime and a person who wears his greatness with the grace of Baryshnikov, without a trace of the prima donna,” Thomas said. “From the beginning of his teaching career to this day, from his first book on the debt crisis in Victorian England to his most recent volume critiquing globalization, Mike sees the big picture and encourages his students to do the same. As an international political economist who knows the importance of wise investments, Mike invests generously in all his students, and the life-time return is impressive indeed.”

This is an interesting circle-is-complete story. Veseth is the Robert G. Albertson Professor of International Political Economy at Puget Sound. Albertson, also from Puget Sound, was the first Washington Professor of the Year award recipient back in 1985.

Congratulations to Mike Veseth for this marvelous recognition, and thank you for being one of the many great teachers at Washington’s independent colleges and universities, on the front lines helping create educational opportunity, choice, and success for students.

John Bassett will be inaugurated as president of Heritage University Nov. 13. He comes to Washington from Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

When Dr. John Bassett is formally installed as president of Heritage University in Toppenish on Nov. 13 it will wrap up a string of three presidential inaugurations at Independent Colleges of Washington member institutions in the last month. Beck Taylor was sworn in at Whitworth University Oct. 15 and Thayne McCulloh at Gonzaga University on the 22nd.

Presidential inaugurations are a little funny because they often come long after the president has assumed the duties of the post. In the case of McCulloh, it had been about a year and a half, as he’d already served as interim president for a year when the GU trustees handed him the permanent gig this summer. We started working with Bassett this summer, too, as he’s also the board chair of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, and we met him at a workshop with folks from other state private higher education associations back in July.

The inauguration lends an official stamp of approval, though, as dignitaries from other colleges and community leaders all come together for some speechifying and other activities. It’s a great opportunity to reach out and talk about the partnerships that make higher education successful in the community.

Bassett has been making the rounds. There’s a nice story in this morning’s Tri-City Herald in which he talks about expanding Heritage’s partnership with Columbia Basin College. Heritage offers teaching, social work, and criminal justice courses at the Pasco campus, and may soon be offering science degrees as well. Heritage partners with a number of community colleges around the state, mostly offering education degree programs. It all fits in with their mission to provide quality, accessible higher education to multicultural populations which have been educationally isolated.

Welcome to all the new presidents. We look forward to working collaboratively with all of our member colleges to help bring opportunity, choice, and success to our students!

One tool student interns will use is the ICW Legislative Action Center.

Independent Colleges of Washington seeks 10 student advocacy interns, one from each member college, to organize students to be advocates for state financial aid programs. The weak economy has resulted in plunging revenue for the state, and higher education has seen state support reduced in recent years. In 2010, with the help of student advocates, we turned back proposals to essentially gut state aid programs. The governor is writing a budget proposal right now, and when the legislature convenes in January it will face a budget deficit of more than $4 billion. Student aid may well be on the chopping block again. If students can make their voices heard in Olympia, we can protect and possibly even enhance student aid programs at a time when they’re most desperately needed. Stable or enhanced aid will help students keep studying at the outstanding private college of their choice.

Our student advocacy interns will be responsible for organizing others from their colleges to contact their legislators and the governor and explain the importance of financial aid. Desired outcomes include:

• Students make face-to-face visits with legislators, either in their district office, at events on campus or in the community, or during the legislative session in Olympia
• Students send messages to the governor and legislators, through the ICW Advocacy Center or by written note or phone call
• Students help put a real face on student aid by lending their likenesses and stories to such collateral as ICW student aid all-star cards or by making advocacy videos and posting them to the Save Student Aid Facebook page
• Students sign up for the ICW Advocacy Center, and like the ICW and Save Student Aid Facebook pages

Each intern will be compensated $400 for their efforts in organizing, paid in $100 increments monthly at the end of December, January, February, and March and based on adequate progress on the outcomes above. Adequate progress in any given month means accomplishments on at least one of the outcomes: At least 10 students meet in person with a legislator, at least 25 students send messages through the advocacy center, students post at least one advocacy video, or recruit at least 75 followers for the ICW and Save Student Aid Facebook pages. In addition, the most successful interns can earn a bonus based on the outcomes, with in-person meetings and written contacts having the most weight in the ICW analysis of these efforts. The most successful intern will earn a bonus of $500, second $300, and third $200.

Interns will report to and receive advice and support from Greg Scheiderer, ICW vice president and lead staff on government relations. Monthly reports to be made on-line.

Background: Independent Colleges of Washington is an association of 10 private, nonprofit colleges in the state. Members of the association are Gonzaga University, Heritage University, Pacific Lutheran University, Saint Martin’s University, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle University, University of Puget Sound, Walla Walla University, Whitman College, and Whitworth University.

The mission of Independent Colleges of Washington is to provide educational opportunity, choice, and success for students. We accomplish this by securing financial resources for students, advocating for public policy that supports students, building strategic collaborations, and by telling the compelling story of high-quality academically rigorous independent higher education.

To apply: Send resume to Info@ICWashington.org.  Include a cover letter telling us why you should be selected from your campus.  E-mail note of recommendation from someone in financial aid or other administrative office on your campus a plus.  Applications will be considered through December, with priority given to early applications.

University of Puget Sound held its second Race & Pedagogy National Conference, part of its on-going Race & Pedagogy Initiative,  last weekend in Tacoma. The following guest blog post is from Shirley Skeel, Puget Sound’s media relations manager.

Freeman Hrabowski III really knows how to get under an audience’s skin. I just left a lecture given by the president of University of Maryland, Baltimore County at the Race and Pedagogy National Conference at University of Puget Sound. He spoke about how to ensure that our colleges graduate more students in math, engineering, and science.

Freeman Hrabowski III. Photo: University of Puget Sound.

One of the first things he did was to pose a sixth-grade math problem for the audience to solve. Here it is:

There are 29 children in a class. Of these, 20 have dogs and 15 have cats. How many children have both?

He did not give the answer. A while later he asked how many in the audience thought they knew the answer. A fraction raised their hands. Then he asked if anyone would bet him $1,000 that they do have the right answer. One brave man stood up. Nothing more on the topic was said.

It is still troubling me as I sit here subtracting pencil lines representing dogs and cats. The answer seems easy, but I am totally unnerved by his “bet” and suspect I have missed something.

I am going to guess that the point of all of this was to underline one of the major themes of Hrabowski’s talk: just how much we are influenced by other people’s expectations. His expectation that I got the answer wrong totally undermined my own belief that I had it right.

“Don’t tell your daughters you are not good at math,” he told the audience. “We must tell our children and students of color: ‘You can do this’.”  Our students’ success in math and science is all about expectations and support, he emphasized.

Hrabowski is a national authority on nurturing excellence in science and mathematics among African American college students, having won this recognition through some near-magical transformations at his own college. He pointed out that of the top 24 nations in the world, in terms of the proportion of students graduating with bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering, the United States is number 20. About two-thirds of U.S. students of color leave science after their first year of college study (and about half of white and Asian students do likewise).

Woven throughout his talk were nuggets of advice on how to improve these numbers:

• Colleges and education officials need to work with K-12 teachers on new math programs, not impose methods on them. It is the teachers who understand what children will respond to, and what will bore or frighten them.
• We need to pose fewer, but more in-depth, problems in math to students, as schools do in other countries. Students need to understand the concepts, not just learn to reel off answers.
• Students should work in groups. The practice of “grading on a curve” pits one student against another and should be dropped. Science advances through the work of teams. Our students need to learn to work in teams; they need to be able to explain what they know to others; and they need to learn from each other.
• Moving students in math and science on to the next year when they get a “C” is a mistake. Math and science require a grounding in basic principles. The “C” student who has been moved ahead will almost never become a “B” or an “A” student. Give them time to learn and re-do the exams.
• Make that extra time available to students who need it by offering classes after school hours, on weekends, and over the summer.
• Tell them “You can do this.”

Hrabowski told a story. When he was in high school he turned in a math paper to his teacher. It came back with a note remarking that he had done “surprisingly well.” Hrabowski, an African American who at the age of 12 landed in jail after joining a civil rights march led by Martin Luther King, Jr., marched to the front of the room and asked the teacher: “Why the adverb?”

“We want children to be rebellious intellectually and to ask the questions and to want to be smart,” Hrabowski told the audience at Puget Sound. There was a standing ovation.

We’re welcoming some new people to the Independent Colleges of Washington family these days, with three of our 10 member colleges inaugurating new presidents in the space of a month.

L-R: Presidents John Bassett of Heritage University, Beck Taylor of Whitworth University, and Thayne McCulloh of Gonzaga University pause for a photo at Taylor's inauguration in Spokane Oct. 15. ICW photo by Violet Boyer.

Beck A. Taylor was inaugurated at Whitworth University last Friday. Inauguration for Thayne M. McCulloh at Gonzaga University will be Oct. 22. John Bassett‘s inauguration at Heritage University is scheduled for Nov. 13.

Three of the other presidents among the ICW membership have been on the job five years or less. Six of 10 changing in the last five years feels like a bit of turnover, but it’s actually about what one would expect. The American Council on Education last did a study in 2007 and found that college presidents stayed on the job an average of 8.5 years.

Several of our presidents have beaten that mark. Fr. Stephen Sundborg has been president of Seattle University for 13 years, Phil Eaton at Seattle Pacific University for 14, and Loren Anderson is the “dean” of ICW presidents, having been at the helm of PLU for 19 years now.

The presidents work together as board members of ICW, along with 24 business and community leaders who guide us along our mission to provide educational opportunity, choice, and success for students. We welcome these new leaders and look forward to working with you to achieve our mission.

Whitworth University President Beck A. Taylor. Photo: Whitworth University.

It’s been a full week of special events at Whitworth University leading up to this afternoon’s inauguration of the university’s 18th president, Beck A. Taylor.

Taylor was appointed president of Whitworth in April and has been on the job since July. The week-long celebration of his formal inauguration winds up with a picnic on the Whitworth campus in Spokane on Saturday.

We offer a warm Independent Colleges of Washington welcome to Beck Taylor, and look forward to getting to know him better when the ICW board meets at Heritage University in Toppenish later this month.

Speaking of Whitworth, you’d know all about Taylor’s inauguration, how to contact the president or anyone else on faculty or staff, where all campus events are being held, and how to find them, if only you had the new Whitworth app for iPhone. I downloaded it today, and it’s pretty slick! It was designed by a talented group: Whitworth seniors, who put the app together for their software engineering class project last spring. They spent the summer tweaking the app and formally published it last month. You can read all about it in an article in The Whitworthian, the student newspaper.

Party on, Whitworth!

Higher education, according to Washington state Sen. Ken Jacobsen, is like an emaciated donkey: We don’t feed it adequately, and then we beat it when it doesn’t move quickly enough.

That was one of the more colorful remarks at yesterday’s forum, Repaving the Road to Higher Education, put together by the Seattle CityClub. The discussion was moderated by Jim Vesely, retired editorial page editor of The Seattle Times. Panelists in addition to Jacobsen were Trish Millines Dziko, co-founder of the Technology Access Foundation; John Warner, a former trustee at Western Washington University; Kent Koth, director of the Center for Service and Civic Engagement at Seattle University; and Gary Oertli, president of South Seattle Community College.

We’re going to miss Jacobsen, who announced in May that he would not seek re-election and is in the last couple of months of 28 years of service in the legislature. In all that time he’s been a passionate and outspoken advocate for higher education, and particularly for financial aid. We agree with his philosophy of focusing resources first on students who need help paying for college.

It is difficult to cultivate much new ground in such a forum, especially if your plow is hitched to a hungry mule, but it was interesting to note that the conversation often drifted away from higher ed exclusively to instead include a look at all of education from “cradle to career.” Warner and Dziko were particularly adamant about the need for change at the K-12 level to include better, stronger leadership at the school level and better, innovative teachers everywhere.

SU's Kent Koth

That’s why it was interesting to have Koth on the panel. Seattle U’s Center for Service and Civic Engagement is working on ways to get students, faculty, and staff of the university involved in improving education for children at schools in their neighborhood. The center was born out of the university’s mission with the aim to connect the campus and the wider community through sustained partnerships in order to deepen student learning, create a culture of service, and promote a more just and humane world. The vision is to build a seamless web of interconnection between the educational programs of Seattle University and the needs and assets of the wider community, and in doing so to inspire the next generation of reflective, creative, compassionate and just leaders.

Kudos to SU for putting values into practice. We think they helped inspire others in the audience at the forum to seek out opportunities to be volunteer tutors or find other ways to make education better for students.

TVW recorded the forum. Keep an eye on their website if you’d like to watch, and we’ll post it here when it becomes available online.

Update: The video is posted below, or watch it on the TVW website.

The Washington Higher Education Coordinating Board sent out a news release today outlining the effect the governor’s ordered 6.3 percent across-the-board budget reductions will have on financial aid programs for college students. The news is not good.

The board estimates that the reductions, a cut of nearly $7 million from the State Need Grant Program, will mean that an additional 3,000 students from lower-income families will not receive the assistance for which they’re eligible. That will bring to nearly 25,000 the number of students who qualify for a grant but cannot receive one because the funds ran out. It’s a tough situation for those students. They’ll have to work longer hours (often at the expense of their studies) or take on more loan debt, and many may simply drop out.

That would be a shame. We can’t really blame the governor or legislature. In fact, their commitment to financial aid programs during recent budget crises has been laudable. The budget pressures, however, are enormous. Analysts are projecting the budget shortfall for the 2011-13 biennium to approach $4.5 billion.

This would be a good time to shore up support for student aid programs, as work is already under way on next year’s budget. We urge you to write the governor and your legislators. Thank them for their commitment to student aid, and urge them to keep up the support. When the budget is tight, investment in financial aid makes sense. It focuses scares resources where they’re needed most. And financial aid works.

Help us create opportunity, choice, and success for students. Write today! We’ve made it easy at our Legislative Action Center. If you haven’t already, sign up to be an ICW Advocate and receive occasional email alerts about higher education policy issues and notice when your calls or emails can make a big difference.

Some of the students who attended the Independent Colleges of Washington scholarship luncheon Aug. 13 have a message for everyone who helps support student financial aid in its many forms! Photo: ICW.

It’s hard to believe that college campuses are already beginning to bustle with activity. Freshmen are moving in, orientations start next week, and classes begin on five Independent Colleges of Washington member campuses before the calendar flips over to September.

Many of those students will only be going to college thanks to your help! Generous donors to ICW contributed more than $1 million again last year to support scholarships and other assistance for students. Legislators reaffirmed their support for student aid programs despite terrible budget challenges, though increasing weakness in state revenues may force some reductions in aid soon. Washington taxpayers get a bargain from the state’s private, nonprofit colleges and universities, which confer nearly a quarter of the baccalaureate and higher degrees awarded in the state each year while receiving less than two percent of the higher education budget, which goes to students in the form of financial aid.

Independent colleges contribute academically rigorous liberal arts education to the rich tapestry of choices available to the state’s students, providing opportunities for scholarship that lead to successful careers, fruitful lives, and engaged and informed citizenship.

Last week we had a scholarship luncheon in Seattle to bring together some of the students who benefit from ICW scholarships and the donors who make it happen. It’s rewarding and satisfying to see how big a difference a scholarship can make in a young person’s life, and the plans, hopes, and dreams that are made possible with a little financial assistance. They, and we, thank all who help make it happen.

The U.S. News & World Report rankings of the nation’s best colleges are out today. The rankings are an item of constant debate. We wonder if they really mean anything, if they try to measure the right things, if it’s actually possible to quantify some of those things, and whether students really take the rankings much into account when they’re trying to decide where to go to college.

Love them or hate them, though, most of us can’t avoid looking.

So yes, we looked, and found three Independent Colleges of Washington member institutions among the top 10 regional colleges in the West, and five in the top 15. Two others were ranked within the top tier in that category.

Gonzaga University rates best in the state at number 4, Seattle University is sixth, and Whitworth University ninth. Both ICW members in the national liberal arts college category ranked well, with Whitman College at 38 and University of Puget Sound at 81. In addition, five of our 10 members made the top nine in best value among regional colleges in the West. (Did you guess that Harvard and Williams would top their respective lists… again?)

We’re not sure what it means that PLU (13) is one “notch” higher than Seattle Pacific University (14), but it is good to see so many of our colleges rated so well by this tool, for whatever it’s worth.

Many of our member colleges elect not to even acknowledge the rankings. Of those that do, here’s what they’re saying today:

• Gonzaga University
• Seattle University
• Walla Walla University
• Whitman College
• Whitworth University