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Waitlisted in California?

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EWU with WUE is the best out-of-state value of all Washington state universities

You may have seen the news: 472,000 students have been waitlisted for community colleges in California.

To put that number in perspective, that’s bigger than the entire population of cities like Kansas City, Atlanta, Minneapolis, St. Louis or Oakland. It’s almost as many people as the entire state of Wyoming. In fact, it’s bigger than a handful of countries in the world, including Iceland and the Bahamas.

Put another way, you could take all those waitlisted students in California and create 38 universities the same size as Eastern Washington University.

Why is this happening?

There  are a few big reasons.

  1. Lots of smart students in California want a college-degree because it means a chance for more and better jobs. According to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data, only 3.8 percent of college graduates over the age of 25 are unemployed. In comparison, the unemployment rate for the whole country is 7.7 percent.
  2. Even as more people want to go to college, the California state government is cutting its budget for colleges and universities. That means California colleges can’t admit all the qualified students who want to attend.
  3. Many of these students are low-income and first-generation, and it’s often harder for them to find cost-effective alternatives.

WUE in Washington state can help

Thankfully, some schools do have room for students, and EWU is one them.

If you’re a student from California, you should know that EWU offers the Western Undergraduate Exchange program to all students from California and 13 other states.

You might also want to know that EWU is the best value of all Washington state universities for out-of-state students.

University 2012-13 WUE Tuition & Fees
Eastern Washington University $11,306
Central Washington University $12,890
The Evergreen State College $20,383
University of Washington (Bothell) $29,466
University of Washington (Seattle) $29,938
University of Washington (Tacoma) $29,457
Washington State University* $25,382
Western Washington University* $19,152

 

*WWU and WSU don’t award WUE to all eligible students.

All qualified students should have access to college

A greater percentage of first generation and low-income students call EWU home than any other campus in Washington, and we’re still accepting applications.

Students need to find the college that’s the right fit for them, and EWU might be that place.

 

New look, new website

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If you’re new to EWU Admissions, carry on as if everything is normal. But if you’ve been to the site before, you’ll notice some big changes.

  1. A new look. We’ve updated colors, fonts and images. (Lots of red! Go Eagles!) The new-look website is also made from 100% real EWU student. Whether you’re looking at the admissions website, an EWU poster in your high school or an EWU admissions piece you picked up at a college fair, every picture is of a real EWU student who volunteered to represent the university this year. That’s school pride, and it’s pretty cool.
  2. New content. You can take advantage of new content especially for transfer students, international students and returning students. We’ve even broken out the freshman student section so that there’s less confusion. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, let us know!
  3. A new way to get around. We’ve explored hundreds of college admissions websites, and most of them have one thing in common: it’s hard to find the information you’re looking for. In fact, they usually have too much information. With the new design, it’s easier for you to get where you’re going by keeping choices simple. It’s even easier on a mobile device, too.

Over the next few weeks, you’ll see new content on a regular basis, and we hope the information helps you see if EWU is the right fit for you.

Thanks for browsing, intrepid college adventurer, and as you plan your future, remember that we’re never more than a click away.

Should I take classes at a school that isn't regionally accredited?

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Normally we wouldn’t tackle this sometimes prickly question in a public forum, but we’ve been seeing more applications from students who took course credits at schools without regional accreditation. In many of these situations, those credits don’t transfer to EWU.

Sometimes students wonder if it’s a for-profit versus nonprofit issue, but it’s actually much more than that. After all, we accept transfer credits from a quite a few for-profit institutions. Instead, it’s a question of accreditation.

Accreditation is the way a school shows it has high academic standards, and generally speaking, there are two types of accreditation.

  • Regional accreditation. This is the gold standard of accreditation. Schools with regional accreditation are typically non-profit universities and community colleges with a focus on academics, and it’s usually easy to transfer credits from one regionally accredited school to another. Examples include Eastern Washington University, Texas A&M, Harvard University, and Spokane Community College.
  • National accreditation. Nationally accredited schools are mostly for-profit schools with a focus on vocational, career, or technical programs. There are many groups that offer national accreditation, but they all have different focuses and different levels of stringency as to what qualifies as “high quality.”

Why doesn’t the four-year university I want to attend accept credits from nationally accredited schools?

You’ll get quite a few answers to this question, but the answers tend to look like the ones below.

  1. National accreditation agencies are typically newer and haven’t yet built a track record of success.
  2. Schools with national accreditation often offer courses that regionally accredited schools do not, which makes transferring credits complex or impossible.
  3. Some nationally accredited schools have less stringent admissions policies, and that makes it harder for regionally accredited schools to accept credits from those schools.
  4. Depending on the accreditation agency (the group that decides if a school gets accredited), national accreditation can be much less rigorous than regional accreditation.
  5. Some national accreditation agencies have conflicts of interest that make unbiased accreditation difficult to achieve.
  6. In some cases, unethical practices at for-profit institutions have hindered efforts to make national accreditation more trustworthy.

But back to my original question: should I take classes at a nationally accredited school? 

Maybe.

  • Do you want to go to graduate school?
  • Do you plan to transfer to a regionally accredited school?
  • Does your future employer have a bias against credentials from nationally accredited schools?

If the answer is yes to any of these questions, you’re probably better off attending a regionally accredited school from the very first day you step into a classroom.

Moreover, students who attend nationally accredited for-profit schools tend to have higher debt levels, higher loan default rates, higher unemployment rates, lower salaries, and lower bachelor’s degree completion rates.

Remember: the State of Washington is pretty much the best state for transfer students, and EWU is one of the best transfer schools. For example, earning your AA degree at an approved community college in the state guarantees your admission to EWU and most of the state’s four-year universities. Better yet, college-level coursework at these 34 community colleges will typically transfer to EWU and any of the other four-year, public universities.

No other state has a such a robust, healthy system, so in many cases, it makes more sense to start you degree at a regionally accredited community college and transfer to a school like EWU.

 

Making every tuition dollar count

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We just saw this in the Spokesman-Review (the regional paper for the second-largest city in Washington, which is just 15 minutes down the road), and we definitely thought it worth sharing:

Demetrius Dennis shopped carefully to find the best college education for the lowest price.

“I reviewed the departments, programs offered and cost of tuition,” said Dennis, 34. “Financing contributed at least 75 percent of the deciding factor when I chose a transfer college.”

The Lakewood, Wash., resident had already saved about $20,000 on a bachelor’s degree in journalism by attending Pierce Community College before determining Eastern Washington University offered the best value to finish his studies.

EWU “provides the most reasonable tuition-to-education ratio available in the state,” Dennis said.

You can read the whole article about the rising cost of college tuition and the challenges that today’s students and families face.

By 2018, at least 63 percent of all jobs nationally will require a postsecondary degree, which means college will be necessary for more and more workers.

As states have cut budgets, however, college has grown more expensive, forcing students to be extra savvy when they make their college decisions.

Our goal at Eastern is to make an amazing college education as affordable and accessible to as many talented people as possible, which is why we’ve had fewer and smaller tuition increases than most universities in the state.

Without sacrificing innovative programs like justice studies, psychology, dental hygiene, education or engineering, we’ve quickly become the state’s best value in education … and our students are smarter than ever. Our average incoming freshman GPA went up again this year (from 3.17 to 3.24), which means we’re attracting more and more talented students who see the incredible value in what Eastern offers.

We’re glad Demetrius compared colleges, and we hope you’re doing the same. We’d love it if everyone made their comparisons and decided that Eastern was the best place to be (because it is!), but more importantly, we want you to choose the university that’s best for you and your future.

Wherever you go, we’re here to answer any questions you have along the way.