Only problem I have with your points is not needing a degree to succeed in business. Sure, a savvy entrepreneur type can build a business or be a good salesman or whatever, but if you want a career in something like Accounting (the biggest field by far when I went there) you have to have a degree. And I have been aced out of more than one job opportunity because I don't have a Masters/MBA. And as a side note, I will always argue for young people to have the campus experience to grow up and learn to interact with humans rather than their phones and laptops. If you are 35 and going for that degree, online is fine. If you are 18, not so much IMHO. (You didn't mention online degrees, just throwing that in there)This is a problem that predates Schulz. Particularly with regard to athletics, WSU has had no imagination since...ever.
Academically, I'm not really sure where the problem started. Com, business, engineering, and vet were still pretty strong in the late 90s/early 2000s, but it appears that they stopped evolving at about that time. Not sure why, but some theories:
- Business is a program that nearly everyone who hands out diplomas offers, so it might have just wilted under a flooded market. Well, that and the proliferation of live evidence that you don't need a college degree to succeed in business.
- Business may have also suffered from over-emphasis on niche, small-demand focuses like viticulture. Seriously, they built an entire building for a program that has like 30 kids in it.
- Com may have failed to follow the modern trend of making journalism entertainment instead of being news.
- No explanation for the fading of technical and scientific fields like engineering and vet...that's just a lack of development.
- Across the board, programs have suffered from a lowering of standards. As state support has faded, it has become more and more necessary for WSU to admit less and less qualified students just to get the tuition dollars. Less qualified students require more support, which costs more money, which means we need more dollars. Those students also mean more emphasis on faculty who spend more time teaching and less time in research, so they become less up to date with the latest trends and technology.
Viticulture is a huge field. Ask Walla Walla or the entire Yakima/Tri-Cities region. Real surprised if only 30 students are in it.
And yeah. Our student quality was on the rise under Rawlins, thanks in large part to massive marketing/PR efforts. "World Class, Face to Face" and all that. Under Floyd, it ended up starting to dip, in part due to increased diversity recruiting. Our Floyd-hired SA VP, a Hispanic man, went all out recruiting Hispanic kids. No problem there, but yeah academic quality and success suffered.
95, I'm pretty far removed from my WSU knowledge after all this time. Feel free to correct any of my points.
Unrelated, I was in Pullman this week and saw Ol Crimson Lager in a display along with some WSU branded wine at Safeway. At the time I wanted cold beer, and the display was not, so I didn't get any. I should have grabbed a half case for later, regret that now. Cool packaging.