Yet Another Fact Check

Pullman flourishes because of Washington State University. WSU thrives because it can attract many excellent professors. Many professors would not have moved to Pullman if they knew it was soon to be a big-box clone of a thousand other places.

Jim "Uncle Buck" Krueger, January 27, 2007, Moscow-Pullman Daily News

Growth on the Vancouver campus is bucking a couple of trends in the Washington State University system.

When spring enrollment figures for the four-campus WSU system were announced Friday,Vancouver was the only site showing a gain, with 323 more students than a year ago.

WSU Vancouver's spring head count - students taking at least one class - is 2,300. That's a 16.3 percent increase over the spring 2006 head count of 1,977.

Head counts dropped at the Pullman (406) , Spokane (55) and Tri-Cities (71) campuses.

Spring semester began earlier this month.

The growth spurt at the Salmon Creek campus was expected, because 2006-07 marks WSU Vancouver's debut as a four-year university.
...

The other measurement of enrollment growth - full-time equivalent students - rose even more sharply at the Vancouver campus with the equivalent of 1,667 students taking full-time loads. That's a 21.8 percent climb from the 1,369 FTE enrollment a year ago.

The other WSU campuses combined for a drop of 374 in FTE enrollments.

The Columbian, January 30, 2007

WSU Vancouver is obviously thriving. According to Krueger, that must be because it can attract many excellent professors. But wait. Vancouver is the home of not one but THREE Wal-Mart stores, in addition to many other large retailers, making it a big-box clone of a thousand other places. In fact, WSU Vancouver held a forum on Wal-Mart last year in which both PROS and cons were discussed. Wow. Covering both sides of an issue. Those are excellent professors indeed.

Could it be that the presence of a Wal-Mart has NOTHING to do with attracting professors or a university thriving? Such a theory is as unscientific and fallacious, as say, claiming Wal-Mart will cause impotence in men.

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