His View: Increased enrollment show Green, UI made the right call

Washington State University’s fall enrollment dropped by 7.7% this semester. This is the third consecutive year that total enrollment has fallen at WSU.

At the University of Idaho, however, enrollment is up again this fall. The freshman class increased by 18% from last year, hitting a record at 2,000 students. Overall student enrollment for fall 2022 is 11,507, a rise of 2% from last year.

There is further bad news for WSU and good news for UI. Last year, the two universities were tied as the country’s 170th best national universities by U.S. News & World Report. This year, UI is ranked 176th best national university while WSU dropped to 212th. Furthermore, UI is ranked the nation’s 26th top value school.

Why the difference? What happened?

Longtime readers know that I have been highly critical of UI in the past. In my February 2020 column, I discussed UI’s steady decline in enrollment since 2005. Idaho needed to do something drastic to stop the hemorrhaging, and the Idaho State Board of Education did just that. They made the unconventional move to hire a successful businessman, Scott Green, to be UI president instead of yet another career academic weenie.

In my July 2020 column, I argued that UI needed to return to live classes that fall, else remote learning would be yet another nail in their coffin. That month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 157 individuals ages 15-24 had died “with” COVID-19 (not necessarily “from” COVID-19). Because the data showed a high-survival-rate virus that was statistically unlikely to cause the death of students within that age bracket, I argued that shutting down K-12 schools and colleges would be a mistake.

President Green did something that no academic weenie would ever do. He introduced a hybrid-flex instruction option so students could attend live classes if they desired. And although he mandated masks on campus (which at least one study —bit.ly/3DL6I5U — indicates were ineffective in controlling the virus), he did not require students to be vaccinated. The UI was one of the few campuses open in the nation, and students flocked to it.

In that July 2020 column, I wrote, “Moscow and UI should acknowledge that college students are statistically unlikely to die from the coronavirus and should take this opportunity to set themselves apart as a rational institution, unwilling to destroy their institution or the local economy by living in fear and expecting taxpayers to prop them up.”

Predictably, Moscow’s professional philosopher, Nick Gier, criticized my arguments for live classes: “For libertarians such as Courtney, the focus is always on the individual, not the collective.”

For collectivists like Gier, one size must fit all. No liberty for an individual to rely on his own discretion and situation to decide whether to attend a live class or not. All students must learn remotely. All restaurants must be closed. All people must be jabbed. All churches closed. All liquor stores and pot shops open. All weddings stopped. All funerals stopped. The elderly must die alone. Children must remain masked.

President Green’s willingness to follow the actual science and common sense is what turned UI enrollment around. Idahoans should be grateful for his boldness to stand up and do what few would do.

I recognize that WSU had insane state mandates imposed upon them by Gov. Jay Inslee. Nevertheless, when WSU recently ended shot mandates for administrators, faculty, staff, contractors and volunteers, it maintained its COVID-19 vaccination requirements for students enrolled at physical campuses during this academic year. All that despite the fact that a total of 6,649 out of 27,366,000 college age U.S. students (.02%) have died “with” COVID-19 (again, not necessarily “from” it) since January 2020. It’s time for WSU former head football coach Nick Rolovich and his four assistants to press in on their lawsuit.

WSU administrators were quick to blame their declining enrollment and falling academic ranking on the pandemic. However, it was not COVID-19 that caused their declining enrollment but the political decisions in reaction to it. Maybe students had enough common sense not to base their actions on a poorly disguised panic. Maybe students wanted to avoid an unreliable, untested vaccine. Why wouldn’t students from around the country veer toward a college that took a more sensible approach?

Courtney served 20 years as a nuclear engineering officer aboard submarines and 15 years as a graduate school instructor. A political independent, he spends his time playing with his seven grandchildren in Moscow.