U of Washington Enrollment Skyrockets as Evergreen State's Plummets

The University of Washington is breaking enrollment records this year at the same time as Evergreen State College’s enrollments plummet to all-time lows.

A report from the Seattle Times this week announced that the University of Washington has drawn its biggest freshman class in the school’s history. The university received a record number of applications from both in-state and out-of-state students. The University of Washington is an outlier, as most institutions of higher education are struggling to boost their enrollment numbers.

“The university is rolling, Seattle is a dynamic city and the Pacific Northwest is an attractive place to be,” a university official in charge of enrollment said in a comment. “It’s all coming together in a marvelous way.”

Evergreen State College, which is only a 70-mile drive away from the University of Washington, is facing some serious enrollment issues following the national media attention for the 2017 spring protests. It is certainly possible now, given their proximity to each other, that students are choosing the University of Washington over the troubled Evergreen State College.

New information from May confirmed February speculation that Evergreen State College was facing an almost 20 percent drop in enrollment following the campus protest movement that garnered national media attention. Former Evergreen Provost Michael Zimmerman said that the college’s current enrollment crisis is directly the result of the administration’s incompetent response to social justice protesters.

“The enrollment crisis at Evergreen, and make no mistake about it, it is a crisis, will not be fixed until the actions of last spring are acknowledged and their underlying causes addressed,” Zimmerman said. “To pretend that students fleeing Evergreen is simply a function of the economy or because of bad press generated by the far right is both misleading and counter-productive.”

Last week, Breitbart News profiled three colleges around the country that are struggling financially in the aftermath of social justice protests.

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