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Washington Is The Largest And The 13th Most Populous State

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Washington is the 18th largest and the 13th most populous state in the union with several powerhouse Fortune 500 companies such as discount retail giant Costco, coffee chain Starbucks, and huge tech companies including Amazon and Microsoft.
The higher education system in Washington includes six public universities, and thirty-four community colleges and technical schools serving more than 233,000 FTE students. In addition state funded universities, Washington also has 14 private institutions. The six state-funded universities, are each governed by their own Board of Regents or Trustees appointed by the Governor and approved by the Senate. Among these four-year institutions are placed into a research or comprehensive category. Research universities focus mainly on research, as their name implies, and provide a bachelor’s and graduate programs, including doctoral and professional degrees. Comprehensive institutions provide programs for bachelor’s and master’s degrees. With this being said, higher education accounts for approximately 18.1% of the total state budget and 8.2% of the general fund. Unfortunately this is still far below the “maintenance level” that is required for the universities to provide the same level of service as they did the year before. A maintenance-level budget includes cost increases over which the institutions have no control, such as negotiated wage and benefit agreements, inflation in the cost of goods and services, and increased energy costs. In

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