Seattle Times: State does not need a WSU Spokane med school

Now, as Washington State University tries to gain statewide support to build a new medical school in Spokane, some regional and national experts say there’s no longer a pressing national need for another one.

State might not need a WSU medical school, some experts say | Local News | The Seattle Times.

A lot of this is about market control. The UW, which has failed to provide adequate med school slots in the state, does not want WSU as a competitor in Spokane and would prefer to go down the WWAMI route of having med school students rotate through various locations. The UW argues its brand reputation is stellar and will attract top students while a first year start up med school run by WSU would start, on day one, with the lowest reputation of all med schools nationally.

WSU-Spokane argues that a med school is needed in eastern Washington to ensure doctors in rural areas even though there is no evidence this solves the root problem: pay is lower in small towns, which does not work for young doctors paying off med school debts, and the lifestyle may not be what young doctors are seeking.

Only a few years ago local Spokane promoters convinced us that a Spokane med school was essentially a done deal and would be opening shortly. Now its pushed out another decade or more (UPDATE: Should be accepting students in about 2017-2018 assuming all goes to plan – this is good news. Meanwhile, the UW has partnered with Gonzaga University on future medical student training in Spokane. There is zero justification for Spokane to have two medical schools –  but one makes sense.)

Our past posts on the Spokane med school including the outrageous lies told about the alleged economic impact of a Spokane med school. In Spokane, people just cannot stop lying. I have never seen a community where lying is conducted so openly and passionately.

Spokane Med School update

The State House would like to fund a start to a med school building in Spokane but the Governor says its funded with gimmicks.  Gregoire doesn’t like the way House would pay for med school – Spin Control – Spokesman.com – April 5, 2011.

The med school would be a useful investment.

Update: As of 2014, its bogged down in politics and in fighting between the UW and WSU. There is no longer a target date by which the  Spokane med school would open.

Spokane Medical School: UW says WSU feasibility study is badly flawed

WSU hired a national consulting firm named MGT of America to produce a feasibility study for a WSU medical school. MGT’s report says Washington needs a WSU medical school.

The University of Washington responds that the consultant’s study done for WSU “contains a number of deep flaws”.

Many of the key justifications cited for starting, funding, and accrediting a second public medical school in Washington are based upon faulty assumptions, omissions, and erroneous data that draw into question many of the report’s central conclusions. These flaws raise significant concern about the actual feasibility of a WSU medical school and are important questions that require answers.

Local Spokane promoters and politicians previously relied on a consultant’s report on the economic impacts of the Spokane Medical School. However, that report was essentially a work of fiction, as pointed out in this blog’s analysis – “Forecast Economic Impacts of the Spokane Medical School“.

This blog would like to see a med school in Spokane and is supportive of WSU running such a med school. But both parties have engaged in flaky promotional efforts.

Update: WSU’s study may have left out the fully accredited Pacific Northwest University of Health Science’s, College of Osteopathic Medicine, in Washington, with another 140 or so medical students beyond those at the UW.

Related:

• WSU, UW in pissing match over future  Spokane medical school (and read how WWAMI med students are fleeing the Spokane WWAMI program)
• Forecast Economic Impacts of the Spokane Medical School
• Spokane Medical School postponed by 10 to 20 years?
• Seattle Times: State does not need a WSU Spokane med school
• Comment: WSU’s ARNP program accused of questionable educational quality
• Spokane’s biomedical economy will collapse without the heated ped/bike bridge
• Amgen’s exit a new blog for Seattle biotech industry
• Tall tales of Spokane
• WSU Spokane enrollment trend
• WSU-Spokane’s Diversity Problem

WSU, UW in pissing match over future Spokane medical school

UW and WSU continue to argue over Spokane-based medical education or a med school.

Spokane promoters again point to an exaggerated and fictitious economic impact, and the parent of a Spokane WWAMI medical student rips the Spokane operation, saying facilities are inadequate and students are abandoning the program.

Spokane leaders point with pride to the city’s growing importance as a provider of medical services, and cite a 2010 consultant’s report which says that a new medical school there would have a $2.1 billion statewide economic impact — $1.6 billion of that in Eastern Washington.

via WSU, UW spar over future of region’s med schools | Local News | The Seattle Times.

See “Forecast Economic Impacts of the Spokane Medical School” to learn why this claim is a work of fiction. Spokane is famous for its tall tales and lies. Also see “WSU-Spokane’s Diversity Problem” (enrollment is 73% female, 27% mail overall, and 87% female at the undergraduate level).

The parent of a WWAMI student at the Spokane campus (see comments of “user492056”) provides this feet on the ground perspective that the facilities are inadequate and most of the students are abandoning the program – something that Spokane’s propaganda shill media are not reporting on:

The current Spokane medical sciences education site is a cooperative venture between Eastern, Gonzaga, Whitworth, and WSU for the education of nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, dental students, and pharmacists.  The afterthought space left over for medical students is completely inadequate.  The lecture space accommodates at most twenty students without even providing electrical outlets to let students use modern technology.

Only nine of the past year’s twenty first year Spokane medical students are choosing to stay in Spokane for their second year.  This fact speaks volumes.  None of Pullman’s first year medical students are going to Spokane for their second year despite aggressive recruitment.  All of them are transferring to Seattle to complete their medical education.

If true[1], Spokane’s multi-zillion $ economic impact medical education program seems to have failed at launch. In real cities, these allegations would be the subject of the 4th estate keeping local government in line. But, you know the story, this is Spokane and we have Spokane promotional media.

[1] Since Confirmed as true. Buried in the Journal of Business on page 27 a few days after this post went live. Thank you JoB and SR (also) for eventually covering this story.

Keywords: Spokane medical school Hoopfest lilac festival parade

Spokane Medical School postponed by 10 to 20 years?

Sold locally as a done deal, the Spokane medical school now looks like it will open about the same time the North South Corridor [1] freeway is completed, meaning, perhaps some time in the 21st or may be 22nd century:

Washington State University Spokane Chancellor Lisa Brown told the panel that a second publicly funded medical school is coming in the next 10 to 20 years, and “I believe it should be in Spokane.”

via Medical school task force convenes – Spokesman.com – April 22, 2014.

Did you know that Spokane once had a medical school? Two of them in fact!

Sort of. Both were frauds, which is fitting for the Scam and Fraud Capitol of the America:

 

Source

Reminder: the claimed $1.6 billion economic impact due to a Spokane medical school is a wild stretch. The economic study that arrived at the $1.6 B figure was for a comprehensive health science program, including nursing, pharmacy, medicine and other activities. The medical school impact is a minor part of the total (see the link, above). Half of the economic impact is due to the ordinary growth of the health care industry in Eastern Washington – and this was included in the $1.6 B figure by assuming the growth would occur solely due to the health science campus. Why not just say that the $1.6 B economic impact is due solely to the construction of a heated pedestrian/bike bridge?

In Spokane, concepts like reality or truth or very flexible concepts.

[1] The North South Corridor freeway is presently an unfinished “North North” freeway that goes from nowhere to somewhere. Conceived in 1946, it might be completed by 2046.

Keywords: Spokane medical school, wsu, uw, washington, university, health science, bloomsday, lilac, festival, parade

Forecast Economic Impacts of the Spokane Medical School

Update: The original economic study has largely imploded. As of 2014, its bogged down in politics and in fighting between the UW and WSU. There is no longer a target date by which the  Spokane med school would open.

 

It is pouring down rain again today so guess I will make some charts.

Data for these charts comes from “America’s Next Great Academic Health Science Center“, part of the economic study to justify a Spokane medical school.  I chose to create some charts in a different form than those that appear within the consultant’s report. The new charts tell a somewhat different and unexpected story than we’ve heard from the promoters.

According to the study, conservative and aggressive models were created for the estimates. It is not clear whether these charts represent the conservative, aggressive or a combination model.  The report section that I could see does not provide the range of potential forecasts.

As will be explained in a moment, local promoters appear to be counting growth that would occur whether there is a medical school here or not. This discovery was unexpected. While there are issues with the economic study, the larger problem is that its conclusions have been presented in a misleading way by local promoters.

Here is the chart from the study showing the overall economic impacts of a health science center (not a medical school per se).

I created a new chart to break out the components of this forecast economic impact. This chart is not available in the study:

The chart above shows the estimated economic impact of the different components of having a health science center in Spokane.  The largest single component is growth of the health care industry (the pink area labeled “Industry g..” but cut off in the legend) and the second is the nursing school growth. These account for half of the total 2030 estimate – and will almost certainly happen with or without the medical school.

The sum total is $1.6 Billion for Eastern Washington by 2030 and over $2 Billion for the state. As will be shown in a moment, much of this growth would occur whether a medical school was here or not.

The study itself is about the proposed economic impacts of the WSU-Spokane Health Science Center, of which the medical school is one part.  Local promoters have focused on the medical school and claim up to $2 billion in economic benefits from the medical school. That is misleading. Much of the growth described in the study will happen regardless of there being a medical school in Spokane.

The next chart is the same information, but in a form that makes this more obvious. Almost all of the economic impact by 2030 comes from the continuing growth of the health care industry (which would almost certainly happen without a medical school here) and WSU Nursing, which would also likely happen without a medical school here. They also include WSU Pharmacy in the total, which is moving to Spokane. The move was approved before the State approved half the funding to start construction on a new health science building that would house a future medical school.

Next, we look at the employment impact forecast.

Same information as the above chart, but in a different form to make this more obvious.

And again, we see the the large component of employment growth is the hospitals and health care industry itself, followed by a more than doubling in WSU Nursing and Pharmacy program employment in the last few years of the 20+ year forecast period.

They assume that a percent of graduates of the program will stay in Eastern Washington and thereby, increase employment and economic impacts. That’s fine. The implied argument is that health care workers would not come to Eastern Washington unless they were trained here. Interesting argument to put in a promotional study …

However, this thinking is flawed in terms of measuring medical school impact: whether or not there was a medical school here, the market will determine the number of health care workers needed in Eastern Washington. Whether they are produced here or not, most of this health care sector job growth and economic impact will occur anyway.  This is apparent from the pink line in the charts, above – it goes straight up from the very beginning, even though the other parts of the plan are still being implemented.

Don’t confuse what I just wrote – I support having the medical school here – but parts of this economic impact study, and specifically, how it has been presented to the public, are misleading. Major components of this growth would occur with or without the medical school.

Let’s state this another way if you do not understand. Demands for health care services drive the number of jobs. If there is no demand, there would be no jobs.   The medical school does not just create thousands of health care worker jobs unless there is market need. There is a market need and we would prefer to have the benefit of producing those workers locally. But ultimately, whether we produce them locally or not does not matter – if there is a market need, those workers will be trained somewhere and they will fill the available jobs. It does not matter if we have the medical school here or not.  Those jobs will occur anyway if the market demands them.

The genuine economic impacts are those of the health science center and WSU-Spokane itself, not the growth of the health care industry overall.

Finally, the statewide impacts.  And once again, the largest single component is growth of the health care industry. The following chart title is incorrect – this chart refers to the employment impact and the vertical scale is the number of jobs created state wide due to the Spokane Riverpoint campus health science program.

Outside of health care industry growth (which I argue will happen whether or not there is a medical school here), almost all of the growth in the other categories is in the last 7 years of the forecast period. The next chart shows the sum total economic impact for Eastern Washington.  As can be seen, about half the forecast impact occurs in the last 7 or 8 years of the 20+ year period – when the growth curve accelerates.

This puts most of the big growth way into the future when:

• The ability to forecast accurately is the least likely due to it being impossible to make assumptions 14 to 20+ years in the future with any accuracy.
• No one will look back at the original forecast

It appears the economic impacts of a Spokane medical school will be less than that advertised by promoters.  A reasonable guess is that the actual impact will be less than half of the top line number – which is not a bad result either.

Please read past comments on the art and difficulty of forecasting here.

I could be completely wrong but there is a lot of wiggle room in this economic impact forecast.  It would be better to see and understand the full range of forecasts and assumptions. Unfortunately, local promoters have misled the community about the impact of the medical school. An accurate statement would be that the WSU-Spokane health science center will have many economic impacts on the region, but the impact of the medical school is just one component of that.

The first sentence of this news article: “Jun. 11–A four-year medical school in Spokane would support more than 9,000 new jobs by 2030 and generate $1.6 billion in new economic activity, a new study says.” illustrates the effectiveness of misleading public relations. The statement appears to be completely wrong – and twisted into a lie.

Update: Controversy as UW bad mouths the WSU-Spokane medical school program and fails to recruit sufficient 2nd year students for the WSU-Spokane located  UW-WWAMI medical school program.

Data Tables

Remedial mathematics at the college level after Spokane schools

A large portion of students who graduate from high school and go on to college end up having to take “remedial” classes in math or writing/grammar. This problem occurs nationwide.

According to this web site, Laurie Rogers (2010) says that 87% of students graduating from Spokane School District high schools who go on to attend Spokane Community College or Spokane Falls Community College are required to take remedial math courses upon entry (I’ve verified similar numbers from other sources).  About half of those then dropped out or failed the remedial class.

For most students, elementary algebra – or lower – was were they were placed based on the standard mathematics placement exam given to entering students. The linked web site appears to be about the school district’s process of choosing a new mathematics curriculum.

Reference:

Rogers, L. (June 2010). “Remedial rates: Spokane’s big, dirty secret.” Retrieved July 25, 2010 from the Betrayed Web site: http://betrayed-whyeducationisfailing.blogspot.com/

Spokane’s biomedical economy will collapse without the heated ped/bike bridge

The Spokesman-Review has an unsigned “Opinion” with the astonishing claim that Spokane’s bio-medical future will collapse without the heated ped/bike bridge being built:

That will not happen without a bridge.

U-district bridge vital to promote area growth – Spokesman.com – July 16, 2013.

OMG. Spokane has descended into lunacy. Or may be it was already there, more likely.

Therefore, we should be building more heated pedestrian/bicycle bridges throughout the County to spur dramatic economic growth!

Previous Data About the Bridge and District

• The Pedestrian/Bike “Cable-stayed arch bridge” is not that unique
• University District Student Population Trend is Flat to Downward over Past Five Years
• University District Pedestrian Bicycle Bridge (costs on par or more than auto bridges)
• Forecast Economic Impacts of the Spokane Medical School

Percent of Spokane High School Seniors Taking the SAT Exam

SAT exam scores are required for application to most 4-year college programs.

The percent of Spokane area high school seniors taking the SAT exam – and hence likely to be college bound – has continued its multi-year collapse.  57% of all Washington high school seniors took the SAT last year but in Spokane, the total is 36%.

This may solve the mystery as to the excitement over more low wage warehouse worker and call center jobs opening in Spokane:   that’s what the workforce here is qualified to do. But seriously, shouldn’t we be frightened of this trend? What steps could be undertaken to address this?

The data comes from the Community Indicators of Spokane web site and is updated from that previously shown on this blog.

Related: 80% to 92% of local community college students need to take remedial math. That compares to 60% nationally.

Updated January 2014:

Follow the line from left to right – the percent of Seniors taking the SAT has gone up nicely, albeit, still lagging the state as a whole (green line).

Related articles

• Spokane Airport passenger traffic update (inlandnw.wordpress.com)
• Southwest to abandon Seattle-Spokane route and SIA is not honest about it (inlandnw.wordpress.com)
• Spokane Airport News back in 2005 (inlandnw.wordpress.com)
• Spokane area unemployment worsens in June 2011 (inlandnw.wordpress.com)

Armed Forces Torch Light Parade

The Armed Forces Torch Light Parade (also known as the Spokane Lilac Parade and Lilac Festival Parade) will be held Sunday evening in downtown Spokane.

The parade is always a lot of fun. A list of the nearly 200 parade units and the order they appear in is here (PDF).

I am amazed by the number of high school marching bands that take part, which leads to an economic observation.

In recent years, around 46 to 50 high school bands took park. But this year, there are only 36, plus the winner of the Junior Lilac Parade’s middle school marching band (and of course, the 141st Air National Guard Band of the Northwest.)  Schools across the state had to cut their transportation budgets-or parent fund raising groups were unable to raise the funds to bus their bands and auxiliary units to Spokane.

Only one high school from the west side is represented this year, and traditional bands like Wenatchee High School and others had to skip this year. We are also missing traditional floats such as the Issaquah Salmon Days Festival, and some community floats that I have seen in the past from B.C., plus local states. (I can’t find them in the parade line up sheet – perhaps they changed their name?)

The one high school from the west side – Klahowya High School of Silverdale, Wa – deserves special recognition because, unknown to most, they will march in an Armed Forces Day Parade in Bremerton, board buses, cross Puget Sound by ferry, then drive all the way to Spokane to march that same evening in our parade!

This is an odd economic data point and it is not measuring Spokane but the wider region. Separately, there’s a unique equine disease issue with the horse units this year that has, that had most horse units dropping out (see KHQ report) – but this has nothing to do with the economy!

Hope you can make it out to the parade – it is always a lot of fun.

Afterword – the Parade was great, as always. The rain held off until it started to sprinkle at 11 pm, as the last of the parade units finished up. Great job by the Lilac Festival organizers and volunteers! I had a lot of fun and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves!

Spokane County High School Seniors Taking the SAT

Community Indicators Initiative of Spokane – Average SAT Scores and Percent of Seniors Taking the Test: Spokane County.

This topic was previously covered here but this new chart shows the trend since 1999. The trend shows that while the percentage of students in the State taking the SAT has been fairly constant (53% in 2009), the trend in Spokane has been slightly downwards over this period (38% in 2009).

Please click on the link above for the interactive chart provided by Community Indicators of Spokane – a wonderful service of EWU that translates numbers into useful information. The horizontal green line is the percent of seniors, statewide, taking the SAT; the declining horizontal red line is the percent of seniors in Spokane County taking the SAT exam.

• What caused this drop?
• What can we do to reverse this trend?
• What is being done now to reverse this trend? Is that working?

Update August 2011: The percent taking the exam has fallen again, to 36%:

Related Articles

• Relative wage distribution impacts in Spokane County (inlandnw.wordpress.com)
• Spokane County average wages (inlandnw.wordpress.com)

2010 High School Drop Out Rates Around Spokane

Image via Wikipedia

As it stands for Spokane’s Class of 2010 2,272 students started as freshman but only 1,479 graduated last June, a graduation rate of 65-percent.

The school with the lowest rate was Rogers High School; 511 students started as freshmen but only 219 graduated, a graduation rate of just 43-percent. The school with the highest number of graduates in Spokane is Ferris High School with about 75-percent.

In comparison to Spokane’s overall graduation rate of 65-percent, Central Valley’s rate is 67-percent and Tacoma’s schools boast a 81-percent graduation rate.

via Are Schools Failing Our Kids? – News Story – KXLY Spokane.

(Photo is of Mt. Spokane High School whose graduation rate is not specified in the linked article. Wanted to clarify that. The Mead SD has an on time graduation rate over 85%.)

Update: Due to the popularity of this item, I have added this link to the State’s Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction where you can look up specific data about each district and school in the state. Look for the “Summary” item at the upper left and click on the down arrow to choose the specific school district and click on “Go”. Look for the “On time” and “Extended” graduation rates.

2nd Update: Spokane Schools have now improved their graduation rate to 70%.

Latest graduation rates improved.  Spokane 70.2%, Central V, 84.6%, East V, 97.2% and West Valley, 96.3%.

Related:

• Spokane Poverty Rates
• 1 in 3 Spokane High School Students Drop Out

Spokane Propaganda Style Manual Revealed

The link is about New York City’s propaganda style manual, explaining how they inflated their tech sector to pretend the city is competitive with Silicon Valley (when it is not). They must have read the Spokane style guide! See NYC Desperate to Pretend It’s a Huge Tech Hub — Daily Intelligencer.

1. Define tech really, really broadly [to include sales jobs, video editors, photocopy machine repair techs]

• Top High Tech Companies in Spokane
• Greater Spokane Inc acknowledges 60% drop in Spokane Top Tech Companies
• Define everything really broadly: 70,000 students at 18 colleges and universities!
• Draw an ever expanding “local region” larger than most European countries!
• Redefine Washington State’s Innovation Ecosystem as 1/4th of North America!
• Chart of industry sector growth (or loss) in Spokane County

2. Fudge the scale on your charts.

Make up anything!:

• Tall Tales of Spokane
• Is Spokane a “High Tech Hot Spot”? Long stated claim was an outright lie.
• 70,000 students at 18 colleges and universities! (By including most of Eastern WA and N Idaho as “Spokane area”)
• Or pick the starting point to hide the decline.
• Manipulate the crime data
• Claim the ordinary growth of health care in Eastern Washington as due solely to a proposed med school in Spokane.

3. Optimize the formula for your city’s benefit [split other areas, like the SF Bay area, into 2 chunks, and then compare yourself to either half!]

The Spokane Public Facilities District chose this approach by publishing economic impact studies only for the not normal 2007 and  modified calendar 2010 years and pretending this would be the normal economic impact every year for Spokane:

• Spokane Convention Center Expansion by the Numbers
• 
• If you want to improve something, measure it

4. Ignore the measurements that really matter.

• Ignore the long term decline in attendance at the Spokane Public Facilities District.
• Call a decline in airport usage “continued growth in aviation!”
• This is a game that everyone can play!

Lots more Spokane examples here!

Basic message: Spokane retains its title as the fraud and scam capital of America. We work hard at this and are damned proud of it – so there!

Corollary: To fix this muddy flat lined economy, the local culture must embrace the truth and stop the lying, distortion and exaggeration. Unfortunately, that will never happen.

Keywords: Bloomsday, run, lilac, festival, parade, marching, bands, spokane, convention, center

Tall tales of Spokane

President Obama has come under fire for numerous problems of ObamaCare’s implementation and, as the news media has begun to report, the President intentionally lied misled the public about keeping their existing insurance and keeping their existing doctors, which they knew was not a true claim when they said it.

It seems everyone lies when they want to sell us something and this is certainly true in Spokane.

There are folks in Spokane that thrive on tall tales – usually people in the promotional business. Unfortunately, some of their tales are outright lies. And that is embarrassing and unnecessary.

There are plenty of things to talk about, and plenty of positive things to say without resorting to exaggeration, nonsense and lies. So stop it!

Here we highlight a sample of some of embarrassing tall tales:

• “Spokane is a high tech hot spot” – Network World Magazine.  Except Network World actually said Spokane is not a high tech hot spot.  Hey, we only left out one little word… yet this lie lives on today and has been duplicated on many local promotional web sites.

• VisitSpokane says there are “over 260 clear days each year” in Spokane (screen capture).  They repeat it again on another page (screen capture).  It’s an outright lie. VisitSpokane’s lie was picked up by Washington Filmworks (screen capture) and then spread by the national media (MarketWatch screen capture).  This lie is off scale in its scope.  The number of clear days averages 86 and partly cloudy days averages 88 (that comes from the Western Regional Climate Center) and the rest qualify as “cloudy”.  Spokane’s gray skies are on par with Seattle and Portland. Here’s another source – 86 clear days per year. The National Climatic Data Center says we can see sunshine on (some part of) 54% of days  – that means it is cloudy all day on at least 168 days. There is no way to get to 260 clear days per year in Spokane – VisitSpokane is lying.

• While aviation operations and total passengers have been in sharp decline since the mid 1990s we say:
  • “Spokane airport might add terminal if GROWTH CONTINUES”
  • “AIR TRAFFIC CAN CONTINUE TO GROW IN THE REGION“
  • “The region’s air traffic GROWTH supports local economic development“

  Nonsense claims are stupid and embarrassing.

• A forecast $350 million biotechnology economy in Spokane will only happen if a $16 million pedestrian/bike bridge is built over railroad tracks.  The claim that a future biotech sector hangs on a pedestrian/bike bridge is loony and mostly a heap of dung.  We imagine Pfizer and Merck are scouring the country’s cities for pedestrian/bike bridges to choose their next expansion location. Not.

• The heated pedestrian/bike bridge will “be unique in the United States, perhaps even in this hemisphere, as a cable-stayed bridge supported by an arch”. A virtually identical bridge was constructed in 2007-2010 in Dallas, Texas. See here for the details. Another Spokane pipe dream based on an outright lie.

• GSI had quite the drug induced dream about Spokane becoming a high tech mecca.  “With its strong base of research and academic resources, Spokane is concentrated on becoming a burgeoning center for information technology and telecommunications.”  A bit of exaggeration.   A past head of SIRTI said, “I want to place this region on the technology map, the same as Austin, Texas, or Silicon Valley.”
  Most of the tech companies here when that claim was made have closed or moved away. In the reality-based world, there is only one graduate technical degree in the immediate Spokane area and in 2012 there were just 3 graduates. (More here.) The sales pitch that Spokane has what it takes to be a world class tech center is more than exaggeration – it is a lie. Continuing with their pipe dream, GSI produced an embarrassingly incorrect list of “top high tech companies in Spokane” which for years included non-tech companies and companies not in the area. It wasn’t true but apparently it made someone feel good to pretend it was true.

• More amusing tall tales are listed here. One was the odd claim that Spokane has more downtown fiber per capita than anywhere else in the country. How that claim came to be “authoritative” is amusing. Check out the link for the rest of the story.

• The VisitSpokane web site is a hoot: “You know how I know Spokane is cool? We have 7 colleges/universities in an 80 mile radius!”  They count Eastern Washington University twice and they count Innovate Washington, the de-funded economic development agency as a college. This is an improvement over the past counting of 70,000 students at 18 colleges and universities in the Spokane area. They cheated and included colleges located hours away. Using their original standard, the Tri-Cities can claim Gonzaga is located in the Pasco region!
• A local real estate company quotes the absurd 70,000 students figure (page 8), and goes way beyond that exaggeration to say there are 1.4 million people living in the Spokane region!  Which is true if the Spokane Region is all of Eastern Washington east of the Cascades (with about 1.2 million population) plus North Idaho from Lake Coeur d’Alene north. The lies never stop in Spokane! We love lies!

• VisitSpokane’s list of local media organizations counts the Spokesman-Review three times, KHQ, KREM and Comcast, twice. KXLY only warrants a single count. Bummer. And by the way, Comcast is a telecommunications company not a news media company.  Embarrassing.

• The medical school project will add $1.6 billion to the region’s economy. They counted the growth of the nursing school and the ordinary growth of health care in Eastern Washington and attributed all of it to the presence of the med school. They greatly exaggerated the economic benefits of the medical school to the point of silliness. They didn’t have to – the actual benefits are plenty – but someone chose to inflate the number into a tall tale. Have you noticed a pattern in “economic impact studies”? Excessive exaggeration – and our local media never follows up in the future to see if grand projects lived up to expectations.

• SPD has officers on its payroll who are prohibited from testifying in Court – because they were caught lying.

• “Spokane is a great place … Things are good in Spokane” Chuckle. More silly lies.

Perhaps this nonsense – and this is only a sample – are inadvertent errors of staff. Or it could be we just enjoy telling tall tales and lies and like our local propaganda ministries.

We’ve created a mythology about Spokane that leads people to make wrong decisions, and leads voters and politicians into dead ends because they believe their lies. You can sure see why Forbes magazine labeled Spokane “The ‘Scam Capital of America'” – an easy call for sure.

When we behave like this, the truth, unfortunately, seems more like this:

It’s why so many countries are so badly broken because they go by appearances, rather than by results.

The idea that we should go by results, rather than by processes, by outcomes rather than by appearances, was revolutionary.

The people of Spokane deserve better than what they are getting. These lies are unnecessary, counter productive and embarrassing. There are enough things to talk about honestly – so stop the endless lies, okay?

If you spot lies, tall tales and exaggerations,  let them know you won’t put up with it anymore.

Just say no to stupid lies and tall tales.

Spokane ranks very low for a STEM jobs based economy

The Brookings Institution profiles the top 100 “STEM” jobs metro areas nationwide. STEM refers to education or jobs in “science, technology, engineering or mathematics”. This particular study defines “STEM” jobs very broadly to include metal fabricators (if they use some math in their work), auto repair technicians (who use computer-based diagnostics) and technical writers who write about tech, in addition to the usual definition of STEM (4 year degrees in science or engineering or computer science).  The unusually broad definition suggests this study had a conclusion before the study began.

The Hidden STEM Economy: Metropolitan Area Profiles.

Absent from the list is Spokane – the future med school will help a bit but will not add enough to place on this list.

GSI goes to DC, SIRTI could be chopped, and we’ll pour more concrete

Further updates are going to be like these – Twitter-sized and infrequent.

• (Correction May 2011: The source that provided the information for this item was not correct. As always, if you spot errors on this blog, please leave a comment. Thank you. According to the above, ISR employs about 40 people and is not out of business.) Original incorrect comment: Isothermal Systems Research (aka SprayCool) of Liberty Lake is out of business. At their peak, they employed up to 250 people.
• GreaterSpokane, Inc (GSI) sent 40+ lobbyists to Washington, DC. Their agenda is to get Federal money for health care, med school, military and pouring concrete. 
• Med school, Health, med school, ag and energy science, and med school are on the agenda but mentions tech only in terms of seeking a $500,000 Federal grant to keep SIRTI alive…
• SIRTI is on the state’s chopping block. The Legislature may merge SIRTI with Seattle’s Washington Technology Center.
• GreaterSpokane posted a blog item where they thought they linked to a web site about the Spokane Waste to Energy web site but instead link to a spoof website. Embarrassing. Again.
• A proposed electric trolley route for downtown Spokane has apparently been selected:

• The path serves local power brokers – Cowles, Avista, GU, government, and the health care block. Paid for by everyone except the Kendall Yard’s folks who pay no taxes for 12 years.
• Pouring concrete to benefit a few smells like a cargo cult. If we pour enough concrete, things are bound to get better! The trolley is effectively a done deal – we are going through the motions of pretending to have public input. Same as the new pedestrian bridge over the railroad. Also a done deal to benefit the downtown core.
• What is the new South University district? Last year we called this the International District but take a look at the map.
• Overall Spokane economy sputtering but shows some signs of life. Different parts will have hit bottom at different times.

Recommendations 2: Part 4 – Plans – Let’s Aim High

Image via Wikipedia

Plans, plans and more plans.

Spokane has no shortage of economic plans going back decades. Please see the links in the right most column of this web page to read about past plans and summaries of what they proposed.

All of them had mostly the same findings and same recommendations.

Poverty and low wages are mentioned in all of them.

The lack of a research university is also prominent. Let’s look at that.

Former Representative Tom Foley said the lack of a research university with graduate research programs hindered Spokane’s forward progress. This idea, going back to the 1980s, led to the opening of SIRTI in the early 1990s.

The Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute (SIRTI) was created by former Speaker of the House Tom Foley, the area’s longtime congressional representative, who was convinced that the lack of a top-notch research facility was a factor holding back Spokane’s economic progress. Initial funding came through a federal grant, and it is now supported by state funds and fees paid by participating companies.

Source: 2003 Brookings Institution study and Ten Years of Innovation (SIRTI publication).

And also:

“Spokane is not at the forefront of higher education. Lack of a major research institution has consistently been called a weakness as community officials assemble a 21st-century information-based economic curriculum.”- Bert Caldwell, Spokesman-Review newspaper.

And:

Throughout the 70’s and 80’s, there was a growing hope that high technology industries could add markedly to the Spokane metro area. Some challenged the feasibility of this goal without a research university saying that Spokane could not hope to compete in the newly emerging world of high technology or biotechnology without this vital asset. Although Spokane has four 4-year universities and a thriving community college system, Spokane has been bereft of a technology transfer, research university

Source

Foley and others helped the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute – which was supposed to create spin offs from local university and government lab research into start ups and industry, and assist other start ups in creating a thriving community of science and technology start ups (some historical background).

To answer the challenge, the Washington State Legislature, with local guidance, created the Spokane Riverpoint Higher Education Park and created the Joint Center for Higher Education JCHE. The JCHE mandate was to catalyze a high tech sector, begin the effort to provide high tech worker education programs, and to be the administrative agent for the newly created Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute SIRTI. The JCHE was to spur university collaboration in teaching of computer science, biotechnology, and other technology classes; collaboration in research projects especially with industry partners; and foster high-tech worker education and training programs. SIRTI was to be operated as a research and technology-facilitating institute that would provide grants, independent research laboratory space, project management help, infrastructure, and the capability of scientists from all local colleges and universities to collaborate.

Source

SIRTI was structured with a Board dominated by academic and government labs due to the thinking that its mission was to move academic and government lab research into the private sector. Over the years, its role has morphed. Today SIRTI is an economic development agency working to help science and tech start ups state wide.

On their website intro they no longer mention the university and government lab connection:

Sirti accelerates Inland Northwest technology-based companies toward success and positive regional economic impact. We deliver entrepreneurial coaching, a mix of no- or low-cost business services, access to capital, and the legal services needed for successful formation, IP protection and long-term growth.

Yet the majority of their Board are still members of the academic and government lab communities, followed by roughly financial services … it seems its original organization structure has not kept up with its contemporary mission. Unfortunately, its Board is specified by State law – as if they poured concrete into the org chart …

Update: There is a bill pending before the legislature that would merge SIRTI and the Seattle-based Washington Technology Center and …. reconstitute the Board so that it was no longer dominated by academic and government agencies. The bill is here.

In addition to assisting start ups, which SIRTI certainly does, SIRTI has, over the years, been seen as a substitute for the lack of local network clusters in science and technology. This is plagiarized from my previous post on this topic:

The Ecosystem Problem

With the loss of the regions early tech and tech manufacturing sector, the area lost its ecosystem and peer networks that in other high innovation locales help to create a culture of risk taking and rule breaking:

“To be blunt, the startup networks that exist in the Inland Northwest are a far cry from the ‘dense network of relationships’ that exist in places like Silicon Valley.”

The Innovation Economy author saw incubators, like SIRTI,  trying to substitute for the “dense networks” that exist in innovation ecosystems by providing “access to mentors, peers, enablers, resources, education and information”. But … there is always a but … at the cost of requiring “exclusivity, requiring an extremely high level of success prior to providing assistance, and requiring the use of in-house services”.

SIRTI was going to help move academic research into the private sector, substitute for the lack of graduate research programs in the area and substitute for the lack of network clusters. But this missed a real world path from lab to industry – the path runs through the students, not a state agency incubator:

The best technology transfer program comes from the students themselves, not from government agencies set up to create university technology transfer (SIRTI).  We need undergraduates and graduate students who pursue their own entrepreneurial instincts to turn great ideas into even better ideas. The real world path from lab to start up goes through  undergraduate and especially graduate research students working in research labs, who license or take ideas from the labs in to their own start ups.

This may explain why we do not have the rich ecosystem of science and technology start ups that were originally envisioned. We’ve got SIRTI. But we do not have the graduate research students who are a critical path to migrate great ideas into profit making ventures. We also lack the graduate education opportunities that attract ambitious students to the area – most all of these students must go elsewhere to get the education they seek and then probably go to work some place else too.

In other words, perhaps the model is broken. It sort of worked but looking at the local economic numbers and the local ecosystem, it did not achieve the orbit that was originally planned. Total jobs here are now down by 10% over the past decade.

Please do not conclude that SIRTI is not working. That is not the message. The message is that a lot more might have happened if we had the rest of the ecosystem.

I previously documented on this web site, that we have close to zero graduate degrees in science, technology and engineering available in this area. Follow the links to learn more.  More information here.  And enrollment in undergraduate technology fields has fallen by 2/3ds.

(GSI says “With its strong base of research and academic resources, Spokane is concentrated on becoming a burgeoning center for information technology and telecommunications.” …. really?)

WSU-Spokane has big plans to greatly expand its health science programs in Spokane in coming years, including moving its College of Pharmacy from Pullman to Spokane.

As many observed since the 1980s, without graduate programs in multiple disciplines, Spokane’s innovation economy is ham strung.

Do we have what is needed for a 21st century innovation-based economy?

Are we Aiming High Enough?

Spokane is the 2nd largest city in the State and the County is the 4th largest by population.

In terms of the much desired research university, Spokane has the smallest branch campus of any research university, as shown in the following chart of WSU branch campuses. Tacoma, with UW-Tacoma branch campus has 3,155 students enrolled today, Bothell has 3,227 students while Spokane has 1,267, even though its been here since 1989. (Crossed out “branch”. Since 2004, WSU-Spokane is not a branch campus but an actual campus.)

While WSU-Spokane will grow larger, so will the others. Spokane’s campus is the smallest and now its the slowest growing. Why?

Local promoters have asked the State to open a 2nd medical school in Spokane. That would be a great asset but due to funding, the Governor says not until sometime after 2021.

This doesn’t feel right – Is Spokane being short changed?  Have we aimed high enough?

Aiming High or Low

Way back in the 1980s, local leaders identified the lack of a research campus as a weakness.  We settled for SIRTI and the smallest of all research branch campuses in the State, plus a fine non-research university (EWU, and also GU and the smaller Whitworth).

Some one suggested to me that this is due to the area’s culture-“we settle for good enough” rather than consistently aiming high, seeking excellence and really doing what it takes to compete on a world class level. To clarify that comment, there are people here who seek and deliver excellence, but I understand what is being said and hopefully you understand too.

Doing “good enough” shows up in the data (e.g. low participation rates on high school SAT exams). Anecdotally, I’ve run into this “good enough” attitude many times myself.

We settle for good enough. It’s a nice place to raise a family. There’s lots of golf courses. It’s a nice place to retire. It’s near nature, near good enough. But good enough will not be a winning strategy in a globalized economy (unless we settle for regional services where we have some regional market power).  Someone else hints a good enough mind set could have been a factor in why Agilent left town (see the next couple of comments there).. I have no idea, those assertions could be right or wrong.

Why not think big, on the order of another World’s Fair Expo? How about an all out effort to put together all the pieces for a comprehensive innovation based ecosystem? Not just bits and pieces but the whole deal?

Ecosystems

Related Past Posts on this web site that will help in understanding the problems, the issues and possible solutions:

• Creativity, Innovation and Infrastructure
• Creating an Innovation Culture
• Economic Gardening
• History of Spokane Economic Plans – Part 6 – Culture and Ecosystems
• What Does This Mean for Spokane?

Unfortunately, local leadership (and state law) has us headed down a path through an incoherent industrial cluster strategy.  We need to build the whole ecosystem and stop drawing ever expanding geometric shapes on a map to proclaim we have clusters that we do not actually have.

Recommendation

Keeping in mind that I am probably off the wall, possibly clueless and perhaps just wrong – with that in mind, here goes:

1. Let’s invest in people and ideas, not concrete.

2. Aim high. Really high.
   

3. Do not settle for anything less than excellence.
   

Will that happen?  It will if we can break out of the good enough mindset. Kinda hard to break but like concrete, when hit with a big enough sledge hammer cracks can develop …

But it might not happen without financial incentives to well connected landowners in town: Benefiting from poured concrete paid for by someone else has been a pretty good gig! (Of course, the med school will be built right where you can guess and benefit … oh, you get the idea …)

Odds favor that we continue to pour concrete to eternity, wages will be unacceptable, ambitious people seeking excellence and and young people with skills and seeking opportunity will head for the coastal cities. Like they’ve been doing for some time. Read what Timothy Egan wrote about Spokane in the NY Times.

“Good enough” and “pouring concrete” are possibly the root cause issues to address. That would make for an interesting discussion topic.  For those that asked for recommendations, there you go!

I could be completely wrong, but at least its different than 30 years of existing plans and strategies.

Alternatives?

The alternative is to settle into a collection of regional service industries which is what we have today. Government is a service, health care is a service, and most of the next largest sectors (retail, hotels and restaurants, business and professional services) are services meeting the needs of the two big kids on the block (government and health care and their work force).

Those that prefer to compete at a world-class, globalized economy level in fields other than government and health care, local service and niche market industries, will find better opportunities somewhere else. Fair enough.

But we will need to re-align our local promotional efforts with this goal (they are not now aligned). And we will still be stuck with our stubborn wage problem: except for the big government and health care sectors, most of our remaining services sectors do not pay well.

Related Articles

• Another Spokane economy historical document (inlandnw.wordpress.com)
• The trail leading to Spokane’s economic plan for today (inlandnw.wordpress.com)
• More higher education data charts for Spokane (inlandnw.wordpress.com)
• Spokane’s capacity for innovation in high tech and bioscience (inlandnw.wordpress.com)

Spokane’s capacity for innovation in high tech and bioscience

“High Tech” generally refers to the fields of electronics engineering and computer science, but there is no formal definition. The field can and does include other disciplines including alternative energy, sometimes includes “biotech” and others.

As a rough measure of Spokane’s capacity for innovation, we can look at the number of 4 year and graduate degrees awarded in relevant fields. (Another is to look at issued patents – which in the case of Spokane, have dropped by negative 75% since 1998. Not good.)

Using the IPEDS database, data was collected for degree completions in certain subjects, from 2001 to 2009. Due to issues with the data tables and the data (see notes below), this chart is primarily useful for looking at the overall trend, but perhaps not the specific numbers.

The following chart combines the BS in computer science, management information systems, and the information sciences degrees (during the years it was offered), and combines the BS in biology and chemistry degrees awarded at Eastern Washington University. Other fields were also counted such as computer engineering technology, but due to very low numbers or missing data, these files were not included in the chart.

Important: the IPEDS data for biology degrees in 2004 was missing. Rather than estimate a value, the value was set to zero, accounting for the unusual drop in 2004 in the red line.

Interpretation

• The interpretation is that Spokane’s capacity for high tech has fallen sharply with the number of CS/IS/MIS degrees falling to less than one-third of the 2001 total.  The number of degrees awarded in electrical or electronic engineering (a new program at EWU) is 10 or below each year, and is also low at GU.
• Spokane’s capacity for biology and chemistry has increased by about one-third.

Other local colleges add a negligible number to the above totals. According to IPEDS, Gonzaga had four B.S. in computer science graduates in 2009 and 37 in Biology and 3 in chemistry.

An additional factor is the area’s capabilities in graduate degrees in the sciences and engineering.

• At this time, there are no longer any graduate degrees in engineering offered in Spokane.
• From 2006 to 2009, EWU averaged 5.75 Masters degrees in computer science. EWU offers the only on campus Masters in a technology or engineering field in all of the Spokane area.
• From 2005 to 2009, EWU averaged 5.6 Masters degrees in biology. Other than an MS in Exercise Science at WSU-Spokane, this is the only masters degree in science offered in the Spokane area.

Update: August 2013 – In 2012, EWU graduated 65 BS CS degrees and 3 M.S. CS degrees, plus 23 BS in electrical engineering and 4 BS in mechanical engineering degrees (the latter two are relatively new programs at EWU). GU had 11 BS CS grads, 50 BS CE, 21 BS EE and 52 BS ME. The EWU MS CS program is the only graduate technical degree offered in the Spokane market.

Important Notes

The IPEDS data is difficult to work with as it is organized by program code numbers, not by alphabetical order of the degree name.  Program codes change from year to year and the same program may appear under different program codes, in the same year.  Some years include an overall total for the program while others include the total number of male and female graduates separately (but not program total).  In a few places, some programs are listed twice!  The BS in biology showed only 1 graduate in 2004, which is not likely correct.

Several programs were examined but due to few graduates, they were not included in the final chart, above. The other program data appears in the data table, below.

It is possible that due to the difficulty of working with the IPEDS data that some individual numbers are incorrect. It seems unlikely that the overall trend curves would not change significantly.

Data table after the break …

Greater Spokane, Inc continues to promote poverty as Spokane’s comparative advantage

As noted previously on this web site (and more below) local home prices are often considered a proxy for local wages. Spokane’s low home prices are an indicator of the area’s low wage structure.

Kevin Dudley of Greater Spokane, Inc posted the following on LaunchPadINW (read the whole thing – GSI will be publishing this data and conclusions shortly):

Most notably, to me anyway, is housing. Spokane’s home prices are 14.5 percent below the national average. Only Mobile, Alabama came in lower out of our peer cities. That’s important, to those looking at buying a home for the first time.

So that’s the cost of living in Spokane. Pretty good, I think (again, I’m biased, but I don’t care). Is this what keeps you in Spokane?

via What brought you to Spokane, and what keeps you here? – LaunchPad – INW.

Low home prices do not indicate what we think they indicate – and GSI’s spin is already underway in the media. If this were true, then Mobile, Alabama would be an even better place to move to, right?

Let’s look at the claims one step at a time.

First, academic research suggests housing prices are an indicator of a local area’s economic status (although one paper contests that). For example:

A New Perspective on the Relationship Between House Prices And Income:

We show that a strong linear relationship exists between income and house price quantiles in Sydney (Australia), Houston, and the state of Texas. This suggests that the house price distribution is closely approximated by the income distribution after a location-scale transformation.

In English, low home prices correlate with low wages.

Or, What Are Cities Worth? Land Rents, Local Productivity, and the Capitalization of Amenity Values:

Private land values vary mainly from quality-of-life differences, while social land (or total-amenity) values vary mainly from firm-productivity differences. The most valuable cities are generally coastal, sunny, and have large or well-educated populations.

In English, well-educated working age populations correspond also with higher incomes.

Or, from Consumer City:

In cities with more educated populations, rents have gone up more quickly than wages since 1970-the natural interpretation of this fact is that while productivity has risen in places with more educated workers, quality of life has risen faster.

Second, GSI compares Spokane to Mobile, Alabama. GSI says Spokane has lower home prices for comparable cities except for Mobile, Alabama, which is even lower – and also has a very high poverty rate (as does Spokane). In Mobile, only 18.6% of those over 25 have a 4 year college degree or higher versus 25% in Spokane.

By this odd definition of low home prices being a good thing, that would make Mobile better than Spokane then? This makes no sense.

While home prices are a little below the national average, Spokane’s average wages are 15% below the United States and 20% below the State of Washington averages.

See also:

• Spokane’s economy in two charts,
• Spokane Poverty Rates,
• Spokane “Community Development through Entrepreneurship”,
• Much of Spokane’s population may qualify for government assistance,
• How Spokane Promotes Itself,

There is no polite way to put this so I will dispense with being polite:

By the economic and demographic report card, GSI has failed. To this day, GSI continues to promote things that are not true (more here and a whopper of a lie here told by another promoter in town). Keeping with a decades long tradition, they literally promote poverty as Spokane’s comparative advantage (see also the economic history items linked at the upper right of this page).

For decades, Spokane’s local income growth has lagged the rest of the state and the nation. Every year, Spokane residents fall further and further behind. In the GSI world of thinking, this is good!

GSI appears to be failing in its mission.

Sorry about that – I usually stick to the data.  But the overall economic data for Spokane says GSI has failed.

Related Articles

• Spokane med school building not in gov’s budget (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

WSU Enrollment Up, but Down at WSU-Spokane

Pullman’s enrollment is up to 18,805 students, while Spokane has 1,267.

via NW today: Wash. legislators might change GET program – Spokesman.com – Feb. 2, 2011.

While overall WSU enrollment continues to climb, WSU Spokane’s spring enrollment of 1,267 is down from 1,311 in the spring of 2010, or a drop of -3.4% and down from 1,539 in the spring of 2009.

Looks like its time for a chart so we can see the trend over time:

WSU Spokane enrollment falls 17.6% since 2009.

All data came from WSU press releases in their archive.  I could not find a press release for 2003 and the 2002 release did not split out the Spokane enrollment from Pullman; I did not look any further back than that. I assume the above #s are total enrollment and not “Full Time Equivalent” or FTEs. Back in about 2002, the FTE number was about 680 or so and total enrollment is usually about 25% or so greater than the FTE number.

Overall WSU enrollment increased year over year. WSU is a great university – so why the drop at WSU Spokane?

Update: I received a suggestion that WSU-Spokane enrollment is a proxy for the local economy, similar to the airport. WSU-Tri-cities and WSU Vancouver are growing because their local economies are growing; WSU-Pullman is growing because the overall state economy is growing. WSU-Spokane is declining because the local economy is not healthy and the local health care employment market is tough (WSU-Spokane’s primary focus is health care and health sciences.). However, as shown in a later post, EWU’s enrollment has gone up steadily. We also know that WSU’s multi-campus enrollment has risen; only in Spokane has it gone down. Therefore, the issues regarding WSU-Spokane enrollment are likely due to something else besides the local economy.

Related: The much desired Spokane medical school initiative has been postponed until at least 2022. There’s no funding to even start such a project until at least 2022.

Looking at how data changes over time is critical to good reporting and understanding what is happening in Spokane. The SR often leaves out historical context that would help our interpretation of the story.

Related Articles

• Washington State University Reports Record Spring Enrollment (wsunews.wsu.edu)
• WSU consolidates pharmacy program in Spokane (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Spokane med school building not in gov’s budget (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Governor’s Budget Spells Out Higher Tuition, Less Money for WSU (wsunews.wsu.edu)