Guest contributor Andrew Tsao is an Associate Professor with the University of Washington’s School of Drama. He has previously written on budget impacts at the UW here and here. His latest editorial arrives as the UW is announcing that it is considering a tuition increase of 20 percent or more for next year.

The long winter has finally given way to a spring of cold reality here at University of Washington.

After an extended session, the Washington State legislature has finally handed down the budget cuts we all have been waiting for that will shape the university not only for the next biennium, but for decades to come.

As Michael Young prepares to become the next president of UW, he will have to strategize, fundraise, and administrate a smaller, weakened university. One word that has been getting a lot of use here over the past few months is “quality.” The UW administration insists that quality will be maintained and even enhanced moving forward. Indeed, many administrators, professors and staff have found new ways to educate our students in the face of dwindling resources. The mainstream press rarely seeks out these stories, but I can tell you that here in the trenches, there are indeed heroics happening.

One personal hero of mine is my colleague Professor Odai Johnson, head of the Ph.D. area in the School of Drama. Faced with losing half his teaching faculty, much of his doctoral student teaching support and little sympathy from the university at large, Dr. Johnson choose to innovate instead of disintegrate. The result is The Center for Performance Studies, a new collaborative venture that creates a synergy between the School of Drama and a range of other programs in the Humanities. By sharing teaching resources and combining curriculum, the center is emerging as a shining example of forward thinking in the face of shrinking resources.

However, while endeavors like The Center for Performance Studies point to the entrepreneurship and resilience of our administration and faculty, the hard truth remains that the concept of an affordable, accessible and high quality university education here in Washington  is in a precarious state. Quality in higher education has always centered on a single idea: a valued professoriat in regular contact with students. No amount of crisis driven innovation, political hyperbole, or necessity-based reorganization can change that fact.

Any institute of learning can educate by rote and routine. To produce consumer/workers who fit into a wilderness of cubicles is certainly affordable. Indeed, it has been argued that some see an unthinking workforce in America as a socio-political goal. The 20th century had a few examples of this way of thinking, specifically in Asia and central Europe. Thankfully, the political forces who advocated ignorance and arrogance as a social ideal faded through war and isolation. Time will tell whether these forces now visible and gaining momentum in our economic and political landscape will fade as well.

Therefore, quality in higher education depends on the freedom and security of academics to teach critical thinking to the next generation. For those who like to tout the gospel of “useful skills” in regard to a quality college education and deride a broad-based liberal education, I cite the copious evidence from corporate CEOs that the single most valuable attribute companies seek in new hires is the ability to think critically and creatively.

Only time will tell whether we will be able to maintain this idea of quality here at UW. We go into the summer of 2011 believing we can. People like Dr. Johnson inspire us to do so.