University of Washington

What it is

The University of Washington is a public university in the United States that dates its founding to 1861 ^[1]. It comprises campuses in Seattle, Bothell and Tacoma, along with a medical centre that serves the state and the surrounding region ^[1]. Those pieces — a large flagship campus, two smaller campuses and a clinical enterprise — are usually described together, because they share one administration and one name.

Founding

The university traces its history back to 1861, the date it gives as its founding ^[1]. That makes it one of the older public institutions in the country; a university of that age typically grew from a small territorial school into a large research institution over many decades, adding professional schools, graduate programmes and, eventually, satellite campuses.

Campuses and scale

The university says it inspires more than 60,000 students each year ^[1]. The Seattle campus alone has more than 33,000 undergraduate students and offers more than 180 majors, which makes it the largest of the three by a wide margin ^[1]. The two other campuses have their own profiles rather than being smaller copies of Seattle. UW Bothell has 6,000 students, more than 350 faculty and five schools ^[1]. UW Tacoma offers 40 undergraduate degree programmes together with 25 minors and certificates ^[1].

Medicine

The medical arm, UW Medicine, recorded more than 1.6 million patient visits in 2021 ^[1]. In the same year it reported 729 million dollars in uncompensated care for low-income patients ^[1]. Uncompensated care is treatment that a hospital provides but is not paid for, either because patients cannot pay or because public insurance reimburses less than the cost of care; it is a standard measure of how much charity and shortfall a health system absorbs. A figure of that size indicates that the medical centre functions as a safety-net provider for the region, not only as a teaching hospital for students.

Research and people

The university states that it receives more federal research dollars than any other US public university ^[1]. Federal money of this kind usually arrives as grants to individual researchers and teams, and it pays for laboratories, equipment, staff and graduate students; a large share of it is concentrated in medicine, engineering and the sciences.

The university also counts its people. It says it has been home to 8 Nobel Prize winners, 17 MacArthur Fellows, 189 members of the National Academies and 193 AAAS fellows ^[1]. These are four different kinds of recognition: the Nobel Prizes are annual international awards in fields such as physics, chemistry and medicine; MacArthur Fellowships are given to individuals whose work shows originality, and come with a no-strings grant; the National Academies are advisory bodies that elect members on the strength of their research; and the AAAS, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, elects fellows from among its members. Counting all four together is a way of describing the breadth of a faculty rather than a single ranking.

Leadership

Robert J. Jones is president of the University of Washington ^[1].

Where it sits

Taken together, the numbers the university reports describe an institution built on two pillars. One is federally funded research, where it claims the top position among US public universities ^[1]. The other is clinical service: a medical centre with well over a million patient visits a year and a large volume of unpaid care ^[1]. Its teaching side spreads across three campuses with different sizes and different mixes of programmes, from a large undergraduate college in Seattle to smaller campuses in Bothell and Tacoma ^[1].