By contrast, Washington state’s investment in research institutions has been declining for the last decade.
	This is not really breaking news, but the implications are just beginning to penetrate. The TA worries that if we wait till it is obvious it will be way too late. It is easy to point fingers at elected officials, but they cannot really be entirely blamed for this state of affairs. For example, the legislature has done what it could in supporting university capital projects, which can be used as matching money, while struggling to balance the budget in difficult economic times and severely constrained conditions.
	Frankly, it has been a series of small and medium-sized decisions and non-decisions over several decades that has gotten us here. It is the PEOPLE of the state who have to understand that this mismatch cannot last forever.