黑料吃瓜网

I鈥檓 off to Washington DC later this week to meet with staff to our congressional delegation about two critical issues facing the 黑料吃瓜网 and other higher education institutions in the United States.

First, the House version of the Higher Education Reauthorization Act known as 鈥淧ROSPER鈥� is slowly working its way to the floor of the chamber, although as of today there are still not enough votes to pass the measure.聽 Authored by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina) with little input from the broader higher education community, the measure would make higher education more expensive for millions of students and families by eliminating in-school interest subsidies for undergraduates, the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant program, and loan forgiveness and other benefits currently available in federal student loan programs.聽 Graduate students would also be hit hard by the measure by limiting federal loans forcing them to borrow at higher costs and fewer protections in the private market.

The 黑料吃瓜网鈥檚 letter of concerns with the PROSPER act can be found

The other issue on our advocacy radar screen in the nation鈥檚 capital are the increasing attacks on international students, particularly those coming from China.聽 While we share everyone鈥檚 interest in insuring our nation鈥檚 national and economic security, we must ensure that any changes to our visa system don鈥檛 negatively impact our ability to continue research and develop cures and technologies that drive our economy.

Over the past few weeks, a number of proposals have been floated in the administration as well as Congress that would place severe limits on how long students from China could study in the U.S. as well as making it harder to be granted a visa in the first place.聽 We believe that student-visa policies for Chinese citizens to protect against security concerns should be much more narrowly tailored to ensure they don鈥檛 needlessly deter the brightest students from studying in our nation鈥檚 top research universities.

For more up to date information on these and other critical federal issues, make sure you check the on a regularly basis.

I鈥檓 back on campus from a week-long visit to Singapore with the Seattle Metro Chamber of Commerce and I can safely say that 65 degrees and low humidity never felt so refreshing.聽 After my long plane ride home and a few days

to recover from jet lag, I鈥檓 starting to try and formulate some major takeaways from the trip that might end up being beneficial for our state and our university.聽 Here are three major lessons I gleaned from this visit.

First, Singapore and all of Southeast Asia has become a critical part of the world and our state鈥檚 economy.聽 The 10 nations that comprise the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (of which Singapore is a member) has the 3^rd largest population in the world and a GDP of $2.4 trillion.聽 It鈥檚 the 5^th largest economy in the world and will

likely eclipse the European Union for 4^th place by 2050.聽 The state of Washington is the nation鈥檚 third largest exporter to ASEAN behind California and Texas, accounting for almost 47,000 jobs in the Evergreen State.聽 Singapore has truly become the Gateway to ASEAN so strengthening economic, cultural and educational ties with this powerful nation-state is clearly in our state鈥檚 interest.

Second, Singapore is relentlessly transforming its economy into one based on knowledge and innovation. For a nation with no natural resources to speak of, Singapore realized early on in its history that their economic future would be based on attracting and retaining the best workers in the world. Today, every first world economy is trying to win the 鈥渉uman capital鈥� competition since the nation with the best ideas for new products and industries will be the winners in the 21^st century economic sweepstakes.

So how does a nation of less than 6 million people (one third of whom are from Europe, North America and other non-Singaporean nations), compete with the U.S., China and other stronger economies? The answer came from a dinner conversation I had with a U.S. native currently working in Singapore for an autonomous vehicle start-up

called Nutonomy. According to this MIT grad who manages the company鈥檚 operations, Singapore went out of their way to both recruit Nutonomy to the country and then bent over backwards to help them establish a base of operations and clear regulatory hurdles to make testing the cars on city streets much easier than the U.S. I heard variations of this same story from other U.S. companies located in Singapore from Microsoft, Expedia, IBM and Tableau 鈥� Singapore鈥檚 government is a true partner with the business community and goes out of their way to make things easy for them to conduct and expand their business.

Third, Singapore is able to work and speak with a singular voice and focus because there is really only one level of government and one ruling political party in the entire nation. As a city-state, the People鈥檚 Action Party has ruled Singapore since its birth more than 50 years ago. There are no states, cities, counties or special district government entities to deal with as we have in the U.S. and the legal system is not used as a way of slowing down or stopping government initiatives. While Singapore is not a complete totalitarian state as their citizens do enjoy some freedoms, dissent is not tolerated and security is very tight. While I鈥檓 still convinced American democracy and government is still the envy of the world, the ability of Singapore to execute and coordinate economic growth strategy while simultaneously looking 10-15 years ahead and laying the groundwork now for future success is truly enviable.

Here in Washington and the Puget Sound region in particular, we do plan for the present and the future in a coordinated and thoughtful way. Our political system, however, can oftentimes make following through on these plans clunky at best based on leadership changes resulting from elections or lack of trust among different political jurisdictions. As with any of these delegation visits, time will tell if we can take the best of what we鈥檝e learned and adapt it successfully for our unique Pacific Northwest sensibilities.