Innovation is too hard to find

“Relentlessly innovative,” at the very least, is something we should try to be, says the gregarious president of Western Washington University Bruce Shepard. Innovative is what Washington’s public universities must be and what Western strives for. Try something new, fail if you must, then try something new again. Be relentless in search of something better.

“I see the exact opposite down in Olympia,” lamented Shepard, during a stop in Wenatchee Wednesday. It was coincidentally the same day the state Senate majority coalition released its proposed 2013-15 operating budget. It proposed a 11.5 percent funding hike for higher education in return for a 3-percent tuition cut.