Is Western Washington University Worth It?

Western Washington gives you a solid financial return with low risk. At under $19,000 a year in net price, the debt you leave with is modest, and median earnings sit high enough above that debt load that repayment stays manageable for most graduates.

Your major decides everything here. Computer and Information Sciences graduates clear the top salary at Western, and they carry roughly the same debt as everyone else, so the payoff is clean. Nursing is the smarter bet on paper: you earn nearly as much as the CS grads but leave with about half the debt, the lowest of any top program listed. Management Information Systems pays the least of the high earners while carrying the most debt, so it's the weakest trade among the strong programs. The other technical fields land in the low-to-mid $50,000s and $60,000s, which still covers the cost comfortably.

The risk is completion, not cost. A 65.5% graduation rate and a 79.7% retention rate mean a real share of you won't finish on time or at all, and debt without a degree is where this deal goes bad. Bellingham's distance from Seattle's tech and health job market also matters if you want the high-paying CS and nursing roles those salary figures assume.

The net price tiers reward lower incomes heavily. If your family earns under $30,000, you pay less than half what a family over $110,000 pays, and the jump between the $48-75k and $75-110k brackets is the steepest single step. Western is a strong fit for you if you're targeting nursing or computing and qualify for the lower price tiers. If you're paying the top-bracket price for a lower-earning major, look harder at whether the numbers work.