Yesterday The Seattle Times and five co-sponsors launched a year-long public education campaign – The Greater good Campaign– focused on reinforcing the broad positive contributions of Washington state’s higher education system on Washington’s job creation and quality of life.

The Seattle Times is co-sponsoring the campaign with The Bellevue Collection, Safeco Insurance, Davis Wright Termaine, Microsoft, and Rowley Properties.

The goal of the campaign – which is both a print and online campaign- is first to build broad awareness that public higher education should not be seen as a personal privilege for individual students, but that the state’s higher-education system provides a much larger public good, creating jobs, enhancing competitiveness, economic growth and innovation.

In addition the campaign is focused on illustrating that the best public investment the Legislature can make in these uncertain economic times is in the state’s public universities.

Over the next year the campaign will feateru facts and messages reinforcing its “Greater good” theme.