
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 10, 1990                   TAG: 9003122958
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NEW COLLEGE

PERHAPS Northern Virginia someday will have a Woodrow Wilson College. But the college, a joint proposal of Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia, won't be established soon.

That much was clear long before the House of Delegates' rejection this week of a Senate-approved resolution for a study of future higher-education needs in Northern Virginia. That much was clear early in the legislative session, as the extent of the state's budget crunch became known - as well as the impact of the crunch on higher-education funding for the 1990-92 biennium.

The proposal for the new college, to be a mid-sized institution specializing in undergraduate education, was one of several put forth by Virginia institutions in response to projections of growing enrollments toward the end of the decade. Those projections flew in the face of national trends, but were based on the influx in recent years of middle-class immigrants into the commonwealth from other states.

But the budget crunch stems in part from a slowdown in the state's economic growth - which suggests it may be time to view the enrollment-growth projections with a grain of salt. Without the magnet of economic boom, will the in-migration trends of the '80s persist into the '90s?

The immediate problem is to make the most out of what resources are currently available. Virginia's state-supported colleges and universities can charge relatively high tuitions in large measure because of their reputation for quality. But as state support slides, so could that reputation: It's a trap that Virginia needs desperately to avoid, assuming the state already hasn't been snared by it.

Already in Virginia there has been a blue-ribbon commission to study higher-education needs into the 21st century. Already in Virginia there is a State Council of Higher Education, whose mission includes oversight of the semi-autonomous institutions to avoid non-productive duplication. Already in Northern Virginia there is a regional consortium - whose members include UVa and Tech as well as George Mason University and other Northern Virginia institutions - that also is supposed to deal with such matters.

Already, too, consideration of the pedagogical worth of a Woodrow Wilson College was being overshadowed by fiscal concerns. And already, a potentially fascinating debate - the academic conservatives at the old-line universities, Tech and UVa, vs. the academic innovators (radicals, some might say) at George Mason - was showing signs of degenerating into just another turf fight.

Given all that, it's hard to fault the House for putting the issue on hold. It's hard to see why Virginia at the moment needs to spend money on a study to study a study.

by CNB