Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 5, 1991 TAG: 9102050435
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Today, the quality of Virginia's colleges and universities is in peril, the victim of budget cuts falling disproportionately on higher education.
Two decades ago, Virginia was among the bottom third of the 50 states in per-student general-fund appropriations. By 1988-89, according to a recent General Assembly-commissioned report presented to the State Council of Higher Education, Virginia's rank had risen to 27th.
But now come the cutbacks. Based on 1989-90 figures for other states, Virginia's college presidents have told the General Assembly, Wilder's proposed 1991-92 higher-education appropriations would send Virginia back to a tie for 40th. In other words, the state would lose in one year the ground it had taken many years to make up.
Money, of course, isn't synonymous with quality. Occasional bouts of self-examination and austerity are healthy in the long lives of large institutions. Temporary cutbacks can be tolerated, the state Senate Finance Committee was told in November by the president of George Mason University.
But permanent cutbacks, warned George Johnson, would drive away good faculty and lessen reputations for academic quality that would take decades to restore. "Virginia," he said, "is coming to be viewed, like Massachusetts, as a disaster area in higher education."
Weakened faculties aren't the only prospective casualties.
Tuition and fees at Virginia's state-supported colleges and universities are already high. They're getting higher as institutions seek to offset reductions in money from the state.
A recent study ranked in-state tuition and fees at Virginia's major research universities eighth among the 50 states. For other four-year institutions, in-state tuition and fees ranked fourth.
Moreover, financial-aid opportunities are failing to keep pace with the increases. State spending on need-based financial aid has risen from $3.5 million annually to $19 million over the past eight years. This is a drop in the bucket compared with rising tuition and the attenuation of federal financial-aid programs.
The result? Poor Virginians are finding college unaffordable - and the colleges are finding it hard to get the kind of student-body diversity that is crucial to campus quality.
Apparently, the point has yet to be reached where middle-class Virginians can't afford Virginia colleges. Indeed, several state institutions report increased applications from prospective students who in past years would have considered even costlier out-of-state and private colleges and universities.
But that may be a curse in disguise. It doesn't help with financial aid for disadvantaged students. And it could delude policy-makers into acting on the mistaken assumption that middle-class Virginians have an infinite capacity for paying ever-higher tuition.
There is also the option of fiddling with out-of-state admissions. As high as in-state tuition and fees are becoming in Virginia, they're even higher - often meeting or exceeding actual costs - for out-of-staters. But exercising this option is tricky. Admit fewer out-of-state students, and you've cut another revenue source that must be offset by in-state students or taxpayers or both. Admit more out-of-state students, and you have fewer places for middle-class Virginia students.
In either case, Virginia's colleges and universities face an immediate choice of raising tuition or going to pot. Without a change in state-budget trends, they'll end up raising tuition and going to pot.
by CNB