Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 24, 1992 TAG: 9201240592
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GORDON K. DAVIES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
STATE IS SHIRKING RESPONSIBILITY
VIRGINIA may be in its most difficult financial period since at least the end of World War II, but it is not alone. Across the nation, governments are trying to provide services demanded by the public and finding that they cannot do so with current tax revenues, spending priorities and ways of doing business.Lacking leadership and vision, the United States is scrambling to keep up with global change, unable to shape it. The federal tax structure seems almost designed to eliminate the middle-income family and to create a hopelessly impoverished underclass. Our spending priorities are severely skewed, and responsibility for social programs is being transferred to the states, without adequate funding to support them.
Medicaid, for instance, has increased in cost to Virginia taxpayers at a rate three times greater than that of state revenues. Corrections also is taking a larger chunk of the budget in the absence of alternatives to incarceration. Building prisons is extremely expensive, and the cost of operating them has increased at a rate 1 1/2 times greater than that of revenues. Aid to Dependent Children and other basic social welfare programs are also consuming more of the state's money each year.
On top of these items, there is a general consensus that public education - elementary and secondary - is not adequately educating our children and, consequently, needs more support.
Virginia's colleges and universities are conspicuously absent from this list of state priorities which are, generally speaking, remedial rather than economically productive.
We are spending scarce money to treat the illnesses of the poor and elderly, rather than to keep them well; to imprison a significant proportion of our population that endangers the rest; to provide basic sustenance for those who do not contribute to the economy; and to improve public schools that are not performing up to par.
Supporting remedial programs is important, to be sure. But it is also important to support programs that help citizens increase their economic productivity and decrease their dependence on remediaton. Available revenues are being spent to fix what's broken, rather than on activities that could help Virginia recover and adjust to new economic realities.
Virginia's colleges and universities aren't broken. By most measures, they are among the best in the nation and, therefore, among the best in the world. Nonetheless, they need to change substantially to keep up with global economic, social, political and environmental changes. They need to prepare imaginatively for the surge of additional students that is coming during this decade. They need to take advantage of technology to strengthen teaching and research, as well as to increase the productivity of excellent faculties.
The irony is that Virginia's colleges and universities have no place at the funding table.
For this reason, the presidents of the state's colleges and universities prepared a document last summer that listed their alternatives:
1. Virginia's colleges and universities could become less good, allowing the quality that has been achieved over decades to slip away in the course of a few years. This the presidents rejected as irresponsible.
2. Institutions could limit enrollment to match funding. The latest round of spending cuts led the presidents and the Council of Higher Education to agree to hold enrollments at 1991-92 levels for the next two years. But more students are coming. There are about 10,000 more children in the second grade this year than 10 years ago. Limiting enrollment isn't feasible in the long run.
3. Institutions could increase productivity by teaching differently, by using technology, by streamlining curricula and by eliminating the costs of centralized state control. This the presidents pledged to do, pointing out that while enrollment increased by 25 percent in the 1980s, faculty and staff grew by only 8 percent - clearly an increase in productivity already achieved.
4. Institutions could raise money from tuition if there is none to be had from the state. This the presidents agreed to do, providing financial aid were made available to needy students to help ensure access. The budget now being considered by the Virginia General Assembly contains authorization to raise about $215 million in additional tuition and provides for $24 million in financial aid to help needy students. Tuition increases will average 15 percent in each of the next two years.
A well-educated, technologically sophisticated citizenry is by all accounts essential to Virginia's economic and social well-being. From this it ought to follow that the state has a major responsibility to pay the costs of education. But steadily and dramatically, we are shifting financial responsibility for higher education away from government and to students and their families. The long-range consequences of this shift ought to trouble us considerably.
\ AUTHOR Gordon K. Davies is director of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.