Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 26, 1992 TAG: 9201230349
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
HIGHER PRICE OF HIGHER ED
WHETHER they're public or private, two-year or four-year, the situations are similar: State-supported colleges and universities and privately funded institutions are searching for ways to cope under the weight of strained economic conditions.One way or another, students are paying.
While the public institutions are dealing with the economy in part by capping enrollments, the private schools are beefing up their recruitment.
And at all the colleges, tuition is rising.
"We have to compete along with other selective institutions in attracting students," said Timothy Hill, Hollins College vice president for business and finance. "It's in fact always difficult for us to compete with public institutions on purely a cost basis. There is such a gap."
The state Commission on the University of the 21st Century has predicted a surge in the number of college-bound high school students by the next decade.
But until economic conditions improve, the doors will close on some students seeking admission.
Private colleges, with generally higher tuition fees, face declining enrollments as students turn to cheaper, public institutions. And the public universities and colleges, hindered by reduced state funding, are being forced to limit enrollments and turn away applicants.
"Since we're in a kind of plateau period, we decided to hold enrollments," said Anne Pratt, an associate director with the State Council for Higher Education, the Virginia agency that oversees Virginia's public colleges and universities. "But the council came to this idea reluctantly."
Opening the doors to more students wouldn't solve financial woes by simply generating more money with more tuition payments. Increased enrollment means hiring more faculty, erecting more buildings, in general, providing more amenities, primarily to salvage the quality of education, Pratt said.
"Part of the feeling of holding enrollments was we didn't want quality to suffer," she said. "In the short run, it was a way to look at what we could do and do well."
In November, Freddie Nicholas, then head of the state's system of 23 community colleges, urged education officials to rethink their position on enrollment caps in light of budget cutbacks. They balked, calling it unthinkable and counter to the very intent of community colleges - offering an education to people from all walks of life.
The state's community college system enrolled 226,512 students statewide during the 1990-91 school year. The system faces steady enrollment growth while being hit with about $20 million in budget cuts already this academic year. A 5 percent cut has been estimated beginning July 1.
At Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke, $300,000 has been trimmed from the back end of the current year's $12 million spending plan. The school has been forced to sacrifice professional development for faculty, future equipment purchases, more library books and miscellaneous supplies such as chemistry lab equipment.
Such cuts trouble Ed Barnes, newly appointed president of the New River Community College in Dublin. The state's community colleges have "reached the point where we can no longer provide the level of services that we have historically," Barnes said.
"We are in worldwide competition in the marketplace. We live in a time when technology is exploding," Barnes said. "There has never been a time when access to information has been more important."
"And when we are not purchasing library books, I am not sure we can even think of being competitive."
With the outlook so bleak, can the state's public colleges and universities cope with the predicted rise in college-bound students?
"If the surge of students comes, and it will, and the state is not able to support our capital needs, then 40,000 new students can't be accommodated," said Virginia Tech President James McComas.
"If we can't take care of the ones we have now, how can we take care of the new ones? If they [the state] can't commit to our needs, what will happen when the burst of student comes?"
The state's private colleges and universities are not exempt from the economic condition. But while the public institutions are capping enrollments, private ones are coping with enrollment declines.
The most noticeable impact on Virginia's private accredited institutions is in admissions, said Robert Lambeth, president of the Council of Independent Colleges in Virginia.
"Our schools, since they are not subsidized by the state, have had to charge close to full cost which means that sometimes, the charges are substantial," Lambeth said. "In a bad economy, people are more conservative in their spending. It'll be more difficult to send kids to colleges."
Virginia's private colleges and universities draw heavily from the Northeastern part of the country for students, a region hit badly by the economic downturn, Lambeth said. Thus, the Virginia colleges are suffering more than others, he said.
Applications at Roanoke College, in Salem, are up about 5 percent over last year, according to President David Gring. But the college has received fewer applications from the Northeast, "where people believe the recession is more noticeable than in the South," he said.
Competing with public colleges and universities always has been difficult for the private institutions, said Hill of Hollins College.
Hollins' current undergraduate comprehensive fee, which includes tuition, room and board, is $16,200, for example. By comparison, undergraduate tuition at Virginia Tech is $2,856 for in-state students and $7,704 for out-of-state students. Room and board ranges from $2,604 to $2,984.
"We're not functioning under the apprehension that it is not a significant amount of money - clearly it is," Hill said. "Obviously we feel the pressure to keep any fee adjustment as modest as we can."
Roanoke College has shifted the emphasis of its fund raising toward student financial aid. Where the focus had been raising the college's endowment for library construction, it now is on financial aid, Gring said.
College endowments always have been a focus but probably never more so than in times of economic pressure.
Even though Hollins' comprehensive fee is up 8 percent over the 1990-91 year, the college had to use more of its endowment fund this year than it normally would to support operating costs, Hill said.
"That money had to come from somewhere," he said. "Rather than pass costs on to students and parents, we went to our own resources."
Those families are likely more concerned than ever about rising college costs and financing strategies to counter those increases.
"People are a bit more reticent about going into debt for higher education," Gring said.