Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 3, 1993 TAG: 9312300008
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Already hit in the past four years by wildly disproportionate slashes in state support, Virginia's colleges are now told to get ready for more. Why?
Virginia Tech, to take an example close to home, is already operating with $26 million less than it had in 1989. Had it not increased tuition to partially offset the state cutbacks, that deficit would be even greater.
Since1989, higher education has seen a 20 percent reduction in its share of state funding. It accounts now for only 11.9 percent of Virginia's state budget. (Compared to 18 percent of North Carolina's, for instance.)
As Virginia Tech President James D. McComas has noted, cuts of the magnitude Gov. Wilder is talking about could drop Virginia from an already low 42nd in the nation in state support per student - to dead last.
Why even consider this? Targeting the commonwealth's colleges for the lion's share of additional budget-cutting isn't just questionable. It's downright bizarre.
In the first place, education - particularly tax-supported higher education - is a proven and powerful engine for economic growth and social mobility. It is the means by which the nation acquires and maintains a trained (and, an increasing necessity in a fast-changing world, retrained) work force. Research universities are a primary locus for the advances in knowledge and technologies that enable living standards to rise.
To scant colleges and universities in tight economic times is to ensure that future times will be tighter.
Second, Virginia has more to lose than most states if it allows short-sighted policy to drive its colleges into mediocrity. Through a combination of good luck and sound planning, the commonwealth has had one of the country's top systems of higher education in the county. This status is now in jeopardy.
Never superbly funded by the state, the system was until recently at least adequately funded. With the blows it has taken since Wilder took office, new efficiencies, endowment income and tuition increases have become more important. But they haven't been enough to offset the losses.
Moreover, Virginia is active in the world marketplace; as a coastal state, adjacent to the national capital, with good ports, it ought to be extraordinarily well-placed to benefit further as the globe continues to shrink.
Virginia will not do so, however, if it fails to maintain the infrastructure necessary to support world-class economic competitiveness. A topnotch system of higher education is an essential ingredient of such an infrastructure.
All of which should be obvious, yet is ignored by a governor happy to whack away mindlessly at higher education. Never mind higher education - this administration needs remedial education on the value of Virginia's colleges and universities.
by CNB