Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 22, 1993 TAG: 9309280326
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
While many were (at taxpayers' expense) on retreat at Mountain Lake resort, several major newspapers were detailing the misdirections of the higher-education resources of the state. But the educators still don't get it.
Look at some of the items in the Council on Higher Education's agenda book - items the public colleges are asking for:
A swimming pool at George Mason University.
Sports arena planning at the University of Virginia.
A recreation facility at Virginia Commonwealth University. Every one of these nonacademic projects will sting the students with extra annual fees.
Even more shocking is the fact that classroom and classroom-laboratory spaces comprised only 25 percent of the total educational and general space (E&G) in 1992, down from 30 percent a decade ago.
While libraries make up an additional 14 percent, a whopping 61 percent of E&G consists of faculty offices, research facilities, administration offices, physical plants, and so forth. Note: Athletic facilities, dormitories and auxiliary activities (bookstores, etc.) aren't considered part of E&G and, therefore, are in addition to the E&G space.
If these are considered, classrooms and laboratory spaces are probably down to less than 10 percent of the total campus area. It's evident that space for teaching is not a high priority in public higher education.
On top of everything else, many colleges are using their teaching space far less frequently than is required by the council's liberal standards. For example, with the exception of Thomas Nelson and Lord Fairfax, all community colleges fell below the standard for mean usage. Some, including Patrick Henry, Tidewater, Rappahannock and Eastern Shore community colleges, scored as low as 20 to 22 hours of average weekly usage. And even during the busiest time of the day, none of these four institutions reached 60 percent usage of available classrooms.
The senior college level hardly fared better. Only two exceeded the suggested norm. The rest fell below, with UVa and The College of William & Mary at 25 to 30 hours, and VMI and Mary Washington registering below 20 on mean proportion of classroom usage. Amazing.
The colleges also failed the suggested laboratory guidelines. Set at 23 hours per week, only 15 of 23 community colleges met this lessened standard and not a single senior institution reached it.
These numbers have caused the council's staff to recommend that these colleges get their usage up by 1996, or they should not request additional classroom space. (They can request other kinds of space. Just no classrooms.)
The council deserves credit for publishing these statistics now, although it's surprising they weren't available last year when taxpayers were asked to support a $472 million bond issue.
Today, while all sectors of our communities are tightening their belts, restructuring, managing for quality, and looking for new ways of doing old and new tasks, public higher education has forgotten its constituents. Worse, it is soaking the taxpayer, flouting the legislature and governor, and ignoring the student ... even while it builds its own empires.
FRANK LONGAKER
President National Business College
SALEM
by CNB