Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 6, 1993 TAG: 9403090032
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GORDON K. DAVIES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But for all my dissatisfaction with the status quo, and all my feelings of urgency about the need for fundamental and substantial changes in the way colleges and universities operate, I am troubled now as never before about the future of Virginia higher education. I fear we are about to throw out the baby with the bath water - that 30 years of commitment to building a good system of higher education is about to go down the drain.
Recent attention to Virginia higher education has emphasized its flaws and ignored its enormous contributions. We too easily forget that when Mobil Oil Corp. chose to move its headquarters to Virginia, it gave as one of its primary reasons our "superb" colleges and universities. I wonder what Mobil's corporate leaders think about the bad-mouthing of recent weeks?
Ours is a strong system of higher education. Its success is essential to the economic and social well-being of Virginia. Its research fuels commercial and industrial growth. Its teaching yields measurable results: Among the 15 Southern states, Virginia follows only Texas and North Carolina in the number of engineers and scientists it produces annually.
We have the ninth-highest college enrollment in the nation, even though we rank 43rd in public funding for higher education. We offer training and retraining within easy commuting distance of every industrial site in the state. We are leaders in redesigning medical education, teaching science and technology, and assessing how and what students learn.
Of course we have problems.
We need to take a breather from double-digit tuition increases. This is true especially for Virginians who are enrolled as undergraduates in our colleges and universities.
The true cost of higher education is complicated by the subsidy known as financial aid. The governor and General Assembly have increased financial aid by nearly $37 million since 1991. Virginians have changed their patterns of college-going because of price. But they are not now being deprived of college access. Our challenge is to ensure that they never are.
Some faculty should teach more. But there are 16,000 faculty, and what organization this size doesn't have some who don't pull their weight? Besides, there are times when a particular faculty member should work exclusively at research or public service. The comments of a few ought not blind us to the great value of break-through knowledge.
Sometimes research is valued over teaching. The two should, of course, be balanced equally; that's all we ask. But just as IBM, General Motors and Xerox have had to change their priorities without eliminating research, so must American higher education. It's serious; but again, neither a scandal nor a crisis. It's just time to adjust priorities so we can continue to meet our responsibilities to the people of Virginia.
Over the years, I have seen attempts to force colleges and universities to change by cutting their budgets. I have seen attempts to encourage them to change by increasing their budgets. Neither has worked nor is likely to work in the future.
We need to reward continuous improvement, to make grants for new initiatives that are as carefully evaluated as grants for research from the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes for Health. This will require new approaches to funding colleges and universities and to supporting construction and renovation on their campuses. The Council of Higher Education is proposing to develop these approaches in conversation with institutional chiefs, the executive agencies and the General Assembly.
The colleges and universities of the past 50 years will not serve us well in the next 50. So they have to change. But let's be careful that we have a firm grip on the baby before we pull the plug.
\ Gordon K. Davies is director of the State Council of Higher Education of Virginia.
by CNB