Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 2, 1994                   TAG: 9410030021
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JEFF DEBELL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ACADEMIA MEANS MONEY - AND LOTS OF IT

COLLEGES and universities are involved in economic development to the tips of their ivy-covered towers.

They are potent economic engines in their own right, responsible for big payrolls and millions of dollars of other spending in their communities. In the New River-Roanoke Valley region alone, economic impact studies show, higher education is a billion-dollar annual industry.

Colleges and universities enhance the workforce. They add a cultural dimension to the quality of life.

As research centers and repositories of information - a golden commodity of the burgeoning global economy - they attract business and industry .

"I have never in my mind been able to divorce economic development from higher education," said Anne Moore Pratt of the Virginia Council of Higher Education.

State universities are particularly attractive to business and industry, especially if the schools are prominent research centers like Virginia Tech. As a Tech business professor pointed out, research universities are in a class with the tourist industry when it comes to bringing in money.

Although it can be argued that the Roanoke Valley has a state university because Tech is only a few miles away, the fact is that no public four-year residential campus is physically situated in the valley. In fact, the only way to get a public baccalaureate degree in the valley is by interactive video.

Most U.S. communities the valley's size have a public university. Not surprisingly, there are calls for one in the valley. Some want a university for its educational benefits, some for its economic value.

It isn't likely to happen anytime soon - at least not in the sense of a traditional bricks and mortar campus. It's too expensive, for one thing. But there are alternatives - new educational delivery systems - and they are being examined. Greater use of interactive video is one of them.

In the meantime, Tech and the region's other schools continue as integral players in economic development - educating the work force, training and retraining employees (particularly at the community colleges) and, in the case of Tech's Corporate Research Center and related enterprises, providing space and start-up assistance for new companies.