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

DATE: FRIDAY, March 24, 1995                   TAG: 9503240091
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HIGHER ED

FOR SOME time, friends of Virginia's colleges and universities - educators themselves; people like former Govs. Gerald Baliles, Mills Godwin and Linwood Holton; this editorial page - have been pointing out how dramatically the commonwealth has slipped in its support of higher education.

Sure, times have been tight in a lot of places - but other states haven't retreated so far so fast. Sure, colleges and universities must respond to changing conditions, and continually seek ways to improve how and what they do - as most in Virginia seem to be trying to do.

Since the late '80s, such folks have been noting, taxpayer per-student support has steadily dropped. Despite the fact Virginia is not - yet - a poor state, they (and we) have been saying, the Old Dominion has plunged to 43rd in the nation in state per-student support of its colleges and universities.

Ah, but let's plug in updated data, for the 1993-94 academic year, and leave out those tax-and-spend states up Nawth. Things look different for Virginia.

They look, if anything, worse.

This past year, according to figures from the Southern Regional Education Board and reported by Virginia Tech's Office of Institutional Research and Planning Analysis, the only SREB states that provided less in public operating funds per student than Virginia's $3,357 were Louisiana ($3,301) and West Virginia ($3,286).

From 1989-90 through 1993-94, Virginia's per-student funding dropped from 91 percent to 78 percent of the regional average. During that period, five states - Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Oklahoma - moved ahead of VIrginia. If inflation is taken into account, per-student support in Mississippi and Alabama actually declined in that period. But they moved ahead of Virginia anyway, because the decline here (13.5 percent before inflation) was so big.

Maryland and North Carolina, which with West Virginia share the bulk of Virginia's border, ranked ahead of Virginia in 1989-90 and had pulled even farther ahead in 1993-94; indeed, North Carolina now spends more per student than any other SREB state.

The link between economic strength and higher-education quality is well-documented. States in the region with which Virginia's higher-education spending now compares - Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia - have traditionally been among the poorest in America. That's an attribute to be avoided, not sought after.

by CNB