Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 30, 1995 TAG: 9505020015
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ELIZABETH OBENSHAIN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Tech is the engine that powers this valley's economy. When budget cutbacks or staff buyouts hit the campus, they also roll off into the surrounding community, sending ripples through everything from home sales to restaurant revenues.
And it's not just the New River Valley that now turns to Virginia Tech with hopes for economic development and leadership. With the disappearance of Norfolk and Western and Dominion Bank, Virginia Tech has also become the civic and cultural deep pockets that Western Virginia turns to when a Hotel Roanoke or Christiansburg Institute needs a white knight.
The region should survive this short-term bump, but today's problems raise worries about whether Tech will flourish or whether state budget constraints will begin to erode its state and national stature.
One small example of the university's national stature is a recent survey that found Tech ranked fifth in the nation among universities without medical colleges in the number of patents issued in 1994. Those patents ranged from anti-cancer compounds to technology to clean contaminated water and soil.
Yet after five years of budget cuts, the worry is that whatever fat the university once had is gone and that the trimming now is affecting the integral quality of Tech's academic and research programs.
Part of Tech's solution to the latest bit of budget bad news is a 5 percent cut for all departments - probably the most politically palatable method of balancing the budget shortfall. The budget decisions in the future may be more more politically charged on campus.
To protect its strengths in high-profile departments such as engineering, which have helped build this university's reputation nationwide, Tech may have to make tough decisions on which programs and academic departments will and won't survive.
The university is in a complex budget struggle - on the one hand it is joined with the state's other universities in coping with across-the-board cuts to all the public colleges and universities.
But the tightness of state dollars is also sure to exacerbate the competition among the state's universities. Virginia Tech will be struggling - however politely - to retain its funding and programs against universities in the heart of Virginia's growing urban centers. Its political budget battles come at a time Western Virginia is seeing its legislative clout ooze away toward Northern Virginia and the Tidewater Crescent.
Virginia Commonwealth University won funding to start a new engineering college - a program that will compete with Tech's long established and highly respected engineering college. Neighboring Radford University saw its College of Global Studies slapped down as George Mason in Northern Virginia confidently announced its own version - with both concept and name (New Century College) remarkably similar to Western Virginia initiatives.
There are some positives in this belt-tightening. Tech and Radford both are becoming more "customer-focused" as we'd say in the real world. Tech issued a pledge to parents to hold down tuition increases and to guarantee the quality of classroom instruction. Radford University representatives recently went into a local industry to talk face-to-face with local workers and recruit them as students for their adult degree programs.
But the continuing drumbeat of bad news and budget cutting for higher education in Virginia is ominous.
At a time when our world is becoming increasingly competitive, when Motorolas come looking for an educated work force with sophisticated engineering skills, why are we making it harder for our children to attend college?
Countries such as Great Britain have found themselves at a tremendous competitive disadvantage because they offered higher education to only a fraction of their populace. How can a state or nation compete when it intellectually disarms its work force?
Nationwide, we've seen a decline in political support for higher education. "The sad fact is that public higher education remains quite low on the list of priorities," said Daniel Hamermesh, a Texas professor who conducted a recent salary survey for the American Association of University Professors.
Who will fight for higher education in Virginia? The universities themselves have the primary responsibility for making their case with the average taxpayer - ensuring that the experience their children have on campus is positive, that the way they spend taxpayers' money is thoughtful and well understood.
This year, it was some of the state's wealthiest business leaders and developers who stepped forward, together with a phalanx of former governors, to speak out for the public universities before the General Assembly.
But Western Virginia will also have to elect local legislators with the political savvy and powerful alliances to preserve funding for Virginia Tech. These legislators will decide how hard to fight by what they hear at home from us, the voters.
For us, it's not just a matter of whether we will be able to afford to send our own children to Virginia Tech in the future; it's also a matter of what our valley's economy will look like once these children graduate.
A university with nationally ranked engineering and biotechnology programs, whose research professors help lure national industries to our region, would be an engine that would power a future for this valley.
The university of Blacksburg, however, with diminished dollars, with a dispirited faculty leaving for better-funded research positions, with key programs duplicated at the state's other universities, would spell a different future for all of Western Virginia.
Elizabeth Obenshain is the Roanoke Times & World-News' New River editor.
by CNB