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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 26, 1995                   TAG: 9507260026
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

COUNCIL BLASTS EDUCATION CUTS

Virginia's colleges need $200 million more a year in state money to recover from repeated budget cuts, a statewide group of business leaders said Tuesday.

The newly formed Virginia Business Higher Education Council is pushing for nearly a 25 percent increase over current funding and said it will use the issue as a litmus test in this fall's General Assembly elections.

``Now is the time for commitment ... not after the election,'' said Northern Virginia developer and council chairman John T. Hazel Jr. ``It's time to hold candidates accountable.''

``I don't think $200 million [a year] is unrealistic, given the growth in the economy and the decline of higher education,'' said Ronald E. Carrier, president of James Madison University.

Hazel, joined by a number of college presidents and business executives at a news conference at the headquarters of Ethyl Corp. in Richmond, said Virginia must reconsider its priorities and stop cutting higher education money ``every time there's a need in the budget.''

Since 1990, the state's more than three dozen two- and four-year public colleges have seen their budgets slashed by nearly $500 million. The result has been back-to-back and often double-digit tuition increases.

Virginia ranks 42nd nationally in direct per-pupil state support for colleges. The state ranks second-highest in tuition for typical four-year public universities.

State-supported colleges are considering a two-year tuition freeze to make up for double-digit increases during the recession of the early 1990s, the State Council of Higher Education said Monday.

Without tuition increases, the General Assembly would have to find $48 million for each percent of growth in university spending.

Even with Republican Gov. George Allen's demand that the colleges limit tuition increases to 3 percent, or the cost-of-living adjustment, tuition at nearly every four-year college in Virginia now tops $4,000 a year.

The business council includes about three dozen corporate, banking and legal executives, including Richmond supermarket magnate James E. Ukrop, Bruce C. Gottwald of Ethyl Corp., Landmark Communications' Frank Batten and William W. Berry of Dominion Resources.

The business council, which has met with the governor's staff but not with Allen, is hoping to win over the administration by pushing the economic development benefits of Virginia's strong college system.

A recent council-commissioned survey found 71 percent of Virginians believe quality higher education is very important to the state's economic future.

And in a statewide study of the colleges' economic impact on their localities, the council said 55,494 outside jobs are generated by the schools. Moreover, the colleges created more than $3.3 billion in economic activity - from staff wages to student spending - in fiscal 1994.

Hazel specifically called for reconsideration of ``the huge sums'' being spent on the state's prison system, a key Allen initiative. Hazel said ``the negativisms of corrections'' must give way to substantial increases in higher education spending.

``The priorities have to be reconsidered,'' said Hazel, the dominant force behind the business council. ``There's been a financial withdrawal of state funds for higher education. We're a system that's suffering.''

by CNB