ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 5, 1996 TAG: 9604050093
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
GOV. GEORGE Allen's call for continuing the freeze on tuition at Virginia's public colleges and universities through the year 2000 is, in itself, neither a good nor a bad idea. It is, taken alone, an empty idea.
That's because the value of any product or service is not determined just by price. Value is, rather, an interplay of price and quality.
Without question, tuition levels in Virginia are high, among the highest in the country. Fifteen years ago, an in-state student attending a state college or university in Virginia paid about 30 percent of the cost of his or her education. Today, it is closer to 50 percent.
The increase did not occur because the colleges wanted to price themselves out of reach. It occurred because higher education took disproportionately big hits during Virginia's recession-induced budget-cutting in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Asking students and their families to pay a greater share of the costs of their education was deemed by state policy-makers preferable to raising taxes.
Big as they were, the tuition boosts were too small to entirely make up for the declines in state support. New and welcome efficiencies helped make up some of the difference; at some campuses, aggressive efforts to raise private money also helped. But some of the fiscal gap had to be offset by allowing product quality to decline.
The 1996 General Assembly agreed with the governor in approving a tuition freeze through 1998. This was done, however, in the fiscal context of restoring some of higher education's previously lost millioins of state dollars. Whether the restoration went far enough is debatable, but at least the principle was recognized: To maintain quality, and thus value, the money must come from somewhere.
Extend the tuition freeze to the year 2000? Maybe a good idea, maybe a bad one. Until there is also a consideration of the effect on quality, any judgment is premature.
LENGTH: Short : 42 linesby CNB