ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 5, 1996 TAG: 9612050068
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: RAY L. GARLAND
SOURCE: RAY L. GARLAND
WERE LENIN alive today, he might think education is the opiate of the people. And because education in America is financed mainly by taxpayers, it becomes an acute political issue.
In Virginia, there are approximately 250,000 people directly employed in education - the vast majority in public institutions. It would be interesting to know how they vote. Judging by letters to newspapers from people identifying themselves as educators, it seems most are now Democrats. Certainly, candidates endorsed by the Virginia Education Association are overwhelmingly of that persuasion.
We might go so far as to compare the growth of Virginia Tech with election returns in Montgomery County, where it now has a dominant presence. Once one of the most reliably Republican of all Virginia localities - carried even by Gov. Alf Landon against Franklin Roosevelt in FDR's 1936 landslide - Montgomery County is now mainly in the Democratic column. In fact, among cities with a strong state-college presence, only Harrisonburg wasn't carried by President Clinton, though other factors might account for much of that.
Gov. George Allen is by no means a poster boy for Virginia educators, and Democrats led by Lt. Gov. Don Beyer mean to ride the education horse to victory next year. The probable Republican candidate for governor, Attorney General Jim Gilmore, will likely distance himself a bit from Allen's strongly conservative stance on education issues. He will be wise to do so.
From 1985 to 1990, taxpayer support for higher education in Virginia grew from $690 million to just over $1 billion. When the recession hit under Gov. Douglas Wilder, that dropped about 10 percent. But the schools made up for most of that by raising tuition. From 1990 to 1994, according to The Richmond Times-Dispatch, tuition charges at state colleges rose nearly 50 percent.
Allen seized on that in his 1993 campaign, promising to hold tuition increases to no more than the rate of inflation, and he has made good on his promise. He also demanded a restructuring of college operations to cut costs, and exhorted the State Council of Higher Education to be more relentless in forcing the pace of reform. Last year, the council said colleges are saving $93 million a year as a result.
Higher education in Virginia is a mixture of rich and famous schools with powerful alumni and others that must struggle for a place in the sun. But even the poorest college has its claque of boosters. All are officially governed by boards appointed by the governor. In reality, every governor faces a nexus of alumni and other interested parties promoting reliable and deserving people for seats on these boards: Cheerleaders, not boat-rockers, need apply.
The cozy relationship that usually develops between board members and administrators is not the best environment for oversight. The General Assembly recognized that years ago when it created the State Council of Higher Education. The idea was to have the council's professional staff review funding requests from colleges and advise the governor and the legislature as to their reasonableness. While given no power to intervene in the actual operations of the colleges, it was hoped the council's standing with legislators would induce college administrators to take heed.
To insulate the professional staff from political pressures, the director works for the appointed members of the council and not the governor or the legislature. A governor could get rid of an irksome director only by influencing his appointees on the council to do so. On the surface, it seems a good system. But it will work as intended only when council members are zealous and the professional staff doesn't get in bed with the college administrators.
Allen, apparently, felt the council wasn't functioning as desired and tried, in 1995, to place its oversight function under the governor's office. But that idea never stood a chance with legislators.
The action then moved inside the council itself, where Allen appointees are now in firm control and starting to shake up the system. The new chair, Elizabeth McClanahan, has established a new system of subcommittees to more closely monitor the agency's work.
One bone of contention was the staff's estimate of future enrollment growth. Director Gordon Davies has warned for some time the state was facing a huge influx of new students. Such projections are a main business of the council and a question upon which a great deal of money rests. That influx now seems to be delayed a bit, and some are saying the estimates erred considerably on the high side.
A majority of the council recently defied Davies by voting to involve the Department of Planning and Budget in making enrollment projections. But when the issue was raised recently before a panel of influential legislators, the prevailing sentiment seemed to side with Davies. In fact, it is almost always good politics to give the colleges as much or more than the state can spare - regardless of need or efficiency of operations.
But something seems clearly amiss in the rapid increase in college costs the past 20 years. The General Accounting Office recently said that from 1981 to 1995, average college tuition rose 234 percent. A good deal of that was met by federal grants and loans, which may also be serving to drive costs as high as the market will bear. The U.S. Department of Education reported that in 1994 students borrowed almost $25 billion - up from less than $10 billion as recently as 1987!
Virginia is now near the bottom in that share of college costs met by taxpayer subsidies. In the current two-year budget, state colleges expect to spend $6.7 billion. But only a third of that will come from the state's general fund. Federal funds and student fees will supply most of the rest. The colleges will be expecting a generous helping from the estimated $300 million surplus likely to be available to the '97 assembly. In a nation based on popular sovereignty, there must be a college degree for everybody who wants one.
Ray L. Garland is a Roanoke Times columnist.
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