ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 28, 1996 TAG: 9612300085
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: BRIEFLY PUT
* IF IT takes a village to raise a child, what does it take to raise a village? Oh, about $62,500 in federal grants.
That sum, actually, will help several communities in Southwest Virginia develop electronic villages with enhanced computer-based communications in the very near future.
An Appalachian Regional Commission grant for that amount was announced recently by 9th District Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon. Among the localities that will benefit are the counties of Pulaski, Craig, Buchanan, Tazewell and Wise, the town of Damascus and the city of Norton. These communities will be following Blacksburg, which established the region's first electronic village and one that has received national attention.
Boucher, one of the most communications-savvy members of Congress, has the ambitious goal of placing his largely rural district in the national forefront of information technology. He wants virtually every city, town and county in Southwest Virginia wired in.
Good goal - but can he get a federal grant to redraw Virginia maps? They may be needed to show where one electronic village ends and another begins.
* EDUCATORS and publishers have designed a standard questionnaire to better ensure that all colleges and universities use the same methods for computing the basic data from which various college-rating guides are compiled.
That's a commendable stride toward truth in labeling, but another caveat remains in order. In rating colleges, publishers use the yardsticks they think are important. The relative weight assigned each yardstick varies not only from publisher to publisher, but also from year to year for the same publisher.
For prospective students, the yardsticks that should count most in choosing a college are those most important to the students' preferences and goals.
LENGTH: Short : 41 linesby CNB