THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 9, 1994 TAG: 9411090305
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
State education officials on Tuesday rejected restructuring plans of six universities, including Norfolk State and Christopher Newport, leaving them open to budget cuts of up to 6 percent next fall.
That would be the toughest penalty yet in the state's mounting campaign to make colleges more efficient. For Norfolk State, the loss would amount to $1.2 million a year. CNU stands to lose $670,000 a year.
``It would be a disaster for us,'' NSU President Harrison B. Wilson said Tuesday. ``The bottom line is, we'd have massive layoffs.''
The State Council of Higher Education, while rejecting the plans, said the six schools were making great strides in improving them. As a result, the council recommended that Gov. George F. Allen rescind the cuts if the plans are approved later in the school year.
However, state Education Secretary Beverly Sgro said that the schools might still lose the money for failing to meet Tuesday's deadline.
``From the governor's viewpoint, he did make it clear that he wants to hold the institutions accountable,'' she said. ``He wants to hold them subject to the cuts.''
She said Allen has not yet decided what action he will take. He is to release his proposed 1995-96 budget for Virginia in late December.
Colleges already have lost more than 20 percent in state aid since 1990. But legislators have complained that the schools resist streamlining their operations, and the General Assembly passed a law earlier this year requiring the restructuring plans.
The other schools whose plans were rejected were Longwood College, Mary Washington College, Radford University and Virginia State University.
Gordon K. Davies, director of the council, said all six plans had ``good elements in them and several strengths . . . but lacked the specificity and cohesiveness that was necessary to make them fully acceptable.''
For instance, Norfolk State has not specified the amount it has saved from various cost-cutting measures and must work harder to raise its graduation rate, the lowest among state-supported universities, said Donald J. Finley, associate council director.
When Davies began prodding colleges to economize in the early '90s, administrators and professors from the largest schools - such as the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech - vowed to resist the pressure. But none of them was among the universities whose plans were rejected Tuesday.
That, Davies said, is because research universities have been under the most pressure in the '90s, from the public and media, to increase efficiency. ``As a result,'' he said, ``they're simply ahead'' of the smaller schools.
Other educators have complained privately that the smaller colleges' plans were generally no worse than those of the doctoral-granting schools. But they say that Allen, in his zeal to trim bureaucracy, was looking to make some examples of colleges and couldn't offend schools like U.Va. or Virginia Military Institute, which have strong support in the legislature.
Wilson declined to comment, but he said NSU has been streamlining since the first cuts.
``We were cutting faculty and putting programs and departments together,'' he said. ``Maybe we haven't put it in a very clear way.''
In another action, the council approved a 2.25 percent raise for Davies, increasing his salary to $111,296 a year. It also gave him a bonus of more than $5,000 next year for his work in pushing for college restructuring. by CNB