THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 29, 1994 TAG: 9412280013
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By GERALD L. BALILES
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
Excerpts from former Virginia Gov. Gerald L. Baliles' Dec. 18 address before the commencement ceremony for the December 1994 graduating class of Old Dominion University.
There are problems on the horizon, occasioned by the priorities being set for Virginia and by an apparent lack of public will to invest in the future of the commonwealth.
What people value, they will support financially. That bodes ill for higher education, no matter how the spin doctors try to interpret what is going on in Virginia today.
Consider this: Virginia has lost 42 percent of its higher-education funding per student over the past 16 years. We once appropriated more than $12 of state funds per $1,000 of personal income. This year, we appropriated less than $7. Virginia seems to be walking away from its commitment to strong colleges and universities.
Here's where I think we stand:
1. Students and their parents - the families of Virginia - have done their part. Tuition has risen dramatically over the past five years until we have reached the point where more money for instructional programs comes from students and parents - from families - than from state government.
2. Our colleges and universities are doing their part. They are involved in the difficult task called ``restructuring'' by the people who make up such names. Like ODU, institutions across Virginia are finding ways to shift money for administration to teaching, to use technology to teach more students, to help students move through more quickly, and to respond directly to what employers and students say they need.
3. The major, unanswered questions is whether the third partner - state government - will do its job. We've been through four tough years in which higher education has slipped precariously. Funding per student has dropped by one-third since 1990.
We may have hit bottom and leveled off, but now we have to decide how to absorb thousands of more students. Will the state help? Or will other priorities push investment in higher education - investment in ``know-how'' and intelligence - completely off the radar screen? Will new enrollment be supported by whatever tuition institutions can collect from the newcomers?
These are crucially important questions. I serve as chairman of a commission on education quality of the Southern Regional Education Board, a compact of 15 Southern states. For more than a year we have been seeking insight into the troubling trend of state disinvestment in higher education.
Consider this: Virginia ranks 43rd - just barely ahead of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi - in its per-student funding of colleges and universities. Only six years ago we ranked 28th!
Here is what the commission wrote: ``We want to persuade citizens, their elected representatives, educators and, indeed, all who have a stake in our region's well-being that higher education is essential and that it is at risk.''
Without higher education, the smart work force is just a dream.
Good government spends its money in two ways: to protect its citizens and to invest in the future.
We want to be protected, to the extent possible, from crime and disease, from natural disasters and industrial hazards. These are legitimate citizen demands to which government should respond.
But we also want government to invest in the future, to ensure that our generation leaves Virginia better and stronger for our children and their children.
There is a phrase in engineering that describes what I fear is happening to our colleges and universities today. ``Elegant degradation,'' is what happens to machines that are subject to constant, repetitive stress. The machine continues to look the same while it is slowly becoming weaker and weaker. Finally, unable to withstand the stress, it breaks down.
Our institutions of higher education can become more efficient and effective; they are doing so. Our citizens can be asked, as you have been asked, to pay a great share of the costs of your education.
But there comes a point where they're not cutting fat; they're cutting muscle and bone. And there comes a point where the families of Virginia cannot bear the burden of what it costs to be college-educated.
We're on the slippery slope of ``elegant degradation.'' Whether Virginia's leaders have the wisdom and the will to change remains to be seen in the months head. by CNB