THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 23, 1995 TAG: 9506220018
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
Education is the key that opens the door that leads to the good life - material and mental. With that key in hand, a young person from the humblest beginnings has a good chance to enter a world rich with rewards.
So it was disturbing to read in The Virginian-Pilot June 14 that Virginia four-year colleges, excluding the University of Virginia, have the second-highest in-state tuitions in the nation. (The annual study by the state of Washington did not count schools whose names begin with ``University of,'' since those schools are put in the separate category of major research universities.)
Annual in-state tuition at Virginia state schools studied averaged $3,841 last year, compared with $1,411 in North Carolina, the 46th most-expensive state.
The $2,430 more it costs to get a year of higher education in Virginia than North Carolina might be the difference that keeps many bright students out of college. There are scholarships, but not enough to go around, and their number could dwindle as the federal government shrinks.
Colleges are outstanding in both North Carolina and Virginia. The reason a public-college education costs a Virginia student so much more than a North Carolina student is that Virginia spends far less per student than North Carolina. In 1993-94, the most recent year for which figures are available, Virginia paid $3,389 a year in tax money toward an in-state college student's education, more than $2,000 less than North Carolina paid. (Those numbers, incidentally, are for two- and four-year colleges.)
Since 1990, Virginia state-college tuition has increased 44 percent, so an in-state student, who traditionally would pay 30 percent of his or her education costs, now pays about 37 percent of his or her education at a state two-year or four-year college. Out-of-state students in Virginia are paying a whopping 124 percent of education costs.
For the 1994-1996 biennium, Gov. George F. Allen has capped in-state tuition - but without increasing the state's contribution, putting universities in a financial squeeze. Thus, while an in-state student's tuition is guaranteed not to rise, the quality of the education could drop.
The story of the Washington study of tuitions ran in this paper the same day as two other stories that seemed related to it.
One told of a new study showing that from 1970 to 1990 the percentage increase in private-sector wages was six times greater in North Carolina than in Virginia. Adjusted for inflation, wages in Hampton Roads actually dropped 2.1 percent, compared with a 11.6 percent increase in Charlotte/Gastonia and a 11.9 percent increase in Raleigh/Durham.
The authors of the study concluded:
``Virginia needs to invest more in transportation and education, and reform the governance of its metropolitan areas if it's going to compete with North Carolina for high-paying jobs.''
The other story was about a German company executive complaining to Governor Allen, then touring Europe, that the company's plant in Virginia had to retrain workers because of deficiencies in the state's public-school system. More than 100 German-financed companies call Virginia home and provide more than 10,000 jobs here.
To state the obvious: Education matters, from kindergarten through college. The truth is, it matters till we die. Better never to stop learning.
Higher education took many hits under Gov. Doug Wilder, as the state endured a recession without raising taxes. Earlier this year, when Governor Allen proposed further college cuts in order to reduce taxes, three former Virginia governors, two of them Republicans, said don't do it; and the cuts were defeated.
There are no first-rate states with second-rate education systems. There are second-rate states with second-rate education systems.
We endanger our future when we care so much less than North Carolina about the ability of young people to obtain a college education. by CNB