THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 7, 1996 TAG: 9601070070
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 134 lines
College officials say more money for faculty raises will be the top item on their wish lists as legislators begin wrestling with the state's budget this week.
``It's an issue that has to be addressed,'' said Samuel E. Jones, vice president for planning and budget at the College of William and Mary. ``It has to be the state's top priority'' for higher education.
Gov. George F. Allen has proposed a 4.2 percent bonus, but no pay raise, for all state workers in December and an average increase of 5 percent for professors in 1997.
That's the best offer they've gotten in the 1990s, and Allen officials say it's a good start to make Virginia's colleges competitive again in the job market. But college officials say it's not good enough if they want to continue attracting the best and brightest professors - and keeping them.
``We are very lucky in Virginia to have an incredibly fine set of institutions of higher education,'' said Daniel J. Larson, chairman of the Faculty Senate and of the physics department at the University of Virginia. ``I just think we're at a point where we need to invest a little more in these institutions to preserve and improve them. We don't want to lose what took several years to build up.''
Some schools are already reporting faculty departures.
``We're starting to see the fact that eminent scholars and other very good up-and-coming scholars are starting to move'' elsewhere, Jones of W & M said. ``We've lost people to Indiana University; we've lost people to Columbia and to the University of Dayton.''
State education officials say they don't have numbers tracking faculty migration. But at a budget hearing Wednesday, Arthur A. Diamonstein, rector of Old Dominion University's board, told legislators: ``ODU has lost 25 faculty members to higher salaries in other states'' within the last year and a half. ``That is dangerous.''
At Virginia Tech, at least 40 of the professors who left within the last two years said they were disenchanted with their salaries or the state's commitment to colleges, spokesman Larry Hincker said. ``There was a feeling among the deans that the number was considerably higher than previous years.''
In the mid-'80s, when budgets were robust, Virginia offered big raises to lift faculty pay at Virginia colleges to the 60th percentile of their peer groups. That meant that the average salaries at the state colleges were higher than 60 percent of those at similar institutions.
But as the state cut college funding in the '90s, the annual raises decreased, ranging from nothing to 3.6 percent. Most Virginia colleges have since sunk to the 30th percentile, or the bottom third among similar schools.
A report issued by the State Council of Higher Education in November showed, for instance, that William and Mary ranked 15th among 20 similar colleges in faculty pay in 1994-95. With a $53,680 average, W & M lagged behind the University of Delaware ($58,300) and the State University of New York at Binghamton ($57,200), among others.
Norfolk State University ranked 17th of 25 colleges, with a $43,800 average. ODU was 16th in its group, at $48,080.
As of 1994, the last year national data are available, Virginia's $49,134 average was still slightly higher than the nation's $48,200. But in 1990, Virginia's average was $4,000 higher.
The Virginia colleges fall to the bottom halves of their peer groups, state officials said, was because the peer rankings weed out lower-quality colleges, which are included in the national average.
At U.Va., bigger raises are also a top priority. ``It's like deferred maintenance of a building,'' Executive Vice President Leonard W. Sandridge Jr. said. ``Deferred attention to salary increases means you have to give greater attention to the problem in the future.''
State Education Secretary Beverly H. Sgro said: ``We did exactly as Gov. Allen said he wanted to do; we have put significant amounts of money into education. We have been very careful in putting those moneys into the priorities we feel are most important.
``We are certainly addressing the issue of faculty salaries in the second year. We were not able to address it in the first year of the biennium.''
The State Council of Higher Education last year recommended annual increases of 4 percent to 6 percent in 1996 and 1997. Including the bonus, Allen's proposal would fall within that range.
But Jones, from William and Mary, said, ``When you start looking at the competitiveness issue, bonuses don't really play a role. They don't build into the ongoing base salary that you're paying. When people consider coming to teach at William and Mary, they're looking at what's the core salary.''
The college has already felt the effects of stagnant salaries when hiring professors, he said. W & M used to sign on virtually all its first choices for jobs, Jones said. Now, roughly half go elsewhere.
Faculty members hired by W & M are ``very good people, but they're still not the first choice you had,'' Jones said. ``Over time, you have to be concerned with that.''
The campaign for salary increases reflects a philosophical shift in the state's budgeting this year.
Previously, Allen and former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder pushed for a series of budget cuts, which colleges fought to reduce. This year, Allen is proposing a $475 million increase in aid to colleges over the next two years. But educators say that figure overestimates the amount of new money they'll be getting. About $210 million - or nearly half - comes from savings due to ``restructuring'' and a statewide buyout program that the colleges say they'd already been told they could keep.
Among other items local colleges will be seeking:
Launching TCC-Norfolk. Last year, Allen proposed eliminating state approval for the Tidewater Community College campus under construction in Norfolk. This year, its survival is not at issue, but Allen hasn't included any money for operating expenses. TCC had sought $5 million over the next two years, said Arnold R. Oliver, chancellor of the state's community college system.
``If we don't receive funding, TCC will have to establish new positions out of its existing budget, which will be a tremendous strain,'' Oliver said. ``It's not something we would want to do except under the most extreme circumstances.''
But Oliver said, with or without start-up funds from the state, the campus is expected to open in January 1997.
Bringing NSU up to speed. Norfolk State is seeking nearly $4 million to boost its funding, which lags behind that of most schools. State figures show that Norfolk State gets $2,744 per student, far less than the $4,000 average for state-supported four-year colleges. Only two get less than NSU - James Madison and Mary Washington.
``The disparity in funding seems to be increasing,'' William E. Ward, a Norfolk State history professor and the mayor of Chesapeake, said at the budget hearing Wednesday. ``I would urge you to look at funds for this university, which provides hope to many young boys and girls across the commonwealth.''
James P. Brown, another NSU history professor, told the legislators that he is teaching 250 students a semester, up from 100 in the 1970s.
``It seems,'' he said, ``that Norfolk State University is expected to do more and more with less and less.'' MEMO: Allen's proposal
4.2 percent bonus in December, but no pay raise.
5 percent pay raise in 1997.
Related story about public school teachers worrying the that 1996-98
budget will shortchange them, on page A7.
KEYWORDS: SALARIES VIRGINIA COLLEGES VIRGINIA UNIVERSITIES by CNB