DATE: Friday, April 11, 1997                TAG: 9704110581

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   55 lines

USING NEW METHOD, STATE CUTS COLLEGE ENROLLMENT ESTIMATE 9%

Using a new system for projecting college enrollments, the state announced Thursday that the estimated number of students who will attend Virginia's state-supported four-year colleges in the year 2001-2 has dropped 9 percent.

Preliminary estimates now show 180,214 students will be at the schools, state Secretary of Education Beverly H. Sgro said. In the last estimate, in 1995, the State Council of Higher Education predicted 197,931 students.

Sgro said it's important because the projections are among the factors that determine college funding.

The issue of enrollment projections became a political hot potato last fall when members of the state council, appointed by Gov. George F. Allen, challenged the accuracy of the council staff's estimates.

The members of the council - whose staff acts independently of the governor and secretary of education - enlisted a review of the numbers by another state agency under Allen's control, the Department of Planning and Budget.

The budget office found that the numbers were seriously off-target. But legislators virtually dismissed the concerns. Supporters of the state council's director, Gordon K. Davies, complained that the issue was a thinly veiled attempt by Allen to discredit Davies.

Still, the members of the council last fall approved a new method of estimating enrollment in which the council and budget department work together. Sgro announced - in a press release - the preliminary results of their first effort.

``It looks like the process that (they) have agreed to is working very well,'' Sgro said. ``. . .I am pleased that we were able to arrive at a more accurate picture of our future needs in higher education, so that responsible budgetary decisions can be made.''

Davies was out of town Thursday afternoon. J. Michael Mullen, deputy director of the state council, minimized the importance of the revision. ``This is part of an ongoing process,'' he said. ``The nature of projections is they change when you get more data.''

Between 1992 and 1995, before the methods for projections were changed, the council had already downgraded its 2001-2 estimate by about 45,000 students, he said.

Sgro's press release also stated that preliminary estimates for enrollment in the year 2001 at both public four-year and community colleges total 305,754 students. That's down 17 percent from the state council's last estimate of that figure (368,282), done in 1992.

But Mullen said most of that error was caught by 1995. ``I think it's old news,'' he said, ``because the large part of this adjustment was identified two years ago.''

The state does not usually issue press releases on enrollment estimates, preliminary or final. Sgro said it was not meant to criticize the state council or Davies, who has had a strained relationship with Allen. ``It's not pointing fingers at anybody,'' she said. ``It's just an update to the public on where we are on this.'' KEYWORDS: COLLEGES UNIVERSITY ENROLLMENT VIRGINIA

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