Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 23, 1994 TAG: 9402240021
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Higher education's first increase in general-fund appropriations since '89 won't come close to catching up to the level of a half-decade ago. But where the 1994-96 budget proposed by outgoing Gov. Doug Wilder would have reduced higher-education spending by another $15 million, new Gov. George Allen recommended a modest increase of $8 million, or $23 million more than Wilder's recommendation. To that, the Senate Finance and House Appropriations committees have added $25 million more in their respective versions of the budget.
Credit the new governor and the legislators with putting a halt to a destructive trend.
The commonwealth's leaders, at last, appear to recognize that a strong system of higher education is something more than an embellishment, that it is a key ingredient for economic growth and a prime determinant of what Virginia's future will be like.
Gerald Baliles, the former governor and current chairman of the Southern Regional Education Board's Comission for Educational Quality, is right: Higher-education appropriations, he told legislators this week, should reflect considered policy decisions and not simply what's left after paying the skyrocketing tab for prisons and Medicaid.
Also credit state leaders with putting a brake on runaway tuition increases - which, in Allen's case, represents the fulfillment of a campaign pledge.
Virginia's colleges and universities have in part responded to the state's cutbacks by becoming more efficient - an essential task on which much work remains. But they were also forced to respond to the disproportionately severe reductions by imposing double-digit tuition increases. The increases have been only partially offset by increases in student financial-aid money.
In the House, the Appropriations Committee's budget bill provides funds so that tuition increases can be limited to 3 percent in each of the next two fiscal years. In the Senate, the Finance Committee has set a tuition-increase limit of 3 percent in the first year and 3.1 percent in the second.
This is good news for parents whose children are attending state schools or soon will be. It is also good news for Virginia.
By 1993, as a result of the tuition jumps of recent years, this state enjoyed the dubious distinction of having the second-highest undergraduate tuition in the nation for state-supported schools.
On the surface, this reflects the underlying strength of Virginia's system of higher education: Students still want to attend, despite the relatively high tuition. But below the surface, long-term inefficiencies are being introduced.
Young people who for financial reasons alone must forgo college educations altogether - settling instead for lower-skill, lower-paying jobs - are only the most obvious, and perhaps least numerous, example.
Subtler examples include the student who for financial reasons must take six or eight years to get what otherwise would be a four-year education. Or the young person who must settle for a commuting-distance institution even though it doesn't have the program for which he or she is best-suited. Or the older worker with a family who can't afford to go back to school to retool. Or the out-of-state student who, if not priced out of the market, could come to Virginia for college and stay after graduation as a productive contributor to the commonwealth's economic life.
Allen and state lawmakers can't claim to have broken out of Virginia's higher-education box. But they seem ready to start the climb out.
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1994
by CNB