Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 6, 1995 TAG: 9508080006
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALAN SORENSEN EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Remember that? After years of planning, with administration and faculty in place and students signing up for the fall, the college was murdered in its cradle by Gov. George Allen. The General Assembly went along, after Radford's Board of Visitors caved in.
I don't know a lot about the school. I understand it was to have been a newfangled, interdisciplinary thing. It would have focused on skills valued in the global marketplace, including fluency in other languages and cultures and communications technology.
A half-hearted effort is under way to incorporate some of the concepts (and funding) into Radford's traditional offerings. But the New College of Global Studies is dead.
I asked Fitzpatrick whether he believes regional leadership, as called for in the New Century Council's recently released proposals, might have made a difference had it been around earlier this year to defend the college.
You better believe it, he said.
I do.
In retrospect, the college's demise seems a case study in our region's need to get its act together. The episode reveals, if not an entirely bare leadership-capacity cupboard, at least some appalling shortages. The most notable deficits are in the Roanoke and New River valleys':
Political clout. House Majority Leader Dick Cranwell and his colleagues from Western Virginia do what they can. But demography is political destiny, and citizens in increasing numbers live in other parts of the state. It speaks volumes that, while the New College at Radford was being axed, a university in urban Northern Virginia was confidently announcing its own version of a new school, similar in concept, called "New Century College."
Self-esteem. This matters to regions as well as to people. Forgive the pop psychology, but would we have rolled over and watched George Mason University appropriate our New College concept and funding had we not secretly believed we did not deserve them?
Appreciation of higher ed. In addition to being a place for instruction and research, a university is a vital civic and cultural presence, and a powerful engine for economic development. Underappreciation of higher education's economic role is grossest with respect to Virginia Tech. But it's also fair to suggest that our region failed to fight for the New College in part because it was regarded as an academic initiative. While it was that, and was important as that, it was also something more. The New College would have offered a distinction - a draw, a selling point, an edge, a sign of international with-it-ness - helping just a bit to set our region apart in a global competition for high-paying jobs.
Openness to change. Ambivalence about change is to be expected, but change happens in any case, whether by active innovation or passive decline. Last January on these pages, three Radford professors who apparently felt threatened by the New College wrote to support Allen's decision. (Yes, we have met the enemy.) They repeated state officials' accusation that the program lacked "rigorous academic focus." In fact, the college was already attracting highly motivated students - some of whom, it was reported, were prepared to turn down offers from prestigious institutions. In any event, the college would have been a laboratory for change, open to new ways of building new competencies. Academics shouldn't imagine that defending the status quo is risk-free.
Economic strategy. The New College also lacked the defense it deserved because it wasn't seen as part of a regional strategy for achieving international competitiveness. This is not surprising; there was no strategy for it to be part of. Yet any conceivable game plan worth a whit could not fail to take into account our export potential. As it is, the Blue Ridge region accounts for almost half of Virginia's manufacturing exports. Meredith Strohm, provost of the defunct global-studies college, had worked tirelessly to set up student mentorships with Southwest Virginia businesses, including 300 with international ties.
Competitive skills. Our region produces lots of workers who are good at making things. Less plentiful are workers skilled at making deals - recognizing opportunities, bringing people together into collaborations (often across cultural divides), and making connections with entrepreneurs outside the region and the nation. As long as the supply of these skills remains inadequate here, people with high levels of other skills will need to go elsewhere to make connections.
Asset protection. We take for granted our region's special assets at their and our peril. Mountain ridgetops won't remain forever scenic if subdividers are allowed to swarm all over them. Nor can we sustain, without a fight, the breadth and quality of our region's educational assets. Based on prevailing political preoccupations, you'd never guess that Western Virginia has 6 percent of the state's population and 20 percent of its college students.
Regional coherence. Many Roanoke Valley residents probably did not regard the fate of Radford's new college as linked to their own or their children's. This isn't surprising. Local politicians, boasting a generally poor record on regional cooperation, have done an even worse job communicating to constituents an emerging fact of life: that communities across the Roanoke and New River valleys share an economic region and destiny.
Regional leadership. Where was it when the New College was threatened? It didn't exist. The region's diminishing statewide clout underscores the need to look to ourselves to manage our future. That's what we should want anyway.
Fitzpatrick suggests that, had we decided we wanted it badly enough, money could have been raised within the region to assure the New College's opening. This happened with the Hotel Roanoke. For the most part, though, we've lacked a sustainable framework for regional leadership and initiatives.
Will the New Century Council provide it? Not by itself, Fitzpatrick is the first to acknowledge. But the group's effort, generating 150 ideas for a 20-year strategy, certainly contains germs of regional leadership. The trick now is to get something done.
How's this for one measure of success: A year or two from now, if a proposal like Gov. Allen's to smother the global-studies college were to come down the pike, it would meet a vigorous civic response mobilized regionwide to defend our future.
by CNB