
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, September 9, 1995                   TAG: 9509110069
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FACULTY FLIGHT FROM VIRGINIA

WHEN BIG budget cuts first hit Virginia's colleges and universities in the late '80s, they were widely regarded as a regrettable but temporarily necessary move in the face of serious revenue shortfalls.

As the state's fiscal crunch lingered into the early '90s, and the continued slashing of higher-education funding seemed to incur little public opposition, the situation was regarded by many as a difficult but timely opportunity for the colleges and universities to re-examine how they do business and to restructure themselves into more efficient organizations.

Now, the recession a memory, the low priority given higher education by Virginia's budgeteers evidently has become institutionalized - and the long-term harm to the quality of the system is starting to get noticeable.

Noticeable for some time, of course, have been the boosts in tuition rates. In some instances, it is less expensive for a Virginian to attend a public college or university elsewhere at out-of-state prices than to attend a Virginia college or university at in-state prices. The impact on access to Virginia higher education for students from less-than-affluent families is already appreciable.

Even steeper increases in Virginia's rates for out-of-state students, sometimes to more than the cost of their education, may well be eroding the commonwealth's traditional status as a net importer of students. Virginia may be losing its power as a magnet for bright young people from other states - who frequently stayed after graduation as productive adults contributing to the economic, social and cultural life of the commonwealth.

Now come reports - most recently from Virginia Tech President Paul Torgersen, speaking Wednesday in Roanoke to a state high-tech advisory agency - that predictions of a decline in faculty quality are starting to pan out. Top faculty, Torgersen said, are beginning to leave for greener pastures: the kind of researchers able to attract grants to support not only their own but also other faculty positions, the kind of faculty on which national prominence is built.

It's hard to hold them down on the Blacksburg farm when in five years you drop from 11th to 17th in faculty pay among 20 peer institutions - as has happened, Torgersen said, at Tech. Or when North Carolina's per-student support of higher education outstrips Virginia's by two-thirds. Or when Virginia is authorizing a 1.5 percent salary raise and another school is offering a 30 percent raise to move - as Tracy Wilkins, the director of Tech's new biotechnology center, said happened to him. (Wilkins stayed at Tech, he said, only because he had started two businesses in the university's corporate research center.)

Virginia's higher-education hole is dug a little deeper each day. The deeper it is dug, the harder the climb out will be.

by CNB