THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 7, 1996 TAG: 9602070009
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
A fearsome squeeze has been put on Virginia's public colleges and universities over the past five years. According to several reliable measures, Norfolk State has fared the worst.
Between the 1989-90 school years and today, Norfolk State has seen its state funding shrink by 20.5 percent. No other state-supported four-year college has endured deeper cuts. In absolute numbers, its $2,815 per student is on the bottom rung and compares poorly with $3,440 for Old Dominion, for instance.
Norfolk State has had to put up with more than its share of difficulties. As a historically black school, it began behind in terms of infrastructure and funding and has had to play catchup for years.
The shift from reliance on state funding to tuition has hit the clientele that Norfolk State serves particularly hard. Higher tuition costs and decreased availability of financial aid work an immediate hardship on students with limited financial resources.
Norfolk State has a smaller, less-affluent alumni base to rely on for support than the state's more prosperous schools. It also has a smaller endowment than many schools of similar size.
As a teaching school rather than a research university, Norfolk State has not been able to offset the squeeze by generating revenues through research activities.
Norfolk State entered the era of the squeeze with less technology installed and has, as a result, fallen further and further behind. It is short on computers, and its campus is only partially wired for the Internet world, and that work was as a result of a federal grant of the sort that is drying up. Insofar as widespread technology on campus equates to greater productivity, this constitutes another handicap.
Norfolk State officials view one final issue as the unkindest cut of all. At the behest of state education bureaucrats, Norfolk State cut back - from 44 percent to 27 percent - on the number of out-of-state students it was admitting. Out-of-state students pay higher fees and produce more revenue. Cutting back on them was a money-losing strategy. Since the state requested the move, it might have been reasonable to expect the state to help Norfolk State make up the loss. But that hasn't happened.
Yet Norfolk State has kept the faith. Faculty voted to teach more hours for no more pay rather than let educational quality suffer by becoming a campus of part-time teachers for 8,800 students. Nevertheless, the last are never going to be first at this rate.
Now that a movement is afoot to make Virginia's institutions of higher education competitive with other states' schools again, help may be on the way. There's some evidence that those in a position to approve funding increases recognize the Norfolk campus has gotten squeezed from every direction and has fared worse than its peers.
If more resources for higher education do become available, as they should, by any yardstick of justice or equity Norfolk State should go to the head of the line. by CNB