DATE: Sunday, May 18, 1997                  TAG: 9705150009

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J4   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial

                                            LENGTH:   60 lines

HIGHER EDUCATION STOP THE SQUEEZE

Virginia has no business having one of the eight highest tuition-and-fee rates among public colleges in the nation.

But neither should the Commonwealth rank in the bottom eight states in per-pupil, general fund support of its university system.

To be at both extremes suggests that the funding arrangements are out of whack. Parents are paying too much out of their own pocketbooks; the state is investing too little in pursuit of an educated citizenry.

An adjustment is in order.

Gov. George Allen proposes half a solution. Lieutenant Governor Donald S. Beyer Jr. and Attorney General James S. Gilmore III, the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor, agree. All would freeze tuition rates, already on hold from 1996 to 1998, until the year 2,000.

By proposing a freeze in tuition without also supporting a hike in state spending, politicians are, in effect, trying to have their cake and eat it too. The state gets an unrealistically low bill for higher education by limiting investment. Parents get the benefit of a cap on tuition.

But the university system is likely to end up tasting more like cornbread than cake. An acceptable system of higher education can, no doubt, be financed on the cheap. A nationally competitive one cannot.

This is not to say that the state should abandon some innovative solutions to the high cost of college education:

The University of Virginia's Alumni Association recently announced that it has pledged $1 million to help attract and keep highly qualified faculty.

The U. Va. Board of Visitors has launched a multi-million drive to supplement faculty salaries with private funds. The goal is return U.Va. faculty to the same salary position, relative to their peers elsewhere, that they enjoyed prior to 1989.

Other schools are pursuing similar strategies for increasing the percentage of private funds devoted to state higher education needs.

Such steps should be encouraged. But not every state college enjoys the fundraising clout of a U.Va. The students at those other institutions should not be penalized because their schools are less high-powered.

The genesis of the current trouble came in the early 1990s when former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder guided the state through a recession, in part, by cutting state funding for colleges by more than 20 percent. Universities were allowed to offset the loss with tuition increases of more than 40 percent over the four-year term.

When Gov. Allen took office in 1994, he limited tuition increases to the rate of inflation. The State Council of Higher Education and the legislature, with Allen's blessing, froze the rates altogether for state residents in 1996.

Continuing the freeze will be popular with voters. And it is fair, given the relatively high cost of a public education in Virginia. But the blend of tuition rates and state funding must stay in balance.

Extending the freeze to 2,000 would cost the colleges about $39.2 million in lost revenues. The governor and those who propose to succeed him should suggest a way to replace those funds. To do otherwise is irresponsible and threatens to subject the schools to a damaging squeeze.

A starvation diet may benefit state budgeteers and parents in the short term, but there is no gain if the end result is an anorexic system of higher education.

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