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Adequate Funding ≠ Top Colleges, According to the General Assembly

Editorial from the Daily Press

What a deal; From its top colleges, Virginia gets a lot more than it pays for

January 21, 2009

John Casteen, Taylor Reveley and Charles Steger should send someone down to the mail rooms at their respective universities, to see if they got anything from Richmond. They should, and it should take the form of a thank-you note, something along these lines:

Dear Mr. President,

We, the members of the General Assembly, want to thank you for managing to operate such exceptional institutions of higher education, given the paltry amount of money we give you. Even though we fill only one-fourth or less of your operating budgets with state dollars, you fill two-thirds of your undergraduate seats with Virginia’s young men and women.

We appreciate your success at cultivating, for your schools, the reputations that make applicants across the nation clamor to get in. We acknowledge that that stature makes it possible for you to compete for faculty, grants, donations and resources — all of which benefit Virginia students, but little of which is paid for by Virginia taxpayers.

We will continue to rely on you to lead what we proudly hold up as state schools — without adequate state support.

On behalf of our constituents, we send our sincerest best wishes for your continued success with that job.

— The General Assembly

It’s unlikely that such correspondence will show up at the University of Virginia, the College of William and Mary or Virginia Tech, where Casteen, Reveley and Steger preside.

What is likely to show up is a notice that their already inadequate state funding will be cut even further. Again.

These, the top tier among Virginia’s public colleges, qualify as “state run” — just ask their presidents about the constraints that imposes on them. But the label “state supported” barely fits anymore.

At William and Mary, state dollars made up only about 18 percent of the operating budget. And with Gov. Tim Kaine’s latest round of budget announcements, that state support will be cut 15 percent. Reveley accurately refers to the school he leads as “a privately funded university that also receives some taxpayer support.” The state-funded portion is even lower at U.Va., a little higher at Virginia Tech — but nowhere near as high as the proportion of in-state students.

Yet these colleges continue to abide by the tacit understanding that governs their relations with the state: that two-thirds of undergraduate slots are set aside for Virginians. In doing so, they are giving up potential revenue from a more market-oriented, supply-and-demand approach. With their strong national reputations, all three could admit more out-of-state students at even higher tuition.

What this means is that Virginia’s getting one heck of a bargain: Top-notch educational institutions at bargain-basement funding from taxpayers.

Legislators should recognize that, and be quick to turn back a regrettable effort by one of their members, Clay Athey, to force state schools to allot at least 70 percent of their seats to in-state students. He says his bill is aimed at Virginia, W&M and Tech.

That might makes sense, if the state were to subsidize something like 70 percent of the bill for these schools.

And if you didn’t acknowledge the contributions out-of-state students bring: The higher fees they pay not only cover their own cost, but subsidize in-state students. Their diverse backgrounds (and often stronger academic credentials) add to the college community, and to the experience of young Virginians.

And if you didn’t recognize that, overall, 81 percent of the undergrad slots in Virginia’s state colleges are filled by Virginians.

State-run colleges make up for the lack of state money by hiking tuition and fees, raising money from grants and donors — and a big handful of fiscal pixie dust, a necessity in staying competitive with better-funded peers around the country. William and Mary, for example, won an overall ranking of 32 among national universities in the U.S. News rankings, despite ranking 111th in financial resources.

But there’s a downside to Virginia’s reliance on this underfunding strategy. Tuition and fees have risen steeply, and the bite they take out of families’ budgets keeps growing. The result is that fewer families of modest or even middling means can afford college, and its flagship schools now mainly serve a slim segment of its families, the most affluent.

On that point, the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education gave Virginia a failing grade for affordability. We spend less per student on higher education than the national average — a sorry showing for a state with higher-than-average fiscal resources and, we say with pride, better-than-average higher education offerings. In Virginia, the families’ part of the college bill is among the highest in the nation.

Yet Kaine is proposing to do what his predecessors have done: offload onto colleges a disproportionate share of the budget cuts that must be made. If the General Assembly follows his recommendations, the least it can do is not undermine the schools’ ability to cope, by way of Athey’s misguided quotas.

And be appreciative of what its flagship schools, and all the others in the state’s broad educational mix, accomplish with the slender stipends they get.

It’s even worth a thank-you note.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 at 11:24 am and is filed under Virginia21 News, Virginia21's Weblog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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