Virginia must be running a budget surplus — lawmakers are pushing for new entitlements. The latest bid to expand the size and scope of government comes from two Republican lawmakers. Never let it be said that Democrats are the only ones who support bigger government.
Senate Majority Leader Walter A. Stosch, R-Henrico and House Appropriations Chairman Del. Vincent Callahan Jr., R-Fairfax have teamed up to push a bill that would create a giveaway program called Virginia Community College Transfer Grants. These grants, explains Matthew Bowers with the Virginian-Pilot, “would pay the difference in tuition costs between students’ two-year community colleges and any Virginia four-year public colleges or universities to which they are admitted.”
Scott Leake, an assistant to Stosch, said the first-year cost to taxpayers was projected at $8 million, with the annual cost increasing to $10 million to $12 million within a few years.
As far as giveaway programs go, this one is modest. For me, it’s the principle of the thing: Legislators approach education much the same way they approach transportation. Roads too congested? Build more roads. College too expensive? Subsidize tuitions. The “solution” is always the same: shovel more money into propping up a dysfunctional system.
In the case of roads, it never occurs to most legislators that instead of endlessly increasing supply to match every increase in demand for roads, they might examine alternatives that would dampen the demand. Likewise, when it comes to education, lawmakers seek to redress the higher cost of higher ed with more tuition subsidies. No one talks about restructuring higher ed to meet its mission at less cost and lower tuitions.
Back in the days of the Allen administration, people did talk about curtailing the growth in the university spending that undergirded the ever-escalating tuition increases. Costs were spiraling out of control back then, too. Gov. George Allen required each university to submit a “restructuring” plan. The idea was that universities, like private-sector organizations, had to make choices. If an institution wanted to invest more resources in one area — life sciences, say, or nanotech — it had to retrench somewhere else.
Private companies continually re-evaluate their product portfolios and lines of business. To finance expansion in growth sectors, they consolidate operations in slow-growth sectors. They shutter outmoded factories. They spin off businesses they’re no longer competitive in. Universities don’t do that. They just grow, grow, grow. When’s the last time you read about a state university shutting down,consolidating or shrinking a department? When’s the last time you read about a state university spinning off an under-performing unit? It hardly ever happens.
Why? Because university administrators can get away with it. Higher education is such a sacred cow that Americans are willing to pay whatever the universities will charge. If tuitions get unaffordable, then colleges jack up tuitions even higher to squeeze students of more affluent families to subsidize students of needier families. Meanwhile, the federal government dishes out more student loans, many of which are never repaid, and state government hands out more subsidies to universities and students alike.
I’m all in favor of making college more affordable to everyone. But what does it have to come at the expense of taxpayers and relatively well-off households? Why can’t higher ed function more efficiently?
Let’s look at some numbers:
1995-2005 Cost of Living Index: 25 %
1995-2005 Enrollment increase in public Virginia colleges and universities: 19 %
Total inflation plus enrollment increase: 44%
FY1999-2008 Increase in General Fund allocation to public colleges and universities: 50%
FY1999-2008 Increase in Non-General Fund budgets for public colleges and universities: 67%
Bottom line: Virginia has increased its financial support for public institutions of higher ed 6% more than the rate of inflation plus enrollment increases combined over the past 10 years for which CPI figures are available. Drawing upon other sources of revenues, primarily tuitions, endowments, dormitory rents, etc., Virginia colleges increased other revenues, adjusted for inflation and enrollment increases, by 23%. In just 10 years!
Affordability of higher ed in Virginia is not a matter of insufficient state support. It is a matter of out-of-control spending — higher faculty salaries, a greater emphasis on expensive technology-intensive disciplines, and god knows what else. If we want our universities to all become polytechnic institutions, that’s fine — but let’s shrink those programs deemed less critical to the future.
Update: Neither the newspaper articles filed by the Virginian-Pilot and the Times-Dispatch — nor my post, which was based upon them — does justice to this issue. Stosch and Callahan lay out their thinking in considerable detail in a press release that I’ve posted online here. I also would recommend consulting a comment to this post written by Scott Leake, an aide to Stosch. New bottom line: This legislation must be viewed in the context of an anticipated expansion of higher ed enrollment in Virginia by 20-25 percent by FY 2012. Question to Leake: Is this bill actually designed to save the Commonwealth money?
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