Group hopes to expand Va. college enrollment, aid

NORFOLK

A coalition of state business leaders, hoping to catch the ear of the next governor, on Monday launched a campaign to expand enrollment, financial aid and funding at Virginia's colleges.

The "Grow by Degrees" blueprint seeks to award an additional 70,000 two- and four-year degrees in Virginia by 2020, many in math, science and engineering. The plan also calls for a "tuition rainy-day fund" to avert steep increases and for more aid for low- and middle-income families.

The program will "grow the economy in the long-term as well as jump-start it in the short run," said W. Heywood Fralin, the chairman of the Virginia Business Higher Education Council, which is sponsoring the campaign, at a kickoff at the Town Point Club.

Fralin, who is rector of the University of Virginia's Board of Visitors, did not attach a price tag to the proposal or say how it would be financed. But he and local college presidents spoke pointedly about the need to fortify state aid to colleges after years of budget cuts.

"Remarkably, we have done more with less year after year after year," said Paul Trible Jr., president of Christopher Newport University in Newport News. "That margin of excellence that we have long celebrated in Virginia is in peril.

"Virginia's next governor and General Assembly," Trible said, "must make higher education an explicit budget priority."

State funding per in-state student, adjusted for inflation, has fallen nearly 40 percent since 2000, from $10,675 to $6,586, Fralin said. In the 2008- 10 period, Old Dominion and Norfolk State universities will face budget cuts of 14.3 percent and 11.5 percent, respectively, according to the State Council of Higher Education.

For a university system with a reputation for excellence, the funding decline "has charted an entirely new course, one toward mediocrity," Fralin said.

He praised the candidates for governor - Democrat Creigh Deeds and Republican Bob McDonnell - for addressing college issues. "We look forward to working closely with them as they refine and elaborate on their plans," Fralin said.

Their platforms contain pieces of the "Grow by Degrees" agenda. McDonnell wants to add 100,000 college degrees over the next 15 years and Deeds, 70,000 degrees in the next decade. Both also propose expanding job-skills training and public-private research partnerships.

In a statement, Deeds praised the business coalition's agenda and called "increased state support for higher education a central part of turning around Virginia's economy." McDonnell's spokeswoman, Crystal Cameron, said he also backed the Grow by Degrees program and would "immediately make investment in higher education a priority again in the budget process."

The Virginia Business Higher Education Council last played a major statewide role in 2002, when it helped successfully lobby for voter passage of a $900 million bond issue for campus construction projects.

Its plan also seeks to codify in law a guaranteed funding source for colleges. "We need to look at public policy and accountability for the long haul, not crisis management for the next week," said Tidewater Community College's president, Deborah DiCroce.

Philip Walzer, (757) 222-3864, phil.walzer@pilotonline.com