|
Sunday, January 26, 2003
Roanoke Times
A
higher-ed sampler (with annotations)
In this special season of state fiscal
crisis and General Assembly anti-tax posturing, we offer the
following for thought and reflection.
" WE MUST do something on research.
However, we don't want to run the other direction on research
and have a drop in quality of instruction." -
Carl Kelley, chairman, State Council of Higher Education of
Virginia, Jan. 15, 2003
This classic piece of advice was rendered
on the occasion of the council's approval of a four-year
strategic plan for Virginia's colleges and universities. The
plan calls for the institutions to improve instruction, boost
research and begin absorbing system-wide enrollment increases
expected to reach 38,000 more students by 2010.
Among the means for enhancing instruction
are attracting and retaining quality teachers. But to accelerate
research, the colleges and universities also are to attract and
retain topflight researchers. And to meet the projected increase
in student demand, they are to find ways for more students to
graduate in less time.
The advice is no less sound, of course,
simply because a higher-education system with sufficient fiscal
resources to follow it no doubt would already be doing so.
Unaddressed in the plan is where the colleges are to obtain such
resources.
" Don't walk him, but don't give him
anything good to hit."
- Countless baseball managers, to struggling pitchers
who, if they had the physical resources to heed the advice,
wouldn't be struggling.
" While some might ask how we can
afford to meet these goals given the current economic climate, I
would ask how we can afford not to."
- Phyllis Palmiero, executive director, State Council of
Higher Education of Virginia, Jan. 15, 2003
The plan and its goals have been adopted at
a time when state higher-education appropriations have been cut
by 22 percent. As a result of the budget cutbacks, the colleges
have been forced to trim faculty ranks, thereby enlarging
classes and student-faculty ratios, and so impeding the quality
of both instruction and research. Curriculums have shrunk and
course sections have been canceled, making it harder for
students to graduate on time. Salaries for state workers are
frozen for the third year in a row, which does wonders for
faculty recruitment and retention. Meanwhile, Virginia's tax
burden ranks among the lowest in the nation. Republican leaders
of the General Assembly
have vowed to block anything so much as hinting of a tax
increase.
" At length I recollected the
thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed
that the country people had no bread, replied, 'Let them eat
cake.'" - Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in Les Confessions,
published posthumously, 1782.
Submitted
by Barry Simmons |
