Budget cuts imperil Virginia's largest and most welcoming university

SOME CANDIDATES for public office in Virginia, particularly tax-averse Republicans, like to pretend that shrinking the size of state government is a simple matter of slaying the mythical dragon of "waste, fraud and abuse." The reality of budget-cutting is drastically different, and more painful, as anyone at the state's biggest institution of higher learning, Virginia Commonwealth University, can attest.

No four-year school in Virginia has expanded faster than VCU, which added 8,370 students over the past decade and now has an enrollment of more than 32,000. With the encouragement of political, civic and business leaders, VCU opened its doors to become a portal of opportunity for the state's most diverse student body; almost a third of the students are the first in their families to attend college. Once mainly a commuter school serving Richmond and its suburbs, VCU now draws students from across the commonwealth. A quarter of freshmen, the largest single cohort, hail from Northern Virginia.

State funding for VCU rose in lockstep with enrollment growth in the mid-2000s, and handsome new buildings for the engineering and business schools arose on campus, paid for by private donations and state bond issues. The university's pact with the state was unspoken but clear: It would educate in-state students, maintain modest tuition and fees, and build respected academic programs in medicine, science, the arts and other high-cost disciplines; in return, the state would provide the cash for steady growth.

The pact was clear, until it wasn't. As the recession sapped revenue, the state slashed funding for public universities and colleges. VCU was hit especially hard because its student body includes relatively few out-of-state students, who pay much higher tuition than in-state students. The university's subsidy from the state, which accounts for about a quarter of its general education budget, is plummeting. In the fiscal year starting next year, state aid to VCU will be almost 20 percent less than it was in 2001, despite a student body that is 35 percent larger.

This is not "waste, fraud and abuse"; this is an unfolding disaster, as VCU President Michael Rao has warned. "[T]he sustained loss of state support threatens VCU's core mission as a research university focused on student learning," he wrote this spring. "[S]evere cuts over the past few years have hurt financial aid for [the neediest] and have affected class sizes, course offerings and faculty retention and recruitment. Further cuts jeopardize access, the quality of education, the value of a VCU degree and the ability to maintain our mission."

With Republicans in Richmond having ruled out new taxes for higher education, transportation or other needs, VCU had no choice but to raise its own revenue in the form of its largest-ever increase in tuition and fees -- a 24 percent one-year hike for students who will enroll this fall. University officials also cite a "hidden tax": Because courses required for majors are often oversubscribed, some students are unable to graduate in four years and therefore must stay longer and pay extra tuition.

The money from the big tuition hike will go toward hiring additional faculty, plugging holes in financial aid and helping stanch the bleeding from ongoing state budget cuts. No one expects it to be enough; another substantial tuition bump is likely next year, putting the squeeze on thousands of middle-class families statewide.

Meanwhile, signs of stress and declining quality on campus are everywhere. Faculty salaries have fallen behind those at peer schools. The number of faculty members per thousand students has dropped by almost 25 percent in a decade. With (lower-paid) adjunct teachers picking up the slack, fewer classes are being taught by tenured or tenure-track professors. Lounges and labs have been converted to large classrooms, and more classes are being held on Friday nights and Saturdays. Money for doctoral stipends and graduate student assistants to professors has dried up. By many measures, VCU, one of the state's major research universities, is an institution struggling to stave off decline.

Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) is not to blame for this. The budget cuts were ordered by his predecessor, Timothy M. Kaine (D). Like many governors, Mr. Kaine sought to balance recession-squeezed budgets by cutting subsidies for state universities, figuring the schools could absorb at least part of the blow with tuition hikes.

Still, it's worth remembering that one of Mr. McDonnell's signature campaign promises was that Virginia would award 100,000 additional degrees over the next 15 years. That, said the governor, would create jobs and "make the Commonwealth one of the most highly educated states in the country." Without additional state revenue, that promise, like the bloodless notion that eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse" can balance the budget, will turn out to have been a mirage.