Bob McDonnell unveiled his higher education platform yesterday in a talk at George Mason University.
He took the gamble of making a “serious’ speech, which in politics tends to interpreted as boring, wonkish and politically insignificant.
But I think that McDonnell carried it off very well.
After his earlier evolution (some called it a flip-flop) on the idea of limiting out-of-state admissions at our highly selective universities and his politically inexplicable foray into the Barack Obama honorary degree controversy at Notre Dame, his George Mason speech yesterday was a thoughtful, considered statement on a policy matter that will have a significant impact on the future of the Commonwealth and its citizens.
Read closely, the talk tells us a lot both about the kind of governor McDonnell intends to be and the challenges that he’ll face in getting there.
As I see it, the speech had two major components: one that articulated what higher education policy would look like under a McDonnell administration and another that sketched his ideas about investment, affordability and efficiency.
Perhaps most importantly, McDonnell announced that, if elected Governor, his administration will have an explicit higher education policy focus that will transcend the institution- specific decisions made by the individual Boards of Visitors. It will be focused on enhancing Virginia’s economic competitiveness and long-term prosperity.
McDonnell noted that Virginia should have an explicit goal of increasing the number of citizens who obtain Associate’s and Bachelor’s credentials, calling for 100,000 additional degrees in the next fifteen years.
He said that most of the these degrees should be in either the STEM fields or in high need occupations where there are a shortage of qualified personnel.
McDonnell also called for an expansion of the community college system, especially around the area of workforce training and development.
In addition, he launched a real shot across the bow at SCHEV, the coordinating body for higher education in the state. “The State Council of Higher Education, which should be helping to address some of these challenges, has done little about them. In fact, there is little to suggest that the Council ranks employability and economy among its core missions. This will change dramatically when I am Governor.” (emphasis mine)
The second major component of McDonnell’s address focused on investment in higher education, affordability and efficiency.
He acknowledged that the state has actually disinvested in Virginia’s colleges and universities over time, though he assigned a lot of the blame to Tim Kaine, noting the GOP leaders in the House had invariably put more funding in the budget for higher ed than Kaine originally proposed.
He called for making colleges and universities an explicit budgetary priority and developing a long-term investment strategy with identified sources of funding.
And he advocated increasing efficiencies in a variety of ways, including an expansion of community colleges for the first two years of a four year degree, greater utilization of technology and a genuine commitment to avoiding excessive costs and duplication by our institutions.
Taken together, McDonnell’s ideas for a statewide policy agenda for higher education represent a departure from recent trends and a genuine new direction for the Commonwealth.
The major higher ed innovation in recent years centered on a deregulatory agenda. Individuals and organization who were concerned about the declining state support for higher education began to argue that increased institutional autonomy, especially for our flagship schools, would be the most effective means of preserving the quality of colleges and universities in the Commonwealth.
In a way, this made perfect sense. It enabled institutions that had already achieved national and international recognition to use their resources more efficiently and be less constrained by burdensome regulations about procurement and capital construction.
But it was hard to argue that increased institutional autonomy rose to the level of a genuine state policy about the role of higher education in the Commonwealth.
In addition, the reality was that neither the state legislature nor universities had the stomach for complete deregulation.
While Assembly members agreed that state regulations about business practices were often too cumbersome, they also continued to think that they should have something to say on issues such as access, affordability and the ultimate direction of a public higher education system. Indeed, it would be odd if legislators did not hold this belief.
Similarly, universities such UVA and W&M never really utilized the pricing power on tuition that a fully dereregulated system would offer. College officials knew that if they started hiking tuition rates to the maximum of what the market could bear, there might be swift retribution from the Assembly with regard to, for example, their out-of-state admission policies.
To his credit, McDonnell is starting a genuine and long overdue dialogue about the broader purposes and organization of higher ed in Virginia. It suggests that, if elected Governor, he’ll be willing to tackle thorny issues and do so in a a thoughtful and comprehensive manner.
McDonnell also should be given credit for his willingness to make our community college system more central to the dialogue about higher education.
I have been extraordinarily impressed by the dedication and commitment of our communty college leaders and how much they accomplish with relatively limited resources. Thinking about how to expand their role and provide adequate funding for both the college prep and workforce development they perform will be an integral component of any serious reform strategy.
How to fund the reforms he advocates will be the big question that McDonnell will have to answer about his higher ed proposals.
Just how will he reverse the state’s disinvestment in higher education? What priorities will be reduced while he elevates colleges and universities? And what is the bottom line price tag that he is contemplating?
Let me offer just one example.
McDonnell’s proposal calls for a sizeable increase in the number of students coming through science, engineering and math programs in Virginia’s colleges and universities.
I doubt that many people would quarrel with the goal. But, at the same time, it comes with a hefty price tag, because science and engineering are often the most expensive undergraduate programs to offer.
In a research university like UVA, Tech, GMU and VCU, the recruitment of a single junior level, faculty researcher in chemistry or engineering is likely to cost about $600,oo0 when you factor in half a million dollars for setting up a lab and a year of salary and benefits.
When I was a dean, I became aware that the recruitment of a single scientist amounted to the annual budget of our entire Philosophy Department.
I think that McDonnell is right about the direction in whichh Virginia should be moving, but costing out what it will take to create 50,000 additional degrees in science, engineering and math is likely to be an eye opening exercise.
In many ways, the higher ed issue is very similar to the challenges facing the state on transportation.
Everyone knows that we should be doing more than we are. Everyone recognizes that failure to move forward will jeopardize Virginia’s economic standing. But during the last eight years, we’ve never been able to fully align our aspirations with our funding priorities.
I think that McDonnell is trying to make clear that as Governor he has no intention of being the leader of the “Party of No.”
His challenge will be to convince the public that his proposals- on education, transportation, and job creation - will be effective in getting us to Yes.
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