NOTHING reflects a person's priorities and character more than where he spends his money. A wise and responsible parent will invest money in his or her children's education, while a reckless bourgeois suburban wife prides herself on the black Hummer that protects her from the perils of the local Talbots.
Despite their excitement for the new sports facility, University students are questioning the financial priorities of the administration that fawns over the new John Paul Jones arena while ignoring academic improvements still desperately needed. Students and professors question whether this allocation of $130 million could have been invested in academic projects. The common misconception when students consider budget allotments for academics versus the sometimes more apparent funding for athletics is that the University is shortchanging its students. However, funding for the academics of a public school is largely the responsibility of the state and if the academic budget is to be improved, change must be made within this sector.
When students consider the ambiguity and lack of transparency in the University's yearly budget formation, some imagine a dark room filled with decrepit old men (a.k.a. the Board of Visitors) badgering alumni for donations before magically creating the annual University budget, which often heavily supports athletics over academics. This image, as well as much of their criticism, arises from a belief that a dollar that goes to buying new uniforms for athletes is a dollar that could have been used for increasing professor salaries or refurbishing class rooms. This assumption in fact belies reality.
Colette Sheehy, vice president of the Office of Management and Budget, clearly explained how her office creates the annual budget. All state money contributes to academic needs, such as libraries and professor salaries. In fact, 60 percent of the operating budget is labor-intensive, for salaries for people such as professors.
Most private money is raised by the deans and "held by the deans in their schools," according to Sheehy. Budget planners do not have the option of taking donations away from the individual schools that raised the money. Nonacademic aspects of the University such as athletics compose the Auxiliary Enterprise, which funds itself through student fees, ticket sales and private donations. Thus, the types of financial resources and fundraising campaigns available to athletics and academics are mutually exclusive.
Even though the University is a public institution, only 13.4 percent, or $140 million, of its budget comes from state funds. Sheehy explained that the state provides enough funding to achieve "base adequacy," or just enough money to maintain the University -- not to improve it or to aid its rise to preeminence among other universities. Without generous private donations, this academic institution surely would not rank as high as it does now. In fact, the budget planners have embarked on a three billion capital campaign to raise the money desperately needed that the state refuses to provide.
Whenever the state economy goes through a recession, the first funds cut are those earmarked for higher education. While no college student wants to steal crayons from first graders, Virginia needs to commit itself to raising the resources necessary to fund its public universities fully. If Gov. Tim Kaine can build support for something as bland as bettering road conditions; surely Virginians would support putting more money into institutions like the University that educates the minds of the next leaders of the country. Alas, finding more money is the eternal plague to any business or government; either taxes must be raised, funding for other programs must be cut or some of the next state budget surplus must be invested in higher education. If the state ignores the growing discontent of students and professors at schools like the University of Virginia and the College of William & Mary, all of its great public universities will become privatized and even more inaccessible to low-income Virginia natives.
Most of the blame lies with the state but not all of it. Yes, the Office of Management and Budget must respect the wishes of donors who want to buy the football team new uniforms. At the same time, as budget decisions are being made and donations requested, the University needs to stress the importance of academic projects. Surely, graduated classes of Wahoos would donate back to their alma mater with the altruistic vision that one day in the future, University students will not have to squeeze into the miniature desks that line the classrooms of Cabell Hall, nor will they have to create strategies for tricking ISIS into allowing them into a coveted politics class.
Offering students the classes they came here for should not be an unattainable feat. In the end, the administration and Board of Visitors cannot idly hope for more money to be handed down from the state, nor should they harass already generous alumni. So long as the University is a nominally public institution, we should not settle for such a low percentage of funding from the state. The University should press state representatives to allocate more funding for academics and not just settle for the leftovers.
Marta Cook is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.
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