In a relatively unsurprising move, Gov. Bob McDonnell directed state government agencies earlier this month to draft plans for proposed spending cuts of 2 to 6 percent in preparation for his first two-year budget. McDonnell's proposal, which will cover fiscal years 2013 and 2014, promises to be stingy since there exists tremendous uncertainty regarding the amount of federal money that will be available for the commonwealth in the future.
McDonnell's approach to budgeting offers both good and bad news to the University. Fortunately, higher education, as a whole, will avoid the blunt force of the mandatory cuts for which most state agencies must begin to prepare. McDonnell instead has ordered the creation of a "work group" charged with identifying "targeted savings strategies." This is meant to take into account the fact that earlier this year the governor signed the Virginia Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2011, which established the goal of conferring an additional 100,000 degrees in the commonwealth during the next 15 years.
Less encouraging, however, is the general thrust of the work groups' mission. Although McDonnell has wisely acknowledged that the rapidly expanding realm of higher education is among the areas facing special budgetary constraints, the idea of "targeted savings strategies" still remains ill-defined and easily could degenerate into the sort of arbitrary budget cuts with which the University has had to deal in the past. Moreover, the exact composition of the work group has not been specified, leaving state colleges and universities unsure of how much control they will be able to exert upon the budgeting process. To resolve these issues, McDonnell should give university presidents and other high-level administrators prominent seats at the table and establish finding cost-effective methods of expanding access to higher education in Virginia as their primary objective.
There are several reasons why the involvement of university administrators would be beneficial to the higher education work group. For one, it would ensure that higher education receives a fair allocation of funds that reflects the need for universities to continue growing enrollment in the coming years as a means of promoting economic growth and higher living standards in the commonwealth. Administrators would enter the budgetary process with a better mindset for achieving this paramount goal than would state bureaucrats who would be more likely to focus on achieving a predetermined amount of cuts that could help alleviate the commonwealth's overall budget situation.
This would be a mistaken approach since "targeted savings strategies" should not necessitate a net reduction in appropriations to higher education. Rather, they should maximize the efficiency of public colleges and universities as they work toward the overriding policy objective of expanding access to higher education among the commonwealth's citizens.
To this end, university administrators would be able to offer constructive strategies for conferring degrees cost-effectively since some of them may have experimented with policies at their individual institutions that could be adopted by the state higher education system as a whole. For example, the University recently embarked on an effort to promote what is known as a "three plus one" degree, in which students obtain an undergraduate degree in three years and a graduate degree after their fourth year.
If this program proves to be successful in allowing students to attain degrees at an accelerated pace, it will elevate the overall education level of the University's graduates without requiring more faculty, infrastructure or other resources. Although this may not provide immediate cost savings on the state's balance sheet, it is a "targeted savings strategy" that works within the framework for higher education that McDonnell developed by signing the Virginia Higher Education Opportunity Act.
Although the commonwealth has to spend its money prudently given the precarious federal funding situation, it also must keep in mind that its upcoming budget functions as a list of priorities. Therefore, McDonnell should invite leaders from within the sector itself to participate in the budget process so that conflicting short-term goals such as budget tightening do not distract from the primacy of McDonnell's long-term vision for higher education.
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