So I appreciate Governor Warner choosing The College as the location for his education reform announcement yesterday. I also commend him for deciding to do something about education which is the critical element of society which has been hurt the most by budget problems. His solution, however, is not right. Let's first point out that Virginia has a collection of great colleges and universities in one state and therefore they should be the priority. Maintaining William and Mary, Virginia Tech, JMU, George Mason, Mary Washington, ODU, Christopher Newport and that school in Charlottesville should be the top priority. I am joking of course about UVA in this situation because of the schools in Virginia, they are the ones that think they are the closest to the academic level of William and Mary. Even if this is not true, they are still getting more and more recognition nationally and by becoming popular, their average freshman GPA and SAT scores are rising. Whether the school is getting any better is another matter. But competition and rivalries are not what is important at this point. VT and UVA have good football programs. VT is much better, but that doesn't matter. Virginia schools are therefore getting national recognition. VT's engineering program is incredible and is one of the best justifications for going to that school. Why can we not focus the state education money on preserving and increasing the quality of learning in these schools (W&M, VT, UVA, JMU, GMU) instead of allocating it elsewhere or even trying to create new universities that will take years to develop anyways.
The main problem with Warner's new program, other than the fact that it is yet another of his multiple programs that our state does not have the funds to support or complete well, is the fact that he is focusing on the wrong thing. Instead of focusing on having less students in these institutions and therefore more individual focus and because of this a better QUALITY of education (which is what a certain school in Williamsburg is about....but even here that vision is being lost), Warner thinks that it would be better to spend taxpayers' dollars on more QUANTITY of education. Meaning that what taxpayers get for their buck is not a better educated, brighter, business-leading, society-contributing graduate, what they get is more graduates with a poorer education. It is bad enough that more and more students are saturating our campuses making every aspect of the education process harder from studying to registering to participating to parking, but most important, actual learning is suffering. By Warner saying that he wants to increase the NUMBER (not quality) of graduates from 47,000 to 57,000 by the end of the decade it shows that he doesn't care about how much is learned or how much they will be able to contribute to society after graduation, all he cares about is numbers and being competitive and getting more tuition money. The more people you have rotating through these schools (which are already beyond capacity and are struggling to grow fast enough) the more revenue is produced. Clearly the state only cares about cash and not about the future, which Warner claims he is investing in.

And since the state only cares about money and the colleges and universities are starting to care about money more and more because the state is not giving them enough, the question then becomes, Warner are you proposing that this increase in graduates be more in-state or out-of-state students? Diversity is great, and I can understand why a college or university would want to have students from all over the nation. When you are a state school and much of you r support comes from the taxpayers in that state, shouldn't they be the ones that get priority? Sure in-state students get cheaper tuition, but is that enough? Their parents have been paying for college since before they were born because they have had to pay taxes for those schools. Yet in-state students that meet the high standards of these schools, which are getting harder to get into because of the great high school systems in Virginia, are being rejected to provide a spot for an out-of-state student who may not be as qualified but is admitted because they make the school's stats look better. So what is the result? Our schools go to crap because the focus is on having more students rather than better education and maybe even less students (gasp!). And these students that push the campus populations over the limit will most likely come from out-of-state making taxpayers who have paid for their children to attend a state school have to pay high out-of-state tuition because their child's spot is taken by someone from another state who will provide the university more money.

He also is proposing that budget be increased. These budgets, however, are restricted to development and research. Both of these allocations are great and they should be parts of colleges and universities that get money, but why not just increase the allocation of taxpaying dollars to the schools themselves and let the schools (and maybe even the students!!! What a novel idea!) decide how the money should be distributed the best based on their own goals and needs. The governor is attempting to look good and look like he is focusing on the wrong things, but is really just trying to get more money for the state and only gives out money in such a way that the state still has some control over it. There is a lot that needs to be done to preserve the high-quality academic institutions we have in this state, and it is surprising that Warner actually realizes that. It is just unfortunate that he is going about it the wrong way.

So instead of decreasing the number of students so the quality of education goes up, we will take tax dollars, reject in-state students, accept way too many out-of-state students, take their high tuition money and then invest a little bit of it in the wrong programs at the schools. Way to go Warner. That's just what we need. Give me a break.