CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Pressured by Gov. Joe Manchin to keep tuition rates in check this year, West Virginia’s public colleges and universities are warning lawmakers that a funding crisis is near.
Higher Education Policy Commission Chancellor Brian Noland told the House Finance Committee on Thursday that student-paid revenues must be revisited soon, in the absence of additional state funding.
“As unpalatable as it may be, we have to examine tuition revenues in the year to come if we’re going to sustain access and quality,” Noland said. “If not, then we are looking at closing things down.”
The latter remark follows a legislative audit that, in part, questions whether West Virginia has the population to justify all 11 of its four-year colleges and universities. Committee members also challenged that finding Thursday.
The state budget proposed for the fiscal year that starts July 1 requests $1.88 billion from various revenues for higher education, a 6 percent drop from current-year spending. The state’s 10 community and technical colleges account for about 11 percent of the higher education budget.
Noland said the funding issue is particularly critical given the record-setting enrollment of 93,712 students in West Virginia’s four- and two-year institutions.
“If we continue to increase enrollment but something does not move with revenues, and here I’m talking fees, it’s a lot like trying to eat soup,” Noland told the committee. “I can thin the soup and thin the soup and thin the soup, but sooner or later there’s not going to be any meat, not going to be any noodles.”
Manchin called for a one-year tuition and fee freeze in his State of the State address last month. He has since written the governing boards of the public two- and four-year schools, urging them to heed this call.
The letter also rejects the state’s college graduation rate as unacceptable. The commission’s latest report said that 48.5 percent of students who began at a four-year school in 2003 and stayed with the public system earned a degree within six years.
Noland said federal stimulus funds will allow schools to comply with Manchin’s tuition freeze request.
“We can hold the line on fees this year,” Noland said. “Down the road, we will not be able to hold the line.”
But some lawmakers object to the freeze.
Senate Education Chairman Robert Plymale blasted Manchin in a Thursday floor speech. The Wayne County Democrat argued that such decisions should be left with the two commissions that oversee the four- and two-year schools.
“That authority does not rest in the executive branch,” Plymale told fellow senators.
Plymale also predicted that the freeze would hurt the community and technical colleges more, as they have fewer funds and greater needs.
West Virginia only recently separated these two-year schools from their four-year counterparts. Plymale cited Kanawha Valley Community and Technical College in Institute and New River Community and Technical College in Beckley as two schools with critical needs for additional funding.
“It would be foolish for us to sit here and say, You can’t get something when you need it,” he said.
As for the legislative audit, lawmakers have defended schools in their districts since its release. It found that West Virginia has more four-year schools per capita than the 15 other states in the Southern Regional Education Board.
Legislative Auditor Aaron Allred said the system dates from an era before modern highways crisscrossed West Virginia, when the state was both more populous and segregated.
“You have WVU-Tech now competing with WVU when it didn’t in 1960,” Allred told the committee. “We have two institutions in Mercer County because of the institutional racism that existed.”
But Allred also stressed the audit’s main finding: the link between income levels and college completion rates. Behind most other states in per-capita income, Allred said West Virginia has public four-year schools with graduation rates as low as 20.7 percent.
The audit also called for further study of the number and needs of commuting students, and the role they play in graduation rates, while recommending performance-based funding for schools.
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