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The sobering figures caused Del. Cleaves Manning (D-Portsmouth) to observe that education costs may be approaching the point where our state colleges and universities could be getting beyond the financial reach of many qualified Virginia students. Davies concurred in this view.
But there was no agreement and, indeed, very little discussion of what should be done about it.
Clearly, however, the state has to make some difficult choices about the future of higher education.
If its costs continue to soar, and there is no reason to expect that they will not, the Commonwealth’s options would appear to be very limited. The state can. simply allow higher education to return partially to the elitist status it occupied in the early years of the century, when its advantages were eqjoyed by a privileged few. As Davies put it, middle-income and poor students would, in effect, be priced out of the education market.
The other option is for the state to increase its contribution to the cost of operating its colleges and universities, thereby taking some of the upward pressure off of the student’s share of the tuition costs.
This is clearly the approach preferred by Del. Richard Bagley (D-Hampton) chainnan of the House Appropriations Committee and all-but-declared candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1985. Bagley rejected the do-nothing option out of hand.
“It certainly is not the intention or the purpose of the General Assembly or the governor,” he sud, “to have tuitions creep to a point where the average Virginian can’t avail himself of a higher education opportunity.”
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