70,000 MORE DEGREES: We Must Upgrade Virginia's Higher Education

The Commonwealth of Virginia is home to a myriad of global business interests, including companies like ours that confront the difficult energy and health care issues of our time.

We have long been fortunate to have one of the best systems of higher education anywhere in the country, and it is especially vital now, since many of the challenges in today's knowledge-based economy can only be addressed through advanced education, skill, and research. We see every day in our own businesses that a well-educated work force is an essential element of a vibrant, dynamic, and growing economy.

With so much of our future riding on higher education, Virginia is at an important crossroads.

As a commonwealth, we must invest in our colleges, universities, and community colleges if we are to produce the quantity and quality of Virginia college graduates necessary to fill the increasingly complex needs of the next decade's job market.

The Virginia Business Higher Education Council (VBHEC) and a broad coalition of business and community leaders and organizations this week are launching a campaign to support the kind of innovation and investment in higher education that will help secure Virginia's economic future and create real jobs. By making high-impact investments in our public colleges, universities, and community colleges, Virginia's leaders will be fueling the state's strong economic recovery while laying the groundwork for real growth in the long term.

The logic behind this initiative is simple: Virginia's economic future will be brighter . . . if we increase the number of Virginians with college degrees and employable work skills attained through our community college system . . . if we more fully realize the enormous return on investment from university-based research and public-private collaboration on work-force training . . . if we enhance regional economic development initiatives that target new-economy enterprises centered around our higher education institutions . . . and if we increase the number of young people earning degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math as well as in areas where shortages currently exist, such as nursing and teaching.

It is not just business leaders who feel this way. So do many of the state's citizens. In fact, VBHEC engaged a bipartisan team of leading pollsters to evaluate what Virginians think about the connection between economic opportunity and higher education in the commonwealth. What the polling showed was striking. While 75 percent of those surveyed believe that a college degree is needed to succeed in today's economy, only 35 percent of college-age Virginians currently enroll in our state's colleges, community colleges, or universities. Only 42 percent of our citizens hold a college degree of any kind.

Virginians, by a large margin, recognize that a college degree is increasingly indispensable for personal economic success. The same poll showed that they also understand that higher levels of educational attainment are crucial for the commonwealth's economic recovery and growth.

Investing in our public colleges, universities, and community colleges -- especially in high-quality degree and certificate programs that prepare Virginians for high-demand jobs in the emerging economy -- will produce enormous economic benefits for our commonwealth. Indeed, Virginia's colleges and universities are already engines of tremendous economic growth. These colleges and universities are creating thousands of well-paying jobs by attracting millions in research grants, alumni contributions, and tuition payments from outside the commonwealth. Many of our colleges and universities are magnets for new business investment and job creation -- and are essential elements of strong local and regional economies in every geographic area of the state.

So it stands to reason that Virginians, by an almost 4-1 majority, believe that investing more in higher education is one of the best ways to stimulate the state's economy. Simply put, greater state investment in the commonwealth's colleges and universities is a high-octane fuel for Virginia's recovery from the current economic downturn. Now is the time to act. And the current campaigns for statewide and legislative office provide a timely forum for discussing these issues.

Any serious plan for Virginia's economic resurgence must focus in large measure on work force preparation, public-private partnerships for research and development, and affordable access to educational opportunities -- all central aspects of the higher education agenda.

Because Virginia is home to some of the best colleges and universities, there is a perception that we are already investing sufficiently in higher education. We are not. Look at the statistics. Even as the state budget grew over the past decade, funding for our public four-year colleges and universities was cut -- that's right, cut -- on a per-student, constant-dollar basis. In fact, it was cut by more than 30 percent, and that cut deepens to more than 40 percent when the temporary stimulus funding is excluded.

Much of this cost has been shifted to tuition-paying students, squeezing lowand middle-income family budgets and increasing the student-loan debt burden on young people just as they are entering the competitive world of work.

It is time for the Commonwealth of Virginia to break the familiar boom-bust cycle of higher education funding by which state support for our public colleges, universities, and community colleges is cut first and deepest whenever state revenues shrink. This cycle makes it impossible for students and parents to prepare for tuition costs and for higher education institutions to plan and manage resources effectively.

Without a clear vision for a vibrant and dynamic public higher education system, the commonwealth is sure to lose ground on economic development, business expansion, and high-wage job creation to vigorously competing states and countries. Virginians believe that a sustained program of investment and innovation in higher education -- embodied in state law and in the business plans of our educational institutions -- can make Virginia a national and international leader in attracting new business investment, research grants, and excellent job opportunities in the future.

Our coalition's vision provides a blueprint for increasing the percentage of Virginians with an associate degree or higher to 50 percent by 2020. By achieving this goal, the commonwealth will be competitive with the top-performing states and countries when it comes to educational attainment and personal income growth.

To accomplish this objective, we are proposing the following policy priorities for Virginia's future:

• Virginia should commit to a 10-year program of investment designed to award a cumulative 70,000 additional degrees by 2020.

• The degrees should be concentrated in high-income, high-demand disciplines such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and in areas where a shortage of skilled workers -- health care and teaching, for example -- exists.

• Access to college degrees must become more affordable. Recent Virginia higher education reforms have significantly enhanced transparency, accountability, and cost efficiencies on college campuses. We must now develop new and innovative pathways to degree attainment, which hold down the costs for taxpayers and tuition-paying families.

• Virginia's community colleges are among the commonwealth's most admired institutions, according to opinion research. Our community colleges are an extraordinary success story. We must identify ways to increase their capacity and focus on creating more job-skill retraining and industry-specific training for workers of all ages.

• There is very clear evidence of the significant economic return from state investments at Virginia's research universities, and we must enact policies that increase the public-private collaboration on university-based research. Experience has shown that research activity creates commercially viable processes and products, helps recruit top faculty, boosts economic development efforts, and creates high-paying jobs.

• The regional diversity of Virginia's colleges and universities means that every region in our commonwealth is well-positioned to benefit from broad-based investments in public higher education. We must foster greater regional collaboration and partnerships among businesses, local governments, and economic development authorities and the region's colleges and universities.

• Greater financial investment in Virginia's higher education system must be a priority. By a more than 3-1 margin, Virginians believe that state support for higher education for an in-state student funding should equal at least two-thirds of the cost of education at our public colleges and universities. Currently, state funding is falling far short of that informal state policy.

The Virginia Business Higher Education Council was founded in 1994 on the principle that the prosperity of Virginia and the well-being of its citizens is fundamentally tied to access to a strong system of public colleges and universities.

The success of our own businesses is directly connected to the success Virginia's public colleges achieve in providing the very best educational product to their graduates. Indeed, our companies employ hundreds of graduates of Virginia's outstanding colleges, and we see each day the value that a degree from one of Virginia's institutions provides in our own workforce. Unfortunately, these benefits will not continue to accrue to Virginians and our economy unless we dramatically retool state policy to promote investment and innovation.

Today's challenges in vital fields such as energy, health care, and the environment can be addressed only if we fully mobilize our human capital, which has long been America's most valuable resource. And while Virginia has succeeded in attracting knowledge-based workers from outside the commonwealth, our future depends on tapping the full potential of young people and workers of all ages right here in Virginia. We can be a national and international leader in creating good job opportunities for our children and grandchildren while at the same time helping to meet our nation's most serious challenges. It requires only a clear vision and unity of purpose.

We in the Virginia Business Higher Education Council will do our part, but we cannot do it alone. All Virginians have a stake in ensuring that this year's election dialogue focuses on the real issues that are vital for our future -- and higher education has to be at the top of that list.

Together, we can promote innovation and higher levels of performance on our college campuses, develop affordable new pathways for more Virginians to get degrees and certificates, and place Virginia on the leading edge of scientific, technological, and economic progress for the nation and the world. We hope you will join us in this critically important effort.

W. Heywood Fralin is chief executive officer of Medical Facilities of America Inc. and chairman of the Virginia Business Higher Education Council. Thomas F. Farrell II is chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Dominion Resources Inc. and a member of the executive committee of the Virginia Business Higher Education Council.