WILLIAMSBURG (AP) — Three top Virginia colleges plan to ask the General Assembly to grant them more autonomy, so they can determine their own financial destiny and rely less on state funding.
Officials at the College of William and Mary, the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech agreed during a series of meetings to seek “commonwealth chartered university” status as a way to close a funding shortfall.
College officials hope to work out the details and have the proposal introduced during the General Assembly session that starts Wednesday. If approved by the legislature and Gov. Mark Warner, it could take effect as soon as July 1, 2005, and other colleges could choose to seek the designation.
The bill has not been drafted and has no sponsor, but college officials have begun discussing it with legislators, William and Mary spokesman William Walker said yesterday.
Calls to members of House and Senate education committees were not returned yesterday.
In general terms, instead of tuition funds and other assets being held in state-managed accounts, the three universities want the right to invest the money themselves and reap the interest, William and Mary officials said Tuesday in Williamsburg.
They also want to be able to determine their own tuition rates, transfer funds among budget categories and set their own spending priorities.
“Tuition can be expected to rise under any scenario that we or the General Assembly might envision,” William and Mary President Timothy Sullivan said in a letter to the community. “One clear advantage of our proposal is that new revenues resulting from these increases can be invested in programs that directly serve our students.”
He also said the schools would devote new revenues to student financial aid.
Mr. Sullivan stressed that the proposal did not involve privatizing the colleges.
“We would remain public institutions with boards appointed by the governor, confirmed by the General Assembly and accountable to the people just as we are now,” he said.
At the University of Virginia, where state aid has dropped from nearly 28 percent of its budget in the 1984-85 school year to 8.1 percent this school year, officials are hailing the idea of greater autonomy from the state.
Leonard Sandridge, the school’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, said U.Va. would improve its efficiency and thus save money. Being more efficient, combined with the freedom to “charge realistic tuition rates,” would allow the school to keep key faculty by raising salaries and to make up for other deficits, he said.
College officials have been sounding the alarm for some time about the toll that state budget cuts have taken on their institutions in the past few years, and Mr. Sullivan has been in the forefront.
But “for the first time, instead of just outlining the problem, we’re trying to creatively look at solutions,” said Stewart Gamage, William and Mary’s vice president for public affairs.
She and other college officials said they have looked everywhere for expenses that could be trimmed and other options.
“We have tried just about everything we can think of,” Miss Gamage said.
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