roanoke.com Real Politics / Preston Bryant

Preston Bryant is a Republican who has represented Lynchburg and part of Amherst County in the Virginia House of Delgates since 1996.

Several weeks ago, Gov. Mark Warner climbed to the top of the mountain and looked into the great beyond. Way over there, somewhere, he saw a system of public colleges and universities whose doctoral institutions are known for their research excellence.

This vision goes back a year or so when Warner, a Democrat, said he wanted to have 15 more research programs among Virginia�s institutions that are in the top five nationally in their fields. This is strikingly similar to the vision laid out by former Del. Vance Wilkins, a Republican, who said in a speech immediately upon being sworn in as Speaker of the House in 2000 that he�d like to see every state college and university have at least one discipline that�s the best in the nation.

Of course, many institutions in our system of higher education already are recognized nationally for excelling in areas unique to their missions. Just take a gander at the yearly graduate school rankings by U.S. News & World Report. Whether it�s the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, Virginia Commonwealth University, Old Dominion University, George Mason University, or the College of William and Mary, you�ll see professional schools and graduate programs that are highly ranked and nationally known.

But this is not to say that our research institutions cannot improve upon those schools, departments, and programs that already are leading their peers or that they cannot begin putting more oomph behind other programs and pushing them to newer heights.

So it�s a good thing that Warner is putting more emphasis on higher education and challenging many of our state institutions to reach for the stars. It�s also a good thing that he wants them to go for more research dollars, whether federal or private.

Today, our research institutions, both public and private, seem to be attracting a little more than $600 million in R&D funding each year. Warner wants that figure to be at $1 billion by the end of the decade.

We cannot, however, expect them to reach that billion-dollar goal without some back-up support. As much as we may want to increase our schools� research renown, it�s not entirely realistic to expect them to succeed as long as the state keeps shrinking the revenue stream flowing to them.

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia announced last week that our state institutions generally trail their peers across the nation in per student funding. In 1989, the state spent about 18 percent of its general fund budget on higher education; in 2004, it�s down to about 12 percent. Our colleges and universities� base funding is today about $350 million less than what it should be. And of this shortfall, the six major doctoral institutions -- UVA, Virginia Tech, VCU, ODU, GMU, and William and Mary -- account for just over $170 million of it.

Granted, the past couple of years have been tough ones, economically speaking. Warner and the General Assembly have had to slice some $6 billion in expenditures in order to keep that state�s books balanced. So it�s been inevitable that our system of higher education also would be pinched.

Warner�s higher ed initiative has four components: administration, management, and governance; planning and capability; workforce development; and research capabilities and centers of excellence.

Regarding the latter, in order to assess the status of our institutions� research programs, Warner and those working with him, most notably Virginia Tech president Charles Steger, have reached out to the National Academy of Sciences for assistance. The academy, it is hoped, will lend expertise in noting which research programs in the sciences, engineering, and medicine are currently flying high and which ones, with a reasonable influx of new dollars, could rather easily see national prominence. They also want to note for the record which ones don�t have such potential, despite their supporters� song and dance to the contrary.

So, yeah, it�s good that Warner is looking anew at higher education, and, yeah, it�s also good that he wants to do so in an objective sort of way. We all must be realistic in determining what�s achievable.

But it�s not good -- nor is it fair -- if Warner and the General Assembly throw down the gauntlet and challenge our colleges and universities to excel in this or that discipline while simultaneously siphoning away truckloads of state dollars from their operating and instructional budgets.

It�s simply not enough to think our six major Ph.D.-granting institutions can reach new heights merely by attracting over the next handful of years a few hundred million more research dollars from the feds and other sources, while at the same time the state is short-changing them by about $170 million in basic aid.

This summer, the Warner administration�s secretariats, departments, and agencies will begin assembling their budget requests for the coming year. Generally, this process goes through the fall, and then in mid-December the governor presents to the legislature his notion of what the revised budget should look like.

Budgets, as we all know, are reflections of priorities. If the governor wants to propel another 15 research programs to national acclaim -- and maintain the excellence of the ones already there -- then he�ll have to make some very hard budget decisions.

And if the General Assembly, thinking back on Wilkins� similar challenge, wants to join Warner in his goals for our higher ed system, then legislators shouldn�t leave it to the governor to shoulder all the tough decisions.

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