Barnie, I thought your "Paradox" post was plenty provocative, but your comment in response to Jim was off the scale. I believe you've hinted before at sacrosanct "job creation" as the fundamental culprit in at least NVA's transportation "crisis," but I've never seen you express it quite as forcefully. I hope you'll consider doing a column on it someday so that mainstream media readers get the "Full Barnie" on this one.
The caterwauling would be deafening.
I'd like to use your exchange with Jim to segue into what I see as a related issue--a university in Southside.
As I'm sure most readers know, there's a proposal to either start a new state university in Southside Virginia from scratch or have a consortium of existing universities start one. It's been discussed for years. The State Council for Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV) recently threw cold water on the idea in a report to the General Assembly. I described the report in polstate.com as "SHEV to Southside: Drop Dead." When Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine, a proponent of a Southside university, reacted to the report, I described it as "Kaine to SCHEV: Drop Dead."
I always wanted to use those tabloid headlines.
Anyway, I am totally baffled as to why this university idea is not a total slam-dunk. We know that there will be unrelenting pressure to create more state university slots for our growing Virginia population. We should know that creating more slots at current universities in gridlocked areas like Charlottesville, Fairfax, Williamsburg, and Fredericksburg is problematic. There is land and private grant money available in Southside. Southside is a struggling area and a university would bring a welcome shot in the arm economically.
What's SCHEV's problem? There might not be enough Southside kids who would or could attend. Northern Virginia kids might not be attracted to Southside. Building a unversity in Southwest's Wise County did not create an economic boom there.
I'm not buying this. Gov. Warner is proposing $21 million on a "Virginia Works" hodgepodge of initiatives for struggling Virginia communities, none of which is guaranteed to create any jobs beyond those that hand out the money and none of which is guaranteed to create any lasting economic development infrastructure. A university would create jobs and an infrastructure that would have the potential to be an economic driver for the region.
Build it and they will come. If the choice is no state university slot or a slot in Southside, kids and their parents will choose Southside. Southside would benefit from an influx of "come heres." The traditional lament is that the best and brightest kids leave economically struggling areas and don't come back. Well, kids leave NVA and don't come back, too. The difference is that other kids come and stay. They attend GMU, then decide to stay and take a job or start a business. They see and make opportunities. That's what Southside needs.
A new university could also design itself to take advantage of sensible and sustainable development policies, using the experience of other Virginia regions that did not think far enough ahead. A new university could innovative in educational programs that weren't just condescendingly referred to as serving "rural" student needs.
Maybe a Southside university would study the Wise example and do things diffferently.
In Virginia, when government largesse is handed out, the rich get richer and the poor get crumbs. If we are truly concerned about traffic and overdevelopment in certain parts of the state, it makes sense to place institutions that could be anywhere in places where there aren't a lot of institutions already. Why add to gridlock in Fairfax by adding more classrooms and dorms at GMU?
I'd be interested in your thoughts, Barnie, as you are from those parts that I think ought to be helped in a meaningful way. Maybe you see it differently.
Sunday, January 23, 2005
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3 comments:
Will, thanks for the note. Before we get to SCHEV and the southside school, you're an economic developer, explain for me a local government's arguing for growth control legislation, while simultaneously pursuing economic development at breathless pace. I did, indeed, fall off of a turnip truck, but I didn't land on my head. Go over that one for me.
In the matter of a new southside school, Virginia Tech, and I assume every other school in the state, will oppose this to the death. Why would that be? They will view any new state school as coming into competion with them--not for students (we're turning them away by the tens of thousands), but for state dollars. Assume that what the state spends on higher-ed is a finite number, whatever it may be. If your name is already on a slice of that pie, would you prefer that the pie be sliced into 15 pieces, or 16?
They will further argue that the state is not meeting its current obligations (hence the so-called 'charter' move), how can it take on more? And there is some validity to that--though I oppose the charter thing. I will tell you why in a moment.
There are some wonderful arguments for it--okay, maybe a couple of cheap theatrical ones, too. It would be an economic boon to the area. No question. We've got another 30-40,000 kids coming on-line looking for a school to go to--what's the plan for them? How about this one? If you could only do one, would you rather build a new prison or a new university? Put that one to your favorite legislator in a public forum.
And then there is this: is there market demand for a new one in southside? May well be. In this age of privitization, this free-market Rennaisance, why do we insist on examing the future with that old, worn-out model called 'the guvment?' If there is demand for it, why not let the market build it? Just a thought.
Lastly, the 'charter' initiative. If tuitions go to what the market will bear, these top tier schools are so good, and such a bargain, that the tuitions could easily triple and there would still be a waiting line stretching from here to Tennessee--and these top tier schools could easily fill up with 4.0, rich snot-noses from New Jersey. I ask myself one question when contemplating 'charter' status: will it make it easier, or harder, for my kids out in this part of the state to get in? The answer to that is 'harder.' And that, by Gawd, is why I'm agin hit!
Oh, sure, tar me with being an economic developer.
Luckily, I work in the poor stepchild part of economic development, the one that tries to help businesses already in Virginia and entrepreneurs who want to start businesses. I don't know as I could live with myself if my job was to lure new companies into already developed areas, although it's amazing what you'll do to put food on the table.
Silly me about state funding for more university slots. I guess I just figured that with a budget surplus that wasn't going to be returned to the taxpayers, some of that money might make its way into projects to expand enrollment. Guess there are too many localized pork-barrel projects to fund out of that surplus.
You make a good point about a private university. I don't know much about the Heritage Foundation and their $50 million, but that ought to be enough to start a university in Martinsville-Henry County, a university that could innovate and keep costs under control. Of course, we'd have to keep explaining any expansion projects at state schools to the free enterprise folks of Southside.
Count me against charters, too. When I read that charter universities could achieve all sorts of economic efficiencies if they were unshackled, I had to wonder why they screamed so much when the legislature cut their budgets. Couldn't they get any efficiencies out of those cuts?
Virginia universities have a good reputation because they offer a great undergraduate education. This charter university plan seems like a scheme to turn VT and UVA into more graduate-oriented institutions that can grab all sorts of high tech research grants(Why William and Mary, my alma mater, is in that mix is beyond me). I don't agree with emphasizing research and graduate study if that's not what you already do well.
I guess we'll end up with funding another study to see if a Southside state university is feasible. Has anyone ever added up how much Virginia spends each year on studies?
We could probably pave a new road or two if we declared a moratorium on studies for a few years.
Will, please understand that I don't seriously advocate tolling job creation--though I do believe we sometimes do a poor job of designing incentives. The worst incentive program I ever came across involved an archaelogist on a Biblical dig in Israel. He hired some local laborers and told them that he would pay them twenty-five cents for each piece of pottery turned in. Of course, to his horror, it was some time later that he realized they were finding 2000-year-old intact urns and breaking them up with hammers! Some of our programs are almost as bad. Superficially they make sense, but they produce idiotic behaviors. Square foot for square foot, NOVA is undoubtedly the strongest economic engine on the planet and I understand better than most that all of Virginia benefits from that miracle--especially us out this way. But to say we want those 10,000 jobs--but not the people and the people needs--housing, roads, etc.--that come with them is, frankly, idiotic. They're inseparable and the best public policy will recognize that fact. I don't really understand some of this 'settlement pattern' stuff that has made its way into the transportation debate. Somehow, it doesn't have currency with me. It puts me in the mind of the 'good news' plane crash that didn't happen. There is a reason you never see a reporter standing in an open field, saying, "And the good news today is, Dan, that a plane did not crash here today. Now back to you." It has no relevancy. I recognize an absurdity in all of this conjestion, this traffic, debate: we can get rid of overcrowding, sprawl, over-development, all of it--but the wealth and well-being we so desire must go with it. The relationship is, I'm pretty sure, a causal one.
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