University of Virginia Library

Financial Problems
Hurt Old Dominion

By Steve Grimwood
Cavalier Daily Staff Writer

Old Dominion University, one
of the five universities in Virginia, is
in serious financial difficulties. The
House of Delegates, Appropriations
Committee announced that Old
Dominion had been allocated $709
per student, instead of the $917
allocation which had been asked for
by President James Bugg. Old
Dominion will receive less money
than any of the five two-year
community colleges in Virginia. It
now ranks twenty-third among the
state-supported institutions in proposed
per-student expenditures.

In 1969, The State Council of
Higher Education and the Governor
authorized a new average faculty
salary level for Old Dominion. The
proposed budget will reduce the
authorized salary level by an
average of $2,000 per faculty
member, leaving an increase of only
$200 for the coming year. This will
make it impossible for the University
to hold their better professors,
as this increase fails even to meet
the rise in the cost of living.

The Board of Visitors of Old
Dominion has asked the State to
restore the previous budget in order
to make faculty averages competitive
with similar urban universities,
enable the university library to
meet minimum standards, and to
avoid rapid deterioration of the
physical plant. Under the new
budget, Old Dominion will be
forced to reduce or eliminate
graduate programs in education,
business and the arts and sciences
along with abandoning plans for a
Ph.D. program in engineering. Containment
or reduction of enrollment
and the elimination of several
special programs will also have to
be considered.

The mission assigned to Old
Dominion University by The Commonwealth
of Virginia was to
become an urban university, emphasizing
the special needs of the
Metropolitan Hampton Roads region.
The Board of Visitors of the
University has instructed President
Bugg to bring before the appropriate
officials of the Commonwealth
the serious fiscal crisis
confronting Old Dominion because
they do not believe that the
University can fulfill its mission
under the proposed budget.

The solution of the problems
lies not in the hands of the State
Appropriations Committee, but in
the hands of the Finance Committee,
for none of the money
problems facing the State's educational
institutions will be solved
without tapping a new source of
income for the State. Either more
money will have to be found, or all
State institutions will have to start
playing the game of who has
priority, and, unfortunately, educational
institutions are usually the
first to suffer, a fact which is now
all too obvious to the students and
administrators of Virginia's schools.