University of Virginia Library

Shannon In Richmond

Despite several cuts in its requests, the
University appears to be doing quite well in
its biennial search for funds from the General
Assembly-a reflection both on the good
fiscal planning and effective lobbying of the
University's administrators and on the willingness
of this year's remarkable legislature
to support higher education in the Commonwealth.
The only major "oversight"
on Governor Godwin's part concerned the
formula used to determine the number of
new faculty members that could be hired,
but President Shannon's appearance last
week before the joint budget committee
should have corrected the matter.

The "oversight" in question was the result
of the Division of the Budget's use of a
new formula for determining the faculty-student
ratio that the state will finance.

The University had determined its request
on the basis of the formula of the Southern
Regional Education Board, Under this
formula, a graduate assistant is counted as
one-half of a regular member of the faculty.

The state budget office, however, made
its recommendations to the legislature on the
basis of counting a full time graduate
assistant equal to a regular teacher.

The unfortunate result was that the University
was scheduled to hire 23 fewer new
faculty members than it had requested to
meet national and regional standards.

Mr. Shannon's testimony January 29
should result in these faculty positions being
restored. He told the economy-mined legislators
that "you get a good return on your
investment" of money spent for graduate
and professional instruction at the University.
He pointed out that in 1966-67
the instructional cost per graduate credit
hour was lower at the University than the
average of the ten other state institutions
offering graduate work.

**********************

The funds the General Assembly is likely
to provide for higher education are only one
part, of course, of the legislature's "new
look" this year. The same day that Mr.
Shannon appeared in the Capitol to testify,
the Senate approved the local option
whiskey-by-the-drink bill that will end a
particularly silly vestige of Prohibition in
many Virginia localities (may Charlottesville
be one of them!).

Other major developments include:

—Authorizing a Commission on Constitutional
Development, which includes former
President of the University Colgate Darden,
that will overhaul Virginia's 1900 vintage
constitution.

—Breaking with the hallowed fiscal tradition
of pay-as-you-go to allow a referendum
next November on issuing up to $81-million
in bonds for college and hospital construction-including
a number of buildings at the
University.

—Recognizing, in general, that if the
Organization, or what's left of it, is to
survive in modern Virginia, it must adapt
itself to the new political reality: namely,
an increasingly urbanized population demanding
more services from the state,
particularly in such long neglected fields
as education and mental health.

As Helen Dewar of the Washington Post
has commented, the Virginia General
Assembly, the Nation's oldest deliberative
body, has been known historically more
for its deliberateness than for its speed.
This year, however, it is moving at an
unprecentented but welcomed-pace.