Here’s a thought: what if the University of Virginia, in reparation to the Virginia taxpayer, helped kick off a satellite school in Martinsville, Virginia that focused not only on two-year degrees, but linked the school itself to UVA’s distance education effort as a means to bolster it’s online education presence, thus not only bringing UVA into the 21st century but providing thousands of opportunities to economically-distressed Southside Virginia?
Sounds fantastic? Not if you really think about what could happen if UVA adopted the New College Institute in Martinsville.
Give this some serious consideration. Most folks know about the controversy swirling around the $2.3 billion “slush fund” and the University of Virginia’s rapid efforts to collect hostages grantees around these ill-gotten gains. In an entirely separate circumstance, the New College Institute in Martinsville — an effort to provide a four-year institution in Southside — is on the cusp of capturing another $26 million in matching grants is hovering over the project… that is, provided it maintains its mission of staying a four-year institution:
The Times-Dispatch reported in August 2015 that Wampler had received total compensation of $450,000 a year during his 3½-year term as executive director, during which he used his influence at the General Assembly and what now is called the Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission to raise $19.2 million to build a technologically advanced center in a long-neglected area of Martinsville.
Now, the New College is looking for a new, permanent leader and considering a proposal to affiliate with Longwood University in the face of pressure by the Harvest Foundation, a community nonprofit organization that committed $50 million in 2006, to create an institution to award four-year degrees in the region.
On Sept. 1, the Harvest Foundation informed the New College Foundation, formed to support the institute, that it would condition the release of almost $26 million remaining under the challenge grant either to establishing the New College as a “new four-year college or university” or becoming a branch of an existing state university.
Read the article. It’s clear that there are a number of goals at cross purposes with one another — workforce reinvestment and two year degrees vs. the desire to build a four-year institution in the heart of Martinsville, all the while with the Virginia General Assembly one the cusp of appointing legislators to oversee the entire project.
But are these goals really at cross purposes? Does NCI really have to choose? Let’s argue otherwise for a moment — a modest proposal (if you will) about how to make NCI work.
Our grand solution? Take a tiny fraction of UVA’s slush fund and marry it to UVA’s expertise, and demonstrate the University’s interest in promoting in-state workforce training and re-investment by adopting the New College Institute.
The article in the RTD is worth reading in full, as it describes the potential for members of the General Assembly to swoop in and help steady the ship over at NCI.
Of course, there are some strings attached. In a region where perhaps 1 in 10 are college educated, getting a four-year degree is rarely an invitation to stay in Southside Virginia. More often than not, it is an inducement to leave. Two year educations — associates degrees and trade certification — are the #1 inducement for major businesses to relocate to an area… but the remaining $26 million grant simply isn’t designed to prop up a community college.
So the question is whether or not these goals are mutually exclusive. One would think not… so potential ways forward:
(1) Ask the University of Virginia Strategic Investment Fund match the Harvest Foundation grant at $26 million. This will enable NCI to purchase its currently existing building from the New College Foundation and use the $300,000 to help address some of the critical needs of the institution, as well as building a credible endowment to help implement the mission of the institution.
(2) Allow New College Institute to partner with the University of Virginia and structure its environment so as to be a satellite college on par with UVA-Wise. This was slightly controversial when UVA-Wise was first named, but has passed into legend. If there is anything that would demonstrate the seriousness of the Commonwealth to attending to the needs of Southside Virginia, our flagship institution’s investment and interest would be an interesting way to resolve the “slush fund” scandal by demonstrating immense good faith.
(3) Create partnerships with local high schools to allow them to offer two-year programs within the traditional secondary format. This will take effort, but it is being duplicated elsewhere in Virginia.
(4) Create a scholarship where anyone with a 3.0 GPA at an in-state and accredited Virginia institution can attend NCI free of charge. Missouri has a similar program for two-year institutions, and though I have proposed this solution in the past for VCCS as a means of reinforcing workforce development and retraining — especially in an era of automation — it would seem appropriate as an inducement to bring talent to Southside rather than repel it with four year degrees.
(5) Absolutely focus on two-year associate programs as a starting point. What’s the first thing any prospective mid-to-large scale business wants to see in a region? A preponderance of two-year degrees. Such individuals are stable, stay put, well educated for the task at hand, and are frankly a relatively easy investment for the Commonwealth.
(6) …and let UVA offer the rest. Let’s face it — right now at NCI? The offerings are pretty thin. UVA could weld it to their School of Continuing and Professional Studies… or any other four-year institution’s effort to go digital.
(7) Find something NCI should be known for. One can probably sit down and think about what each of Virginia’s four-year colleges are known for producing. In Southside Virginia, having an institution known for doing one thing and one thing well is a flagpole that others who may not be there for a similar reason can salute. True, no one is building any philosophy factories anytime soon… but the humanities still have their place.
To abstract from what past presidential candidates have mentioned, in Virginia our welders should know philosophy. To borrow from Mr. Jefferson, who boasted about a specific type of wheel created from young saplings, the practice was well known in America before it was ever borrowed by the English. His reasoning?
The writer in the paper, supposes the English workman got his idea from Homer. But it is more likely the Jersey farmer got his idea from thence, because ours are the only farmers who can read Homer; because, too, the Jersey practice is precisely that stated by Homer: the English practice very different.
Consider that Virginia has seen an incredible rise in state population over the last 20 years, and we have not truly seen another four year institution emerge — rather, we have seen existing institutions burst at the seams (George Mason, VCU, and Christopher Newport come to mind as examples).
Members of the Virginia General Assembly truly interested in creating something in Martinsville should consider the possibilities of directing NCI to partner with UVA while holding on tightly to the possibility of working to establish two-year certifications and associates by working with local high schools — as is done elsewhere in Virginia.
If a plan gets to paper, and the right case is made to both the Harvest Foundation and the University of Virginia (preferably by members of the Virginia General Assembly still itching for answers as to how that “slush fund” was ever aggregated in the first place)?
This could be a stone that knocks out several birds — all to the positive.