Helen Dragas was on the University of Virginia’s board of visitors for eight years and served as its chairman or “rector.” During that time she tried, unsuccessfully, to replace the school’s President, Teresa Sullivan. Now, Dragas is back in the news – crusading against rising tuition. But as Sandy Hausman reports, some critics find fault with her ideas and tactics.
Helen Dragas was a founder and now chairs the board of Partners 4 Affordable Excellence – a non-profit dedicated to accelerating change at America’s premier public research universities. In an Op Ed for the Washington Post last summer, she complained about what she called crushing policies made by the disconnected elite at UVA, and attacked a pool of money she branded a slush fund. Over nine years, the school had accumulated $2.2 billion even as tuition for in-state undergrads went up 74%
“At the same time that we were amassing the funds, Virginians were having to pay more and more and more,” Dragas recalls.
Media Studies Professor Siva Vaidhyanathan and top university administrators say the money in question was no slush fund.
“The Strategic Investment Fund is an essential financial move by the university to bolster particular areas of research where UVA can take major steps forward and can distinguish itself and make a great contribution to society,” he says.
Vaidhyanathan accuses Dragas of using dishonest methods to attack school administrators. For example, he says, her foundation commissioned a poll of 600 Virginia voters.
“It’s essentially a push poll where a pollster will call up people and feed them information and give them a very limited set of choices. She tried to assess why tuition is going up at state universities and gave them no options that reflect reality.”
Twenty-five percent of those surveyed agreed with the suggestion that college administrators are wasting too much money. Vaidhyanathan says that isn’t so.
“The university systems throughout the state of Virginia are running lean. They’re serving students very well. We have maintained and expanded our research capability, the ways we teach.”
The poll offered other possible reasons for rising tuition – that colleges are trying to keep up with their competitors, that availability of loans encouraged charging more, or that schools were building nicer dorms and recreational facilities to attract more students. Pollsters did not suggest that reduced state funding was a factor, but Vaidhyanathan says that is the big one.
“Tuition is going up at state universities, because state funding per student has been going down for many years. We are way behind peers in states like Maryland and North Carolina.”
But Dragas claims reduced state aid cannot fully explain rising prices.
“In fact, for every one dollar cut in state funding, there’s been a two dollar increase in tuition.”
That claim comes from a legislative committee that compared tuitions charged at 15 state schools from 1996 to 2015. Over that time, in-state tuition increased by nearly $3,200 per student, while state aid dropped by just over $16-hundred, but the tuition hike is an average, skewed by an especially large increase at William and Mary.
A statistical expert at the Weldon Cooper Center said the claim of a $2 tuition hike for every dollar cut is a crude measure that overlooks many differences in state schools. UVA, for example, lost $4,100 per student – more than double the state average. And the legislative report itself concludes the top reason for tuition hikes was uneven state support.
Statistical issues aside, Dragas blames higher costs on campus for a slowdown in the state’s economy.
“Higher education is really inextricably linked to economic growth and opportunity, and Virginia’s economic growth has lagged for the past six years.”
She did not mention reduced federal spending on defense – a huge driver of this state’s economy.
Dragas hopes the poll will help lawmakers in Richmond. They’ve introduced more than 20 higher ed bills to, among other things, require that 75% of students admitted be from the Commonwealth, limit financial aid to out-of-state students, require that governing boards give notice and hold public hearings before raising tuition and guarantee incoming students a cap on the cost of a four-year education.