by Gordon C. Morse

I learned earlier today of the death of Gordon K. Davies, the former head of the State Council for Higher Education. He was ousted from that post almost 30 years ago, and Virginia was the less for it.

Occasionally, the commonwealth attracts brilliance to its service, and Gordon was brilliant enough to get on people’s nerves. As the familiar line goes, he did not suffer fools gladly—though in Gordon’s case, he wasn’t going to suffer them silently, either.

The old-guard Democrats—the ones still holding onto power in the late 1990s—would have protected Davies, not because he was especially lovable, but because he delivered the goods. He knew his stuff. He understood that Virginia’s system of higher education—in its history, ideals, and defining characteristics—really amounted to no system at all. It was mostly an idea. Davies understood why that idea required protection, partly because he knew how many times it had come under assault.

The attempts to centralize and homogenize Virginia higher education—to build a superboard in Richmond, with a “chancellor” on a throne—were routine and resolute from the 1920s forward. Formal legislative commissions were formed, consultants were hired, recommendations were hauled before the General Assembly repeatedly, all with one essential goal: efficiency.

Efficiency had carried the day in many other states and, based on Virginia’s parsimonious inclinations, it’s a wonder that centralization never got done. Virginia adopted that model for its community college system, but every time an opportunity arose to put Richmond in command of the state’s 15 colleges and universities, the powers responded with a single word: No.

The why of that—what Virginia produced as a result, in the form of Virginia’s unusually distinct and successful institutions of higher learning—sits at the core of an effort I undertook a few years ago. It’s a book and, lord help me, they’re not easy to do. Much more fun to sit down, like this, and pound out something that gets done in a couple thousand words or so.

I knew Davies. His reign overlapped the administration of Gov. Jerry Baliles, in which I served. Everyone in our shop admired him and watched what they said. He had joined SCHEV in 1973 and became director four years later. He remained director for the next 20 years and, on his way out the door, he was asked to pen a valedictory and did so.

As best I can tell, there aren’t many copies floating around, but I have one copy of a copy and got a little arbitrary on what follows. I looked for the good parts and much of it is astoundingly good and still dead on. Is this a bit of tribute to Davies? You betcha.

Excerpts of
“Twenty Years of Higher Education in Virginia” (1997)
Gordon K. Davies

I do not think I was wrong to regard college as an intellectual adventure, although many did not then and do not today. Colleges and universities provide many essential services to the people of Virginia and the nation. They help women and men prepare themselves for work and economic self-sufficiency. They solve technical problems and create knowledge that improves the human condition: better food, cleaner air and water, life-saving medicines and procedures – the list goes on and on.

But in the end, the highest purpose of all education is to help people learn how to live in the world — how to live what Aristotle called a “good life.” This purpose complements and fulfills the practical aims of education. The well-educated person not only has acquired skills and knowledge, but knows why she has acquired them and what to do with them for the common good.

After all the job-related courses; the training in computer and other technologies; after all the cooperative relationships with industry and all the synergies between higher education and economic development; after all the exploitation of modern communications networks as new ways to deliver instruction …

After all this, if women and men have not learned to choose “good lives” as a result of the hours or years they spend with us, they will march someday at the behest of demagogues. I am aware, as is anyone who remembers World War II, that learning in the liberal arts is no guarantee against tyranny. But minds ignorant of the best that has been thought and said in human history seem to me to be particularly fertile ground for intolerance and brutality. Liberal education may not guarantee decent human behavior, but decent behavior is far less likely in its absence.

Education is not a trivial business, a private good or a discretionary expenditure. It is a deeply ethical undertaking at which we must succeed if we are to survive as a free people. The founders of this Commonwealth, who were eminent among the founders of this nation, seem to have known this more certainly than we do today. As the millennium approaches, and we engage in introspection, as we inevitably shall, we might ask whether Virginians have the conviction and commitment to make education the single highest priority of government.

In my 1987 report, I identified many of the issues which we would have to deal in the coming decade. But I did not foresee the economic recession that caused us to spend the first half of the 1990s slashing budgets and increasing tuition until the very notion of what it means to be a Virginia “state supported” college or university is in question.

I foresaw the need for restructuring—the kind of change that does not come easily and that comes only at a price—but I missed the intensified politicization of education that has infected our nation in this decade and now threatens Virginia higher education. For all the difficulties, Virginia still is committed to the first principles of public higher education: every citizen who can benefit deserves access to it, and those responsible for the system of colleges and universities should make that education as good as we possibly can. But this commitment now is attenuated by the absence of political leadership, rising levels of intolerance in our society, and meanness of spirit.

The responsibility for supporting the colleges and universities has been shifted to students and their families because, with less state support, there was nowhere else to go for money. Tuition has become a user tax on people investing in the future—their own and their children’s.

About 20 years ago, Virginia adopted a policy that required the colleges and universities to generate about one-third of their operating revenues for their main educational activities from tuition: the state would provide the remainder.

That policy, refined as the system of higher education evolved, was enforced until the recession of the early 1990s. Then, as state support was slashed over a period of three years, the colleges and universities sought and were given authority to increase tuition in order to stay afloat. The state provided major increases in student financial aid to help those who simply could not pay the higher prices, but today slightly less than half of the operating revenues for the main educational activities come from tuition and fees.

From a financial perspective, we probably saved the colleges and universities from disaster by moving quickly to replace the lost state support. It may have been the right decision in a bad situation, but it was not good public policy, and we shall live with its consequences for some time to come. High tuition has fueled a widely held perception that higher education is a private rather than a public good. From a consumer standpoint, it is viewed as a service purchased at a high price with no resulting social or ethical obligation to the recipient. No matter that half the costs of college education still are subsidized by the taxes of citizens, many of whom will never participate in higher education themselves, the notion of higher education as a public good—as one of the cohesive elements that holds society together—is largely discounted today.

When Virginia decides that higher education is, in fact, critical to the state’s continuing economic development as well as to the ability of its citizens to lead good lives, its elected officials will see the wisdom of supporting colleges and universities at least as well as they did in 1987 (that is, about as well as Maryland does). We then should consider additional forms of tuition subsidy for all Virginians. Now, when state financial aid for low-income students is only about one-third of what is needed, and state support for colleges and universities places Virginia 44th among the states, the state should support its institutions adequately and provide financial aid for the needy among our citizens.

Leave politics at the door.

Political interference in colleges and universities is nothing new. But it comes and goes, and now its intensity is increasing. Because higher education in America is the door to everywhere—because it is what virtually everyone wants or needs—it is no wonder that factions want to control it. They want it to be responsive to their perceptions of what needs to be done.

Those responsible for colleges and universities have an obligation to listen respectfully, to meet challenging needs as best they can, and to decline to be controlled.

It is unfortunate that we seem to have entered into another phase of overt political interference with higher education because it distracts colleges and universities from important changes they need to make. We are deciding how to prepare the women and men who will sustain the kind of society we want to live in. Partisan political agendas, ideology, and even the political maneuvering occasion by pensive institutional ambitions, divert attention from the truly important issues of the day.

We need, in short, boards whose members, in the strong tradition of lay governance, mirror the defining values of an ideal citizenry: involved, enlightened, tolerant, and able to negotiate differences of opinion.

The best defense of colleges and universities finally lies in the hands of the women and men who are appointed to govern them. Their good judgment and shared commitment to long-range educational objectives are essential.

Governing boards have different responsibilities now that the academy is closely involved with other social institutions and the body politic, rather than distant as it was until only a few decades ago. In addition to their fiduciary responsibilities, board members now should help senior administrators form essential collaborative relationships and understand the environment within which they are working. This means that they should be experienced, well connected, and able to work effectively in an unsettled environment.

Board members richer in conviction than in professional experience or maturity may threaten the freedom of inquiry that is the foundation of institutions of higher learning by attempting to impose their personal opinions upon the curriculum, the composition of the student body, or the services provided by the system and the institutions. Those who fear change and do not understand the necessity for it may impede the work of institutions or whole systems preparing for the challenges of a postindustrial society.

There is no easy way to ensure that the right kinds of persons are appointed to boards. But alarm about what is happening in some states has caused the national Association of Governing Boards to advocate creation of review panels that would evaluate the credentials of possible board members and create lists of qualified candidates from which the appointing authorities can select their nominees. The idea has merit and might be considered here in Virginia.

American systems of higher education are complex even chaotic. Students progress through them in a variety of ways that surprise even those of us who are supposed to be responsible for them. Our systems combine, and seek to hold in productive tension, the right of individual women and men to shape their own learning and the responsibility of government to use its revenues as efficiently and as effectively as possible.

There is no simple formula for doing this—only our creative adaptations to unanticipated change. The systems of higher education are as distinctively American as jazz, and like jazz, our systems of higher education thrive on improvisation.

I think the systems were simpler in 1955 when I began college; I know they were simpler in 1977 when I became director of the State Council of Higher Education. But ideas still matter, and the need for lifelong learning is greater than it ever has been. We can be grateful that Virginia’s colleges and universities remain dedicated to creating knowledge and transmitting it for the common good.

These institutions require constant attention if they are to remain dynamic because the future is the accumulation of our present decisions. Virginia now needs leadership that will help colleges and universities be strong and vibrant partners in developing the Commonwealth. What we create today will determine how our children and grandchildren live tomorrow.

Gordon C. Morse has been writing commentary and speeches in Virginia since 1983. This column his republished with permission from his Substack account Heart’s Desire.