Leslie & Berdahl: The Politics of Restructuring in VA

This article discussed the changes that happened as a result of the "Big 3"- VA Tech, W&M, and UVa- wanted to become less dependent on the state.  They were looking for deregulation, privatization, and using the market.  Nevertheless, the state seems these institutions in particular as ways for the state to receive some revenue.

In 2005, the state allowed public schools to apply for this as long as they met 11 goals (it is not 12 and could be more over time depending on the legislature's wants).  Pg. 321 discusses that this could be part of some future "legislative mischief" by having options for additional amendments-- could this make the decentralization to hard to upkeep or make it just a pretense with all the check boxes schools might have to fill?

Garbage Can Model- three separate streams:  problems, policies (ideas/solutions), politics-- pg 311.  These streams come in with a window of opportunity for policy makers.

Here are some of the different streams that the Big 3 wanted to fix/have more control over:

• regulations from state bureaucracy-- rigid and inflexible
• competition for control over setting tuition
• inconsistent state appropriations (I am still working without a budget and have been doing this since July-- I hope I have the same funding as last year....)
• ambiguous strategic priorities
• incremental interdependence from state funds (but the schools want more interdependence 

Decentralization has been happening over the past 15 years, and having a new political player-- Gov Warner and his business background-- influence the legislature to think about this 2005 act. 

Nevertheless, this didn't work out for the Big 3 as intended-- but it did provide opportunities for all of the VA public four-year and community college institutions-- with those 11 clauses as indicated above.   

The schools were not completely unhappy with the 11 points, but I doubt anyone was entirely happy.

• "We also got something very different than we thought we were asking for...But we take the result as a fundamental state commitment to decentralization, and we feel all sides have entered new territory in good faith so far"  (pg. 319)
• More focused on output-- process can be intentional for each school

One of the continuing arguments/discussions is the ability for each school to determine tuition costs.  Schools have the authority to do this, in theory, but some of the proceeds go from the school directly to the state.  As a compromise, schools can set tuition, with six year projections.  I think this is good in theory; however, things can change during the course of the six year projections that might require an individual school or program not to increase tuition (like the intense competition between law schools-- some public like WM can't scholarship as well, but we can keep tuition low!)

A big thing with more decentralization is that each school can manage their own capital projects, human resources, etc all on their own, and allows each school to decide how to use state appropriations and to try to make individual institutions more efficient and stretch their budgets further. (pg. 317)

So what will ultimately happen with the decentralization?  Will quality and efficiency increase, better revenue streams?

The article starts and ends with questioning if this model can work for other states.  The authors don't want to say one example means it can be overarching for other state systems, and VA school admins also don't want to say this could work everywhere since each public system has such a different infrastructure.