The dialogue continues: Rao responds to students in WVCW interview

Erica Terrini

News Editor

VCU’s student radio, WVCW, continued their series of conversations with administration Wednesday with an interview with university President Michael Rao.

Radio DJ Michael Campbell, a sophomore mass communications major, hosts the VCU News Room radio show that ran the series.

During the interview, Rao first responded to concerns regarding VCU’s budget. Later, Rao answered student questions that were submitted to WVCW via e-mail and to WVCW’s Twitter page.

Introductions

Michael Campbell: We want to get to know you Dr. Rao. Let’s tell our listeners a little bit about your self.

VCU President, Michael Rao: Sure … It’s hard to know where to begin. I’ve served as a president now for 16 years. Most of those years at Central Michigan University, the place where I served before I came here. Most of my career has been in higher education.

The job

Rao: It’s something that has obviously been near and dear to my heart. I love VCU partly because it’s got such an incredibly focused mission. I love the research mission but I also love the access mission. It’s been a great place for people to come to transform their lives and much of my career is focused in those areas.

Getting down to business

Campbell: So, given the recent general assembly, how has VCU’s budget been and how have you been managing that situation?

Rao: Well you know, I will say that I am really pleased to have been in a place like Michigan where for about a decade it was a struggle there. Economically, as you know, it’s a manufacturing-based state and of course, in the last decade manufacturing took a real tumble and so that university faced the kind of circumstances we face now.

The challenge

Rao: The challenge for us is of course that, I mentioned to you the importance of access in our mission and we’ve done a lot of that through low tuition, but when you try and combine that with low appropriation, which is the money that we get from the state, which is really a direct relationship so what ever you get from the state and you compare that to what you get in terms of tuition that really is going to be … it determines what your tuition is going to be.

The current financial state

Rao: So, if you take tuition or rather appropriations down to a lower level, which is exactly what happens come about a year from now – $43 million less than we have today – it creates a real problem for us.

And that’s on top of a situation that’s already challenging to begin with, in that, we rank 40th in the United States and that was a couple of years ago in terms of per student funding from the state and last in the South East among South Eastern states including states like Mississippi, which have a historically low funding base.

So, it’s a challenge but it’s not one we can’t get through.

The concerns

Rao: I think we have to make some choices about what we want. I’ve been listening to students for a while now … We’ve seen a reduction in sections; we’ve seen a reduction in electives and a significant reduction in the faculty before you’ve come and all this has happened – while in the last ten years we’ve actually seen an increase in the student population of about 8,500 students and then of course access becomes in jeopardy to, even though people perceive our tuition to be low today, it’s only low compared to the other institutions but the problem with that is we don’t even come close to meeting financial aid needs.

The choices

Rao: So, something bold has to be done. I know that from my experiences. Sometimes what you’re doing appears on the surface to be a difficult, bold, tough decision but if nothing is done at all, that’s a bad decision–that is to do nothing … So, I’m really concerned about the fact that we are where we are because it puts us in a terrible position. My first year of having to make a really tough choice and that is either to cut and why would you cut an institution that’d already so bare bones.

It’s an institution that has far too few faculty, has very little financial aid compared to the needs of it’s students so why would you cut? I don’t see that as an option.

The bottom line

Rao: My only recommendation is that we move further toward doing more fund raising but we also need to do, and that’s of course going to take years before it comes back to us, what are we going to do to look more like our peers in every respect in terms of performance?

What we can do for our students with financial aid, what we can offer in the classroom in terms of faculty and how do we protect quality overall and of course, that does leave us with nothing when you have the state’s fund in the situation that it is, that leaves us nothing but tuition.

And so, what we’re probably going to look to do is have our tuition paid by the students who can afford it the most based on the expected family income.

To hear the entire interview, visit blog.vcu.edu/wvcw or www.commonwealthtimes.org.