In the 1980s, after the railroad headquarters left Roanoke and other changes to the economy started to undermine longtime employers, the city wallowed in despair over its future. City leaders began to look over the mountains to Virginia Tech. They began to understand that universities are economic engines, and they tried to figure out some way to build a closer connection with the school in Blacksburg.
There was a proposal for a shortcut from Interstate 81 to Blacksburg to reduce the travel time — a road that never got built beyond the test bed for the “Smart Road.” When the Virginia Tech Foundation decided to buy the shuttered Hotel Roanoke, city officials were thrilled. It may have seemed just a nameplate on a hotel, but the move revived a cherished landmark and helped give Roanoke some modest tie to Virginia Tech.
Today, look at what’s happened: Virginia Tech now has a medical school and research institute in Roanoke, with the economic impact now estimated at $457.7 million a year.
The Roanoke Valley now has an entirely new economic sector, all of which can be traced back to that decision more than three decades ago for Tech to take over the hotel.
Today, an analogous situation is playing out in another Virginia community, but with very different political dynamics that run the risk of making a bad situation worse.
Appalachian School of Law, a private, nonprofit law school in Grundy, is losing money. It had looked into a merger with Roanoke College in Salem, a merger that would also have entailed a move to the Roanoke Valley. The Buchanan County Board of Supervisors, which controls half the seats on the law school board, understandably took a dim view of that. No community wants to lose anything. Instead, the supervisors voted to give the school $3.4 million — a sum that will pay some bills now but ultimately won’t save the school.
Now another rescuer has appeared: the University of Pikeville, a private school about 43 miles up the road — and across the state line in Kentucky. Unlike Roanoke College, Pikeville would keep the law school where it is. This would seem the ideal solution: Appalachian stays in Grundy, but gets affiliated with a four-year school that can provide support. Strangely, some Buchanan County officials seem hesitant to embrace Pikeville — and perhaps even outright hostile out of concern about losing control of “their” law school. The county supervisors meet today in closed session to discuss the Pikeville offer.
Let’s review what we know.
- Appalachian has lost money in 10 of the past 11 years, a total of $19.7 million.
- This isn’t because the school has been profligate in its spending; a comparison of the school’s finances with other standalone law schools finds Appalachian generally spends less money per student. The problem is on the revenue end. Appalachian simply doesn’t have enough students — 184 when school officials say they’d like to have 300 to be sustainable. (I delved into all these numbers in a previous column.)
- Enrollment will be difficult to boost because law school enrollment nationally is declining and seems unlikely to reverse course as we enter an era where there’s a smaller pool of traditional college-age students because of declining birth rates, which are now starting to catch up with us.
There is lots of passion in some quarters in Buchanan County about “saving” the law school, but not even passion can stand up to cold facts. If Buchanan County wants the Appalachian School of Law to survive as an independent entity, then supervisors need to be prepared to not just make a one-time infusion of cash, but to prepare for annual subsidies for the law school. That’s a policy decision for supervisors to make: How do they want to spend the taxpayers’ money?
Buchanan County pays its teachers less than all but one other locality in Virginia (Russell County). The gap is not insubstantial. Based on figures from the Virginia Department of Education, a teacher in Buchanan County could make $5,002 a year more by driving across the line into Dickenson County or $8,428 a year more by driving into Tazewell County. Would raising teacher pay to make the county more competitive in the marketplace be a better use of county money than subsidizing the smallest independent law school in the country? Again, that’s a policy decision for supervisors. They just need to be aware that the school’s financial history suggests that it’s not going to break even. By blocking the proposed merger with Roanoke College — even if they had understandable reasons for doing so — supervisors indirectly have made themselves responsible for the school’s fate. If the school should ultimately fold (and small colleges close every year), that stain will attach itself to the board and the county at large: Buchanan County refused to let Appalachian stay alive by moving to Salem, but the county realistically may have to make some hard fiscal decisions to keep it alive at home.
That’s where Pikeville comes in.
When the Roanoke College merger was still on the table last December, Pikeville sent a fascinating proposal to the Buchanan County Supervisors: “Should ASL vacate the property, UPIKE respectfully requests to be considered as a successor institution to assume responsibility for and operate the site as an educational location that could support a range of future academic programming.”
What??
Pikeville wanted to set up some kind of branch operation in Grundy. What locality these days turns down a chance to get even a small piece of a college?
Technically, the Buchanan supervisors didn’t turn down Pikeville; they simply preferred to keep Appalachian, which makes perfect sense. However, if Pikeville is interested in expanding its operations to Grundy, Buchanan supervisors, this is a rare opportunity. Geography, and demography, have dealt Buchanan County a hard hand. Its historic industry — coal — isn’t dead, but isn’t what it was and never will be again. The county is losing population at a faster rate than any locality in Virginia — down 6.6% since the last census, down 47.4% from when it peaked in 1980. Nor is there any official prospect of improvement. The Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia projects that, based on the county’s age distribution and other demographic trends, Buchanan County’s population will fall from 19,002 now to 9,888 by 2050, which is just 24 years away.
What Buchanan County needs is the same as what a lot of rural communities need: an entirely new economy. Many have scant likelihood of developing one.
Buchanan County, though, has something those other counties don’t. It has a four-year university that wants to come in and do, well, something. Pikeville wanted this when it thought the law school would move; now it’s willing to take over the law school as well, which suggests that maybe it’s interested in both things over time — a law school plus some other programs in Grundy.
This seems a win-win proposition all around. Buchanan County keeps the law school in the county, while Appalachian gains the affiliation and administrative support it needs. Perhaps more importantly, though, Buchanan County gains a commitment from an ambitious college that has set its sights on being “the leading university of Central Appalachia.” In 1997, it started a medical school. This year, it will open a dental school. Now, perhaps it will add a law school to its portfolio — and the potential for further expansion in Buchanan County.
This is a chance for geography to work in Buchanan’s favor for a change. The county sits in a corner of Virginia, wedged between two other states — and closer to five other state capitals than its own. Our current governor appears to have never been to Buchanan County. Pikeville, though, sits just up U.S. 460 and, as a private school, doesn’t have to stop its work at the state line. The University of Pikeville is interested in doing something that no state school in Virginia has shown any interest in: setting up a campus in Grundy. This is a generational opportunity.
We have no idea where that might lead. Maybe it leads nowhere. However, a hotel in Roanoke three decades ago eventually led to a medical school and a new economy in the Roanoke Valley.
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