Last year more than 3.4 million people took part in choosing Virginia’s next chief executive, who will serve for four years and be gone.
Far fewer people — perhaps no more than 14 — will have a say in hiring the next chief executive of an entity who might have even more lasting impact on Virginia. That is the president of Virginia Tech.
A college president gets no fancy parade and no military flyover when he or she is inaugurated, and no one calls them “Your Excellency,” but a case can be made that the president of a major state research university is, in some respects, more influential than a governor.
It is those respects that we’ll deal with today.
The president of Virginia Tech can issue no executive order, sign no bills into law, send none back to the legislature with a stern veto message. Like a governor, a university president often must resort to begging money from the legislature.
The realm in which a university president might have more lasting impact than a governor is in economic development. It’s a truism that universities are economic engines, but it’s also a truism because it is true, and we have examples close to home to underscore that.
In 1999, as the textile industry was collapsing, community leaders in Danville turned not to Richmond and the governor to help them build a new economy, but to Blacksburg and Virginia Tech. Ben Davenport, one of Southside’s most prominent business leaders, met with Charles Steger, about to be installed as Tech’s president. “My hope was to engage Virginia Tech in a new kind of outreach,” Davenport said at Steger’s memorial service in 2018. “Well, Charles quickly saw the infrastructure we could create. And through helping us he began the creation of a new model for the role of a land-grant university.” What came out of that meeting was the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research, which was intended to signal a new era in the Southside economy. A quarter-century later, Danville clearly has entered a new economic era — the city is gaining population for the first time since the ’90s.
Steger also presided over the creation of an entirely new economic engine in the Roanoke Valley: the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and Fralin Biomedical Research Institute. For decades before its founding (the first formal announcement was in 2007), the Roanoke Valley had pined for a closer connection with Virginia Tech. Now a study (commissioned by Tech but done by an outside consultant) has computed that Tech’s Roanoke operations have an economic impact of $456 million a year. This is an entirely new industry that’s been created in the Roanoke Valley. Steger alone didn’t do this — the governor at the time, Tim Kaine, was certainly involved, too — but this still serves as an example of how a university president has driven economic development.
Tim Sands, whose impending retirement from the helm of Virginia Tech sets this new search in motion, was the mover behind Virginia Tech establishing its Innovation Campus in Alexandria, a key component of the state’s pitch that landed Amazon HQ2. While that particular project lately hasn’t met employment targets, Virginia’s ability to win the Amazon sweepstakes solidified the state’s ranking as a technology state.
These examples set the stage (and the expectations) for Tech’s next president.
The average tenure of college presidents nationwide is roughly 5.9 years, according to the American Council on Education, down from 8.5 years two decades ago. That may be a short tenure in university time but is still longer than we give a governor. The average tenure of Tech presidents since World War II has been 9.8 years, and that number is pulled down by the two-year term of John Redd Hutchinson in the late ’40s. Take him out of the equation and the average rises to 11 years. When the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors selects its next president, it’s likely picking a leader capable of serving a decade or more. Some of the questions the hiring committee will ask must necessarily deal with the here and now, but the board must also envision what the school’s needs — and the state’s needs — will be as far out as 2036 or more.
That may seem a long time out (and it is), but keep in mind that some football games are already booked that far out and beyond. In 2034 and 2035, Tech has a home-and-home series with Alabama. In 2036, the Hokies are scheduled to host Notre Dame. In 2037, they’re set to play at Ole Miss. We have no idea what the college athletic conference landscape will look like then but you can apparently plan on a Labor Day weekend 2037 trip to Oxford, Mississippi.
College football schedules can be changed; the trajectory of the economy is harder to turn around. With that in mind, what questions should the board be asking potential applicants about Virginia Tech’s role in the state economy? The board’s search committee meets again Tuesday. Here are a few suggestion for what members should be asking.
1. How big should Virginia Tech be?
Those in Blacksburg are certainly interested in this question, but this is hardly a parochial question. We’re about to drop off the so-called “enrollment cliff” — an era of smaller pools of traditional college-age students due to declining birth rates. That doesn’t mean all schools will shrink, though. Some will grow, while others won’t. Virginia Tech’s undergraduate enrollment is now 31,536, according to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, the biggest public four-year school in the state. That’s up from 31,035 the year before and 30,504 the year before that. However, graduate admissions are dropping and are expected to decline further, as Cardinal’s education reporter, Meghan Mangrum, recently reported. Part of that is due to a drop-off in the number of international students, with much of that due to actions by the Trump administration.
Is Virginia Tech at the right size now, or should it plan on expanding enrollment more? This is partly a policy question for state legislators (who see themselves as the real custodians of policy-making). How much does the state want to enable the growth of large institutions, such as Tech, and how much should it try to cap that growth in hopes of building up enrollment at smaller schools?
2. Are there new sectors Tech should explore?
Many of the economic sectors seeing the most growth seem a natural fit for Virginia Tech’s skill set: aerospace, artificial intelligence, energy, life sciences, robotics. That’s both convenient (Tech’s already engaged with them) but also challenging (what more should the school do?). Then there’s the question of whether there are any other sectors Virginia Tech ought to be pursuing. I don’t profess to be wise enough to know what they are, but it might be useful for the search committee to ask potential presidents this question. After all, at one point not that long ago, Tech didn’t have a medical school; now it does. Here’s a subset of that question:
3. What should Tech’s role be with cannabis research?
Don’t giggle. Like it or not, cannabis is now big business. The Cannabis Science and Technology site estimates that last year, it was a $96.5 billion business nationwide if you count all versions of THC, the compound that gives you the buzz. Virginia Tech’s background is as an agricultural school. Virginia is about to legalize retail sales of a new agricultural product — cannabis. What should Virginia Tech’s posture toward that new industry be? Should Tech seek to become a leader in cannabis research and what else this plant can do besides make people high? Or should it intentionally stay away, recognizing that someone else will surely fill that market void? This is hardly the biggest question on the new president’s plate, but it is a question.
4. Where should Virginia Tech be once college athletic conferences are rearranged?
Education is nice. So is economic development. Let’s face it, though: The most consistent way that colleges get attention is through sports. We can wring our hands over that, but no president of Virginia Tech is ever going to look over Lane Stadium and say, “You know what, we really ought to go back to the days of not having any athletic scholarships.” If one ever did, that president’s tenure would not be long. That’s just reality. Here’s another reality: The college sports world may be headed for a big-time reshuffling unless Congress intervenes (which it might; stay tuned for a column on that). Some realignment is already happening — and sometimes not-so-slowly in the case of the implosion of the once-mighty Pac-12 conference.
Virginia Tech currently plays in the Atlantic Coast Conference, whose teams are falling behind the big revenue generators in the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference. The league’s TV deal runs through 2036 (there’s that date again), so maybe the next president won’t have to deal with what happens after that. However, some of the ACC’s marquee schools (Clemson and Florida State) seem to be itching for the day when it makes financial sense for them to buy their way out — assuming they can find a bigger payday elsewhere. The next Tech president would probably rather spend his or her time raising money for a new research center that will cure some disease or solve some pressing social problem, but events will likely force the next president to spend some time thinking about Tech’s place in the college sports hierarchy. Where should it be? What will that cost? And, of course, are there 50-yard-line seats available for that Notre Dame game in 2036?
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