Georgia may limit access to public colleges

As student populations surge and budgets shrink, Georgia’s public colleges may have to limit enrollment to maintain quality, Chancellor Erroll B. Davis warned the state Board of Regents on Tuesday.

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“We will recommend to you that we restrict access before we knowingly allow quality to degrade,” Davis said in his annual State of the University System address.

The chancellor also expressed concern that 25 percent of Georgia’s first-time freshmen are unprepared for college work.

Additionally, he told the regents that the state’s public colleges — especially two-year institutions — are losing ground to other Southern states in faculty salaries.

Average four-year faculty salaries fell from sixth to eighth among the 16 Southern Regional Education Board states, Davis said, while two-year faculty salaries ranked 10th.

“We simply cannot maintain our competitiveness and our core academic quality indefinitely unless we can address some of these salary challenges,” he said.

State colleges and universities have seen their budgets cut by $182 million while adding 23,000 students, Davis said.

The University System “remains strong, healthy and more vital than ever to the future of Georgia,” Davis said. “However, the University System is being tested and challenged in ways that we must acknowledge, and about which we must be concerned.”

With the potential of more budget cuts on the horizon, he said he wants Georgians to realize that the University System is an investment, not a cost — “an investment in the future.”