According to Tuesday's AJC, the chancellor of Georgia's 35 public colleges and universities has asked the presidents of those institutions to provide budgets showing a 5 percent reduction compared with the prior year ("UGA's Adams warns of cuts," Metro, July 22).

When I first moved to Georgia, in 1968, Georgia Tech, Emory and maybe Oglethorpe University and Agnes Scott College were the only schools in the state of which I was aware that had a national reputation for academic excellence. Then, in 1993, under the leadership of one of my favorite governors, Zell Miller, the Legislature enacted legislation creating the HOPE scholarship. In addition to making college affordable for good students, there was an equally important, unexpected benefit. As a result of lower costs for attending college in Georgia, many more of Georgia's best and brightest students chose to attend Georgia Tech, UGA, Georgia Southern University, Georgia State University and other Georgia schools.

As a consequence, schools in Georgia, especially Georgia Tech and UGA, have much more qualified students than they had in the past. Each of these schools has moved up in the overall U.S. News & World Report rankings.

Georgia Tech's industrial engineering program is rated No. 1. Many of Georgia Tech's other engineering programs are rated in the top five, and its Graduate School of Management has leapfrogged those of many of the other business schools. UGA's real estate program is ranked very highly, as are UGA's and Georgia State's risk management programs.

Having achieved these goals, it would be a shame to reduce the budgets of our schools and thereby cause them to lose their edge.

Funding of education is an investment with huge returns. Surely there are budget items that could be cut without harming the future of the state. Let's keep up the support of our colleges and work hard to cut out only those items that are of questionable value.

> Rob Hassett is an Atlanta lawyer.