Thank you for inviting me to be with you today. It is my pleasure to speak to such an esteemed assembly of citizens.

You have devoted over 16 months of your time, your ideas, and your heartfelt concern for the next generation of Virginians. As First Lady, I extend the Commonwealth's appreciation for your public service.

Sixteen months is a long time in the life a commission, but not when the subject is something as complex and illusive Virginia's vast system of higher education. When you began your work, my husband asked you to "make discernible the esoteric enterprise called 'higher education.'" Your Interim Report rendered the last two decades of tuition, tax support, and spending in higher education quite discernible. And we look forward to a final report as illuminating.

I have spent a significant amount of time of my own life in higher education. I spent nearly a decade as an undergraduate and graduate student at the University of Virginia. And now I teach Classics at Randolph-Macon College.

As First Lady, I often hear the concerns of policy-makers and taxpayers regarding the cost of and quality of a college degree in Virginia.

I also think about higher education from the perspective as a parent. I have one son in the 11th grade and one in the 7th grade. Jay has begun looking at colleges.

It is my perspective as a parent that I want to share with you today. The significance of topics like the cost of operating a big university or bolstering the quality of an education can appear abstract and unfocused until you put yourself into the shoes of a parent who has worked many years to afford the high opportunity of a college education for her child.

There is a story told of Woodrow Wilson - a son of Virginia - when he was the president of Princeton University. An anxious mother - one I can relate to - questioned Mr. Wilson intensely about what Princeton could do for her son. After much discussion Wilson became exasperated and finally blurted: "Madam, we guarantee satisfaction or you will get your son back."

I think I know how that mother felt … so please excuse me if I sound like her in my remarks here.

The exchange between the mother and President Wilson is over 8 decades old, but the same exchange occurs between colleges and parents even today.

Parents have high expectations of the institutions that educate their children. That's only fair. Parents spend large sums of money on everything from tuition to fees to room and board to taxes in order to put a child through college. As this Commission documented, the cost of tuition and fees at Virginia's public universities increased 110 percent in real dollars in just 15 years. With your help, my husband cut tuition at Virginia's colleges by 20 percent this year, but other charges and costs continue to rise, and parents are naturally apprehensive about a four-year financial commitment that typically exceeds $50,000.

So parents rightly ask the question: "What can a public college in Virginia do for my son or daughter?"

Fundamentally, parents are asking about the quality the college education they pay so dearly for. And as every parent in this room will attest, it's not just about the money - it's about our hopes and aspirations for our children.

The concept of a "quality" college education can prove to be an immeasurable abstraction, often discussed and seldom defined.

To some, "quality" is in the eyes of the beholder - a purely subjective assessment - like a reputation in a poll.

To others, the "quality" of an institution is objective, should never be presumed, and should be measured according to universal assessments of student outcomes.

I offer my own definition. My definition is this: Does the degree granted by a college after four years of study have integrity? What does the degree signify about the student?

Or, put another way, does the degree mean that the student can think critically and write clearly?

Does the degree guarantee that the student is well versed in a broad spectrum of disciplines from Shakespeare to science and from Machiavelli to math?

And does the degree granted after four years of study provide assurance that the student has been prepared to be an ethical citizen?

These are the expectations of a parent - that their child will have obtained the skills and intellect greater than when they left home four years earlier and be prepared to assume their role as a responsible citizen.

That is what the mother who questioned Woodrow Wilson wanted to hear. That the degree her son would receive after four years at Princeton would certify the attainment of these skills and knowledge - and only then would the education have been worth her financial sacrifice and her aspirations for her son.

Given high expectations by parents - as well as the public - of our public colleges and universities, the Commonwealth and its public servants bear a solemn responsibility to prioritize students and learning in the allocation of public resources. That is true at the State level and at the institutional level.

The most critical task is that of determining what to prioritize. My husband touched upon this question briefly when he announced the Commission over a year ago. "No doubt, higher education has been - from the days of Jefferson - the topic of healthy debate. More often than not this debate is over priorities," he said. "Should we build more buildings or use existing facilities more efficiently? Should we hire more administrators or more professors? Is the highest use of our intellectual resources more faculty research or more instruction in the classroom?"

This Commission hopefully will make some very helpful recommendations to answer those questions and to begin to establish Virginia's priorities for the next two decades.

But let me offer a mother's view of a couple important priorities for those who aspire for two decades before their child graduates from college.

First, parents entrust their children's intellectual development to individual professors. We know the quality of teaching at a college depends directly upon the skill and commitment of its faculty.

In order to prioritize students, we must prioritize the value we place on professors who teach in the classroom. And good teaching must be rewarded in everything from compensation, to tenure decisions, to post-tenure review.

Second, a college degree is of little value to a parent unless it means that her daughter or son has received a well-rounded education and can write and think clearly and critically.

To accomplish this, each institution bears a responsibility to the parents and students it serves to expose students to a core curriculum. Every parent should be guaranteed that their child will be taught a minimum of core courses before graduation. That curriculum should be rigorous and should cover topics of universal knowledge such as great writers, important scientific principles, and the fundamentals of democratic self-governance.

And no matter what discipline one majors in - every student should be taught to write clearly. I cannot stress this enough. Engineers and architects, scientists and mathematicians, sociologists and budding political scientists - no one should graduate from a college in Virginia without the ability to communicate clearly.

And third, Virginia must make assessment of learning meaningful.

For a long time academia has focused on grades to assess student learning. So long as grades are real and accurate, they will remain important assessment measures for students.

However, if "grade inflation" becomes the norm, the integrity of the degrees our institutions grant will be diluted over time. Employers and graduate schools will find very quickly they must look behind the degree to discover the graduate's true intellectual credentials.

And even students themselves will feel shortchanged in the long run when they discover their degree is not the ticket to opportunity they had bargained for.

But so long as the institution and its faculty remain true to accurate academic assessment, we will have some measure of the learning that occurs within the minds of young people at our public colleges and universities.

In closing, let me thank you for assuming a substantial responsibility to the parents and students of Virginia.

We aspire for our children that their graduation is not simply something that happens to them with the passage of four years - but something that happens within them upon four years of studying into the wee hours of the night, and upon real learning and personal growth.

We aspire that after four years of college our children will be wiser, more articulate in their thoughts, and prepared to assume their role in a democratic society as responsible adults.

The recommendations you make in your final report will impact the lives of real people for many years to come.

And to the mother who questioned Woodrow Wilson about what Princeton could do for her son, it will say "Send your son to Virginia. We will send him back to you a better and wiser person."

Thank you.