Regents not sold on ideas in report
The Louisiana Board of Regents on Wednesday distanced itself from an external study that argued the “ideal” higher education setup would exist if there were no Southern University System and if the LSU System gave up its campuses in Shreveport, Alexandria and Eunice.
The state’s higher education coordinating body is instead morphing the draft report into updated role, scope and mission statements for each of the state’s public colleges that are expected to be finalized in February.
The updated mission statements divide the state’s colleges into five categories: a comprehensive research university, specialized units, statewide universities, regional universities and community and technical colleges. LSU is the comprehensive university, while the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Louisiana Tech University and the University of New Orleans are the three statewide universities.
State Commissioner of Higher Education Jim Purcell emphasized that the five categories are not a step toward breaking up the existing college systems.
“The structure is really just to make sure all the institutions are staying in their lanes,” Purcell said.
The latest controversy over changing college governance systems developed earlier this month when the Board of Regents distributed the draft report from the Colorado-based National Center for Higher Education Management Systems to the state’s college systems. NCHEMS has led several higher education studies in Louisiana in recent years.
The last two pages of the “Developing a Postsecondary Education System to Meet the Needs of Louisiana” draft report were titled, “Areas Where Changes Should be Considered.”
The section suggests Louisiana would be better off if Southern, Southern University at New Orleans, LSU in Shreveport and LSU at Alexandria were all moved into the nine-school University of Louisiana System, which could be renamed. Southern University at Shreveport and LSU at Eunice, both of which are community colleges, would go into the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, according to the report.
The draft report contends that the LSU System could then be a true flagship system, the UL System would become a “regional university system” and the LCTCS would finally contain all of the state’s public two-year colleges.
“While it is not feasible to make wholesale changes, it is possible to take steps that result in a better alignment of capacity and need,” the report states.
But the draft report states that it defers its recommendations to the state’s higher education Governance Commission, which wrapped up its work earlier this month. The Governance Commission recommended against undertaking a major restructuring of higher education for now, except for strengthening the Board of Regents.
The commission asked the Board of Regents to “make recommendations to align institutions with their shared missions.”
Larry Tremblay, the Regents interim deputy commissioner for academic and student support, said Wednesday that NCHEMS was asked to “play God” and make recommendations on how the state’s higher education structure should look if it could start with a clean slate.
“There are those who thought that NCHEMS should’ve deferred from their comments that led up to that,” Tremblay said. “But they didn’t.”
In dealing with reality though, Purcell said, it is necessary to account for the state’s history and its unique needs.
That is why there are no new recommendations to undo the current setup with the LSU System, the Southern System, the UL System and the LCTCS, he said.
Tremblay said final approval of the report is being delayed until February because there is still some back-and-forth ongoing with the details of the mission statements.
For instance, he said, LSU Law Center Chancellor Jack Weiss requested that his school should be stated as having a “global mission.”
The Board of Regents is sticking with giving the law center a “statewide” mission because that is as broad as the mission statements will go for the Louisiana focus, Tremblay said.
The report is in response to House Concurrent Resolution 30 by state Rep. Austin Badon, D-New Orleans, which was approved last year and asked the Board of Regents to study the missions of colleges and to maximize their resources.