Jenkins: LSU in precarious position

Advocate staff file photo by BILL FEIG -- The LSU Parade Ground is at the center of the LSU Baton Rouge campus, shown here in 2010.

State budget cuts and the corresponding sinking opinions of peer institutions have put LSU in danger of falling out of the nation’s top tier universities recognized in the popular U.S. News & World Report rankings, System President William Jenkins said Tuesday.

LSU ranked as the 134th best school in the nation last year out of the roughly 200 schools regarded as tier one institutions.

“We’re at the tipping point of going from a tier one to a tier two,” Jenkins said during a meeting of LSU’s Transition Advisory Team. The 10-member group is in charge of coming up with recommendations for LSU’s current structural reorganization.

If LSU were to fall out of the top tier, it would deal a significant blow to a university that first reached that status — to much fanfare — just four years ago.

The magazine’s rankings take into account student selectivity; faculty resources; graduation and retention rates; alumni giving; financial resources; and how a school is viewed by its peer institutions.

The LSU System, like the state’s other public college systems, has absorbed massive funding cutbacks as state support for higher education has dropped by about $625 million since 2008.

“That we’re going through financially challenged times is not a secret,” Jenkins said. “The message there is that our peer institutions know we’re struggling, so it doesn’t bode well for what our standing is going to be.”

Jenkins supports reorganization of LSU in the face of budget cuts.

He added that LSU has also seen “a downward turn” in research productivity — a first in Jenkins’ long tenure with the university as a former system president, former chancellor, and now taking on both roles in an interim capacity.

“We’ve lost some pre-eminent researchers, and the number and the value of our grants have gone down,” Jenkins said.

Higher education leaders both inside and outside the LSU System have sounded the alarm in recent months on what it means for a university when research funds start to dry up.

One of the most tangible effects is a lower placement on the National Science Foundation’s rankings, which are widely regarded as “the gold standard,” in determining a university’s academic health.

Jenkins also mentioned that LSU’s faculty-student ratio has risen in recent years from 19:1 to 23:1 as faculty have left and taken their grant money with them.

“That has put us in a predicament,” Jenkins said. “The parameters aren’t in our favor. We’re already not very high in the rankings but we may take a turn for the worse either this year or next year.”

A portion of Tuesday’s meeting also focused on what steps LSU could take to be in consideration to join the prestigious Association of American Universities, or AAU.

The 60-member, invitation-only organization is made up of the top public and private research universities in the U.S. and Canada.

Since the founding of the Nobel Prizes in 1901, 35 percent of all winners and 70 percent of winners at U.S. universities have been affiliated with an AAU institution.

Former LSU Baton Rouge Chancellor Mike Martin last year said eventually being asked to join the AAU should be one of LSU’s top priorities.

Part of his vision was to see LSU’s Baton Rouge campuses — the flagship campus, the law center, the agricultural center and the Pennington Biomedical Research Center — consolidated under one umbrella. Without that, LSU will never truly enter “the big leagues,” Martin has said.

On Tuesday, consultant Christel Slaughter said part of the advisory team’s mission should be to figure out how far away LSU is to being seen in the same light as AAU universities.

“It is without a doubt the pinnacle, an exclusive group of top universities,” Slaughter said.

As members of the advisory team debated how long it would take, under favorable conditions, for LSU to reach the same prestige of AAU institutions, Jenkins cautioned that money is a major factor.

“We’re too underfunded to get into AAU company,” Jenkins said.

Comments

1) Comment by SuzanneMS - 20/02/2013

The largest percentage of LSU funding is not from the pockets of students -- most students are not paying tuition. They are on TOPS. A research institution is not just about training undergraduates for jobs. It is about doing research and training researchers to do further research. And not only does LSU take close to 50% of every grant, faculty have always written in money for student assistants, providing stipends for graduate students. Now they also have to write in tuition. Louisiana does, however, have far too many "universities" for its population and not nearly enough 4-year and community colleges and technical schools, as the Turner Commission found a couple of years ago. None of the legislators is willing to face the wrath of his constituents, though, by voting to turn the "university" into the community college that it should be.

2) Comment by GardenVariety - 20/02/2013

HA! Jenkins wants us to pretend that, over the last decade, he's not been one of the primary actors driving LSU into the mud. ROLL TIDE ROLL!!!

3) Comment by hemogoblin - 20/02/2013

Sorry, Jeff Sadow, you are flat wrong about researchers and grant money. LSU gets about 50% of each grant for overhead, which goes to support the entire university. This money has supported the university much more than the occasional handout from the athletic department. More importantly, the people who get grant money are nationally and internationally known scientists. Some of them are among the top people in their fields. Working with them and learning from them provides a big boost to the careers of LSU students. Because of these top scientists, LSU sends its graduates to places like Harvard and Stanford and USC for post-graduate work. Many LSU undergraduates do research in laboratories and some of them achieve publications. What a great foundation in science! These students go on to success in graduate school, medical school, dental school, and business. Scaring away top young scientists with the drastic state budget cuts has been a disaster.

4) Comment by Scrooge - 20/02/2013

Speaking of economic value a la Sadow, what exactly do political science departments at an adjunct branch contribute in terms of employable skill sets? What is the employment rate of LSUS political science graduates in their field?

5) Comment by stopnthink - 20/02/2013

Since the largest percentage of LSU funding is from the pockets of students, I'd argue LSU is already a defacto private school. However, unlike private schools LSU students pay more for less. Spikes in tuition/fees have been met with cuts to degree programs, departments, and loss of professors.

6) Comment by stopnthink - 20/02/2013

jeffsadow...while you make solid points, the article is based on LSU and not LA higher education as a whole. That is why many points you mention aren't brought up imho. Also, using 2004 as the baseline leads to contestable results given that leadership under JIndal did not begin until 2008. It is difficult to say funding is not an issue for LSU, especially considering that how the university is dependent upon bailouts from its own athletic department.

7) Comment by jeffsadow - 20/02/2013

What the article doesn't tell you is that LA higher education is not as financially bad off as it often is made out to be. Using 2004, that is the fall semester prior to the hurricane disasters, as the baseline, for a student population that has increased 5.5 percent since, spending per student has gone up overall 21.9 percent, and the taxpayers’ portion has increased 7.4 percent. -- the rest of this increase explained by tuition and fees hikes. Another way to look at this is from 2004 total state spending on higher education has increased around $700 million to educate about 8,000 more students (figures from the Fall, 2012 semester). And it's not like, on a per capita basis, LA higher education is starving; it still ranks in the top 10 among states in expenditures. The problem is money has not spent or allocated wisely, for three reasons: (1) overbuilt system, (2) too many governance systems, and (3) too much emphasis on getting students to enroll, not enough emphasis on quality teaching to produce graduates ready to move into employable areas where their skill sets may be used. Notice all of this wailing and gnashing of teeth about losing researchers and grant money. Well, grant money related to research usually has little to do with undergraduate education and the most charitable way to express in the aggregate the relationship between, relative to the skill set of a faculty member, what the academic community defines as quality research and teaching ability is that there is none (less charitable observers would say there's an inverse relationship). There's a reason why the for-profit schools continue to eat away at public higher education, and it has nothing to do with the consternation Jenkins is expressing here.

8) Comment by rumseyroad - 20/02/2013

Politics. It's a game of politics at every level, not just at the President/Chancellor level. People get jobs they aren't qualified for because of politics, then they do a terrible job at those jobs, then the people who are doing a great job get tired of dealing with the roadblocks put up by the people who suck, and the good people leave for industry, taking the ability to bring in grant funding with them. (I've seen it happen in several departments across multiple campuses). The administration has said we have to rely more heavily on grant funding, but don't put tools in place to help researchers receive grant funding and then succeed with their grants.

9) Comment by foldgers - 20/02/2013

What are you guys talking about? These undergrad teachers are the best! They put together pre packaged Power Point presentations and just read the slides word for word and never saying anything besides what is pre printed on each slide. That is the best way to learn in my opinion, right? Granted, the higher level classes, in my opinion, have pretty good teachers/professors. My favorite ones were in my last two years. My first two years or so of classes, the teachers barely made any impression at all. I remember teachers from 2nd grade and yet I can't remember my teachers from my freshman year in college. They were more like robots to me. Then again, maybe I was just hungover...

10) Comment by SuzanneMS - 20/02/2013

Vernonbrew22, that's pretty much Jindal's objective. Make LSU so expensive that it is a de facto private university. In his world, only the rich deserve an education. Swinham, it's clearly the second. It says it in the article. I'm just waiting for Jindal to take on TOPS.

11) Comment by DMJ - 20/02/2013

Nice work, Jindal.

12) Comment by Vernonbrew22 - 20/02/2013

News Flash: LSU will never be a top tier university! Many of the underqualified professors hang out on Chimes Street complaining how upper management never communicates. It costs less to send your child out-of-state to Wisconsin, a state that historically funds its universities. We should just make LSU private.

13) Comment by 8point6 - 20/02/2013

@Notauser : That about sums it up. Here's a suggestion to get mo money. Propose a property tax of, say, 249 mills on residents of White Oak landing and Country Club of Louisiana. Get dat money from dem white folks!

14) Comment by swinham - 20/02/2013

A cynic would say there are 2 possibilities: !. Dr. Jenkins knows his permanent successor is soon to ascend to the throne so he is safe actually admitting the funding problem is having deleterious effect, or 2. He is supporting the governor's higher education reorganization initiatives with the strong implication it will solve the financial and all other problems in higher education.

15) Comment by dday198 - 20/02/2013

lsu got what they voted for, jindal for Gov. and everything that comes with him

16) Comment by SuzanneMS - 19/02/2013

Oh, it's not that deep, Stephen. He opposes all public services, including education. Where are the "Tigers for Jindal" now? The NSF rankings also affect researchers' abilities to even secure funding from that agency and others. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that one of the reasons the Board is refusing to release the names of applicants for President is because then we would all see how few of them are even remotely qualified. It's getting harder and harder to get anyone at all to apply for a job at LSU, let alone quality candidates. Graduates are going to find it difficult to get into prestigious graduate schools, as well. What Jenkins doesn't say is that LSU is on thin ice in terms of just basic accreditation. A major requirement is that the university be free of political control -- and that is clearly not the case. The underfunding of the library cannot continue much longer, either.

17) Comment by Notauser - 19/02/2013

In my opinion LSU should not be in the top tier of universities, and it has nothing to do with state support. The top problems with LSU are: 1. It puts zero effort into undergraduate teaching. Undergraduates get instructors who are working on their advanced degrees and take the instructor jobs to pay their tuition. They could not care less about teaching, and it shows. All LSU cares about is research. The undergraduate program is just a funding source for research. 2. LSU is losing its researchers because LSU has no academic integrity. Look at how they treated the guy who did the reports on the levy system in Katrina. Look at how they treated the guy accused in the anthrax scare years ago. They are ready, willing and able to throw anyone under the bus who they perceive as not kissing the correct posteriors. 3. LSU in run by people with no talents or abilities other than their outstanding posterior kissing skills. Of course, none of that means Jindal is any good. Just that LSU would be failing with or without him.

18) Comment by crazycajun - 19/02/2013

This is just the beginning. The dominoes are starting to fall. And fall they will. This state has bought in to his bag of hot air hook, line and sinker. Now we the people's time has come to pay the piper. And it won't be pretty.

19) Comment by Stephen - 19/02/2013

Please know that Jindal does not care about LSU. Deep down he just does not care.

20) Comment by two_cents - 19/02/2013

Way to go Bobby. Ruin the one thing that puts Baton Rouge on the map. You're not the right Governor. It's time to move on.

21) Comment by MBW - 19/02/2013

The funding situation won't change until the people of this state demand that it does. Period. If you want a top flight university, sorry, but you have to fund it. Your top faculty (the ones who bring in the grants) won't tolerate years of pay freezes.

22) Comment by spqr - 19/02/2013

Does our corrupt governor care? Nah. A strong LSU cannot help him politically.