Tuition strategy offered

Higher education plan gets tepid review

Advocate staff photo by TRAVIS SPRADLING -- System presidents, left to right, Sandra Woodley, of the University of Louisiana system; Ronald Mason Jr., of Southern University system; Joe May, of the Louisiana Community and Technical College system; and William Jenkins, of the LSU system; listen Tuesday to the presentation by state Higher Education Commissioner Jim Purcell, during a meeting of the Joint Legislative Education Committee. Purcell asked legislators to give Louisiana's four public college and university systems more control over setting tuition.

The idea of giving Louisiana’s public colleges and universities more control over tuition got a mostly lukewarm response from state legislators Tuesday at the State Capitol.

State Commissioner of Higher Education Jim Purcell laid out a number of initiatives he said could get Louisiana’s higher education system out of the doldrums as he testified before the Joint Legislative Committee on Education.

But with many of Purcell’s proposals needing overwhelming support from both the Louisiana House and state Senate to pass, state Rep. Thomas Carmody said he agreed with some of the plans but described them as unlikely without a large-scale change of heart from the Legislature and support from Gov. Bobby Jindal.

“If we have to have a two-thirds vote in the Legislature, we can’t do any of this,” Carmody, R-Shreveport, said. “We’d need the political will and the administration behind it.”

Legislators will return to Baton Rouge for the start of the legislative session April 8.

After the meeting, Purcell said he wasn’t discouraged.

“I still think it’s early,” Purcell said. “In the end, we have to find a solution ... but our solutions are getting limited.”

Purcell was referring to five straight years of state budget cuts to higher education that the state Board of Regents has tallied at more than $625 million.

While schools have raised tuition roughly $331 million and cut staff by more than 6 percent to offset some of the missing revenue, Purcell said the colleges and universities are in “dire straits.”

Select schools in some of the fastest-growing parts of the state — Baton Rouge, Hammond and Lake Charles — have seen their budgets cut between 43 and 52 percent since 2008, he said.

LSU in Baton Rouge is at the low end of that range, having seen a 43 percent decline totaling more than $102 million in the past five years, he said.

“If our intent is to build a flagship school rated much higher than it is now, this isn’t the appropriate approach,” Purcell said.

Among the several paths forward, he said, schools need to seek further efficiencies in staffing, direct their research toward the needs of businesses and design coursework to meet the needs of industry.

The Legislature could help by granting schools authority to “become more market driven,” Purcell said.

Louisiana is the only state where the Legislature controls tuition.

Purcell’s plans include giving schools the ability to adjust tuition up to the Southern regional average; allow institutions to charge more for high-cost, high demand programs; and give them the power to charge per credit hour. Currently, students are only charged for the first 12 credit hours they take in a semester.

But giving colleges increased control over tuition appeared to be a nonstarter with many of the legislators who attended the committee meeting.

Sate Rep. Dee Richard, No Party-Thibodaux, said a higher priority for him would be to merge some of the state’s 14 four-year schools. Without that, Richard said he “won’t be able to support any tuition increases.”

State Rep. Cameron Henry, R-New Orleans, seized on a recurring theme of higher education administrators wanting to raise tuition to roughly the same as their peers in the south.

“Getting to that average is probably not attainable,” Henry said. “But we can look at how much it costs to run an institution to the best of our ability.”

Henry said it’s hard for him to sell the people in his district on the need for more money based on what other states do.

“People ask me ‘Why do we care what Tennessee does? If we can turn on the lights for less, let’s turn them on for
less,’ ” Henry said.

Purcell countered that Louisiana schools can “survive” at their current levels but will need additional revenue in order to “thrive.”

Senate Education Committee Chairman Conrad Appel, R-Metairie, downplayed Purcell’s calls for more tuition authority saying he was more concerned about performance.

“Not to say that funding is not critical, but we want more of the discussion to be about performance,” Appel said. “I don’t believe we’re setting the world on fire in terms of achievement.”

After the meeting, Jindal spokesman Kyle Plotkin emailed reporters what he called a “fact sheet” that included what he called “key points,” such as increased graduation rates and $700 million in higher education infrastructure spending, during the Jindal administration. No one in the Jindal administration testified before the committee.

Comments

1) Comment by zealer99 - 23/01/2013

We cannot afford to support the public colleges and universities in the style in which they would like. Increasing tuition and depending on students to pay the bill with Federal Student Loans, plunging the students into deep debt loads is a bad plan. Not being aware that with the approaching multi-trillion dollar default of that debt load and the eventual scaling back of access to those loans is a bad business model. Access to TOPS needs to be scaled back by higher academic standards and the student population needs to decline to accommodate the State's ability to pay. Degree programs that afford little opportunity for employment should be scaled back, financial aid restricted, and competitive.

2) Comment by welcometothebananarepublic - 23/01/2013

Mr Sadow, you miss the point and some of your data may be out-dated (e.g., the ranking for Louisiana's per capita state and local spending for 2011 is 14th, Ref. http://www.higheredinfo.org/). The main point is that higher education officials are constrained by the legislature from raising funds through tuition increases as state expenditures decrease. Given Louisiana's drastic drop (Ref. http://chronicle.com/article/State-Spending-on-Higher/136745/) in the last few years, the only -- *only* -- option in Louisiana is to cut operational costs whereas other states have the flexibility to raise tuition in order to remain or increase their research and scholarship competitiveness. But, assuming for a moment that your funding data is accurate (I have my doubts), then this rosy fiscal picture you paint coupled with abysmal six year graduate rates for Bachelor students (47th out of 50 in 2009) and low research expenditures across all public Louisiana universities suggests that our public dollars are spread too thin in support of several low-performing four-year only institutions, such as LSU-Shreveport. Perhaps, we should consider that many of them should be shuttered so we can marshall our financial resources to competitively support a flagship university at LSU Baton Rouge.

3) Comment by IMVOR - 23/01/2013

Exactly, Mr. Henry. Everyone knows there's nothing to higher education but keeping the lights on.

4) Comment by jeffsadow - 23/01/2013

It's clear that several commenters do not know some pertinent facts concerning this discussion. 1. In the 2004-12 period, total state spending (that includes tuition) on higher education operations has increased $700 million, while the number of students enrolled in that period has increased 8,000. 2. While the majority of this increase has come from tuition increases, in fact state taxpayer spending over that time span on a per student basis has risen 7.4 percent, and when you throw in the tuition increases, per student spending (state bucks plus tuition) has gone up nearly 20 percent in that span. 3. In terms of per capita spending on higher education, LA ranks 8th highest in the nation. Now please explain to me how it is that LA higher education is being starved? And, 4. most state legislators and all of its elected executives have college degrees and quite a number have graduate degrees (roughly a third of legislators have law degrees). In fact, only two of the statewide elected officials don't have graduate degrees. So you can disagree with their policies, but you can't say they haven't been educated, if not well-educated.

5) Comment by crabby - 23/01/2013

Can we require people running for public office to pass the civil service exam? Is that something that's already in place? There are too many legislators with too few brain cells . . . that's where we could use some strategery.

6) Comment by BRmoderate - 23/01/2013

You cannot expect Louisiana to outperform her peers if you underfund education at the levels we do. Not just higher ed but also k-12 funding. You cannot expect LA college students to achieve at North Carolina College student levels because they are not receiving the same level of secondary education as NC students. You want Louisiana's colleges to succeed? Start by giving them first year students who have been better prepared by their local secondary school systems.

7) Comment by The Realist - 23/01/2013

"I don’t believe we’re setting the world on fire in terms of achievement.” HA....and I wonder if this could have any correlation with cutting $625 million from the universities the last five year.....This state just gets more comically woeful as each day goes by. Hopefully the citizens of LA one day will pull their heads out of the sand and see what type of representatives they keep electing over and over. The more "right wing" the state has grown the worst it has gotten.

8) Comment by oddduck - 23/01/2013

@welcometothebananarepublic - You are absolutely right. Another thing to consider is how TOPS plays out in this dance. By the legislature controlling the cost of higher education, they also limit the amount of dollars the state is on the hook for. TOPS isn't a bad idea, it just has unintended consequences. If they let the market set tuition rates, TOPS will need to be restructured or it could be a significant drain on the state budget. I say let higher education control their own tuition, and make TOPS a race to the top type of situation, where only the top 20% (or pick a number) are eligible for the money if they choose to stay in Louisiana for their studies.

9) Comment by welcometothebananarepublic - 23/01/2013

The NC governor and state legislators don't pretend to know how to manage a higher education system. They hire great people with sterling academic credentials and with experience in university administration to manage for them. UNC administrators have flexibility to set tuition to match costs and the market as well as resources to attract the best thinkers and researchers. We don't have those things. We have very good faculty and researchers leaving Louisiana brownfields for green pastures and taking their research resources with them. We had Mark Emmert and John Lombardi at LSU; now we have a retired interim filling two posts. We have a dictatorial governor, ignorant state legislators, and crony higher education board members with zero experience in academia who think their power to control tuition at LSU is something god-given. It's almost funny how they don't ask for the power to control season ticket prices for Saints games or for Benson to "turn the lights on for less".

10) Comment by MBW - 23/01/2013

Instead of having a government that does a few things really well, in Louisiana, we have a government that does lots of things half- assed.

11) Comment by MBW - 23/01/2013

The government doesn't need to do everything....but the stuff that it does do, it should do it right. Why can't our leaders in the state get that??

12) Comment by MBW - 23/01/2013

If you're comparing us to other Southern states, look at North Carolina. They have one of the top public universities in the entire country. If they can do it in NC, why not here?

13) Comment by SuzanneMS - 23/01/2013

Because they equate higher education with vocational training. When most of them do not hold even an undergraduate degree, how can we expect them to even understand the meaning of "higher education," let alone value it? Louisiana universities were already underfunded before these cuts began. The problem is not to turn on the lights; it's to keep more of them from going out. "Seek further efficiencies in staffing?" It's already taking weeks longer to process student paperwork, with the cuts in staff; technology problems are only resolved after weeks of waiting, if at all; mail service, custodial service, building maintenance, all of the support services have been cut back in ways that affect the ability of the college and universities to function. "Direct their research toward the needs of businesses?" Humanities scholars need not apply. "Design coursework to meet the needs of industry" -- by any other name, that's vocational training. No more English, history, art, music, nothing except job training. Let's just quit pretending. Turn all of the colleges and universities into 2-year training schools and be done with it. Of course, the LSU football program would have to go, but that's the price of progress.

14) Comment by welcometothebananarepublic - 23/01/2013

Why are leaders in state government so obsessed with keeping LSU and other universities so poor? They cut state funding 40-50 percent and then prohibit the schools from raising tuition to compensate. We are no where near the southern -- not national -- average for tuition. We lack financial resources to make LSU competitive in terms of research and scholarship. Low funding is also a major signal to the world outside of Louisiana, which is bigger than any of these elected idiots realize, that Louisiana universities are poor in quality and commitment. This is the most telling quote: “Getting to that average is probably not attainable,” Henry said. “But we can look at how much it costs to run an institution to the best of our ability.” We aren't talking about being the highest; we're talking about the freaking average!!! Obviously, these state legislator and governor's office goons have zero business and math sense. It's a shame because as the national economy is on the upswing, states with great universities will be very competitive, and Louisiana residents will slum once again with their oil, natural gas, and piddly "workforce development" initiatives.

15) Comment by Scrooge - 23/01/2013

“I don’t believe we’re setting the world on fire in terms of achievement.”might that include the legislature?