Members of the Postsecondary Education Review Commission adopted four recommendations this week aimed at streamlining higher education in Louisiana following a two-day meeting. According to a PERC press release, the commission recommends:
● The Board of Regents, in consultation with the management boards, undertake a rigorous statewide review of academic programs for unnecessary duplication and excess hours required for degree completion and eliminate such duplications and excess hours accordingly.
● The Board of Regents, in consultation with the management boards and institutions, undertake a rigorous review of role, scope and mission statements with the aim of eliminating or minimizing mission creep in order to create a better fitting system of higher education.
● The Board of Regents continue to conduct regular reviews of academic degree programs that consider the following:
a. Program quality
b. Alignment with statewide and regional workforce needs and economic development priorities
c. Cost effectiveness
d. Student completion rates
e. Institutional role, scope and mission
f. Residency of students enrolled and to the extent possible,
g. Information on graduate employment and continued education
● The Board of Regents establish a formula by which to uniformly allocate funding for all associate degree programs and to implement such formula not later than the beginning if the 2010-2011 academic year.
Meanwhile, political columnist John Maginnis reports today that a coalition of chambers of commerce and business groups “is forming in aims of building a consensus of local support for the reforms.”
Citing a source, Maginnis writes that the state’s largest chambers along with Blueprint Louisiana will unveil a concensus-building plan in the coming weeks. According to Maginnis, the coalition will focus on areas of change that include more flexibility for universities to raise tuition, increasing admission standards, funding colleges based on retention and graduation rates, and eliminating duplication.
It’s unclear whether the Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce is part of this coalition. The INDsider has requested response from GLCC President Rob Guidry.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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