BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana's top higher education official said Tuesday that the state's investment in public colleges has sunk to its lowest level in more than 50 years when compared to income levels, and he's pushing for new tuition increases to offset some of the loss.
Commissioner of Higher Education Jim Purcell said more money is needed on campuses to train workers to fill in-demand jobs across the state.
"Even though we are making progress, we're not meeting the human capital needs," Purcell said, in advance of a presentation he'll be making to the Board of Regents about higher education funding and a push to ask lawmakers to change state tuition policy.
Purcell is asking lawmakers for more tuition-setting autonomy for college management boards, saying schools need the ability to charge higher tuition and fee rates for specialized and higher-cost programs, like engineering, advanced technology fields and nursing.
He noted the number of high-profile job announcements made by Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration in recent months. Purcell applauded the business announcements, but said Louisiana's colleges aren't turning out the number of specialized workers needed to fill the industry jobs that will be created in the coming years.
"Because of all the new job opportunities, we're the ones who really need to recommit to building our investment in higher education," he said.
He pointed to data by the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education that showed Louisiana spends $6.67 for every $1,000 of personal income in the state. Purcell said that's the lowest state investment since the 1950s.
Since Louisiana began to grapple with a series of budget problems in 2008, Jindal and lawmakers have stripped $625 million in state funding from higher education, according to the Board of Regents.
Tuition hikes offset some of the cut, leaving public colleges with a $258 million net loss, according to Regents data.
Jindal's budget for the new fiscal year that begins July 1 proposes to strip another $75 million in state financing and offset that with tuition increases that already have been approved by lawmakers.
But much of the state funding included in Jindal's higher education budget relies on one-time sources of money, like property sales and legal settlements that haven't yet happened.
Purcell said colleges need to raise tuition to reach a reliable source of funding for schools as the state's spending on higher education continues to drop.
Lawmakers have been reticent to grant further tuition increases and have rejected previous attempts to charge different tuition rates for high-demand, high-cost programs. Purcell will again pursue the idea in the regular legislative session that begins April 8.
"All you have to do is continue to spread the gospel of building the human capital of this state," he said. "We do know from all data, they need workers to fill jobs now."
The legislation hasn't yet been filed, so it's not yet clear how much money could be raised by the proposal.
Jindal hasn't said whether he'd support new rounds of tuition increases beyond those already approved by lawmakers.
"We are currently reviewing all legislation that's been filed for the upcoming session, and our top priority for education bills is whether or not the policy is good for our students," Jindal spokesman Sean Lansing said in a statement.
Lansing defended the governor's budget proposal as preserving funding to campuses and avoiding higher education cuts, and he expressed confidence in the schools' abilities to turn out enough workers to meet demands. For example, he cited LSU's College of Engineering increasing undergraduate enrollment by 41 percent since 2009.
His statement also took a dig at Purcell.
"We know that our students are getting the skills needed to find jobs in the 21st century workforce. They deserve a leader who shares that vision and has a plan for the future, not one who is living in the past," Lansing wrote.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
Most Read
in case you missed it
Subscribe to this comment's feed