Local HBCUs work around budget cuts
19th October 2015 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
If you’re an institution of higher education with less than 2,800 students, $4.5 million makes a big difference when it comes to programming and faculty levels. If your school suddenly loses that amount in funding, it can put you in a downright precarious situation.
But that’s the dilemma facing Southern University at New Orleans, which has seen an immediate $4.5-million drop in financial allocations for its budget from the state government thanks to the Louisiana’s fiscal crisis.
Fortunately, says SUNO Chancellor Dr. Victor Ukpolo, the university has avoided outright cuts to the classes it offers or staffing and faculty levels, but it’s been able to do so only because, among other creative cost-saving tactics, it hasn’t filled positions when they’ve become vacant via retirement or job changes.
Right now, says Ukpolo, virtually every day is a struggle to make ends meet — and it could get worse, with the state threatening more slashes in funding in the near future.
“We’re just trying to stay afloat at this point,” Ukpolo says. “Right now, we have no idea what will happen.”
Unfortunately, SUNO isn’t alone. Every publicly funded institution in the state has been faced with similar fiscal trials and travails, thanks to drastic funding cuts across the board flowing out of Baton Rouge. Since 2008, the amount the state Board of Regents has allocated to all its public higher-ed institutions has plummeted from $1.5 billion to just $700 million, leaving all state schools to scramble to find ways to close the shortfalls to their own budgets caused by that drop.
But, says Board of Regents Commissioner of Higher Education Dr. Joseph C. Rallo, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have, in many ways, bourn an even greater burden for key reasons, such as a smaller enrollment and a focus on education instead of the type of grant-garnering research found at other state schools.
“The budget reductions affect systems and institutions differently,” Rallo says. “Thus, institutions such as LSU, Louisiana Tech and UL-Lafayette with high research activity can use grant dollars to make up for budget cuts from the state general fund [unlike HBCUs].
“Each institution has also been forced to raise its tuition by about 10 percent annually, but some institutions, including HBCUs, had a lower tuition base to begin with, and thus the percent increase will still result in fewer dollars than institutions which had a higher tuition base.”
Such situations are found at public HBCU campuses in every corner of the state, and it’s been happening for a while. As the state legislature was crunching out its 2015 budget, Shreveport station KTBS reported on how potential higher-education cuts could especially impact HBCUs, such as Southern University-Shreveport, whose president, Dr. Ray Belton, painted a pretty bleak picture.
“We are operating with skeletal departments at this point,” Belton told the station. “Where now, if we cut an individual, we are cutting services and support services in particular.”
Of course, with the country still struggling to crawl out of the U.S.’s worst economic recession since the Great Depression, Louisiana isn’t the only state in such a shaky situation. At just about every one of the nation’s 40 publicly funded HBCUs, wrote Ry Rivard for the Web site “Inside Higher Ed,” the struggles are sadly similar, and they’ve been going on for some time.
“Enrollment declines, cuts to government financial aid, leadership controversies and heightened oversight are working together to threaten some HBCUs in new ways and perhaps even jeopardize their existence, according to people who study, work with and have led HBCUs,” Rivard reported in June 2014. “Some private Black colleges, like other tuition-dependent private institutions, are also struggling, but public HBCUs are being tugged at by a variety of forces, old and new.”
On the ground in Louisiana, HBCUs have been battling valiantly to follow their mission and not only retain current course offerings, but even expand on them when possible in an effort to attract more students as well as research grants that each boost the schools’ revenue.
For example, here in New Orleans, SUNO announced last month that it’s in the process of launching its very first doctoral program — a doctor of social work, through the university’s School of Social Work.
The three-year degree program is scheduled to open to students for the fall 2016 semester.
“The new program will fill a state and national need for social workers in the areas of health care, social services, mental health and school social services,” stated a SUNO press release. “It also will alleviate a projected severe shortage of doctoral-trained social workers to expand the ranks in academia in the coming years.”
SUNO Chancellor Ukpolo says the creation of the new DSW program is generating a buzz and new enthusiasm on campus, which has bolstered the university community’s hopes for the future despite the dire financial predicament that’s constantly looming on the horizon.
“It’s something we’re pretty excited about,” Ukpolo says.
In addition, local, privately funded HBCUs are also helping offer a diverse array of programming and coursework. Like SUNO, Xavier University of Louisiana recently announced the launching of its first PhD program — in this case, a doctorate of education degree in Educational Leadership.
According to an Oct. 5 XULA press release, the school’s new program will hit the ground for the fall 2016 semester with a 60-hour curriculum. The deadline for applying to the new course is March 1.
“What makes this degree program unique is its focus on leadership values that include social justice and inclusion of all the organization’s stakeholders,” said Dr. Rosalind Hale, XULA professor of education and one of the authors of the new program, in the Oct. 5 press release.
“But like all our educational programs, it is grounded in a conceptual framework that identifies six constructs – spirituality, diversity, professionalism, inquiry, competence and technology) – passed on from the Division’s experienced professional team to those who will lead effective schools in the future.”
But even with such promising offerings on the part of private schools, the state’s publicly funded HBCUs will always retain a special and crucial place in Louisiana’s rich higher-education tapestry. That’s because, according to Board of Regents Commissioner Rallo, public HBCUs provide students with unique opportunities for education because of their vital mission.
However, Rallo adds, such institutions still need to be prepared to adapt those missions, and the resulting coursework and programming, to fit the needs of a new, financially strapped era that, at least for the near future, has no relief in sight. That could include expanding their research bases and grant funding, employing skillful accounting and budget management, and vigorously recruiting students and faculty of other ethnic backgrounds.
“HBCUs nationally are faced with the need to revisit their historic mission in light of budget cuts, but also because students of color can go to whatever institution they desire,” Rallo says. “Thus the HBCU challenge nationally is how to maintain its traditional mission in such a way as to attract new, capable students. As the national press relates, some HBCUs are actively recruiting Hispanic and white students which will bring a measure of financial relief while underscoring the challenge to its traditional mission.”
For SUNO’s part, Ukpolo says the school will continue to judicious in bringing aboard new staff and faculty — a tact that, unfortunately, includes maintaining its current hiring freeze — while doing its absolute best to ensure that such trimming by attrition doesn’t impact critical functions such as coursework and academic programming offered.
Ukpolo says SUNO has, fortunately, experienced “a bump in enrollment numbers” for the 2015 academic year. However, he adds forlornly, “That hasn’t made up for our [funding] shortfall.”
That must happen while, at the same time, school officials continue cautiously eye the actions of the state legislature and Gov. Bobby Jindal as they mold the new state budget for the next fiscal year. All in all, it could be a tense wait to see what happens come January.
“Right now, we have no idea what the state might do,” Ukpolo says. “We’re trying to hold the line in hiring and operational costs. We don’t anticipate and cuts in programming for now, but we’ll see what kind of shortfall we have.”
This article originally published in the October 19, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
