Time to privatize LSU? Use $120M to fully fund HBCUs—and UNO
21st November 2016 · 0 Comments
By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer
With the state only able to cover 42 percent of the TOPS scholarships for the Spring Semester, the University of New Orleans has embarked on an innovative plan to make up the gap for its scholarship students.
UNO President John Nicklow worried that his best students might transfer from his university, if the promise that those who made at least a 20 on their ACTs would be guaranteed a free college education was revoked.
Almost a year ago, Nicklow identified students who qualified for Federal Pell Grants, and employed every grant opportunity available, in order that UNO students in the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students (TOPS) scholarship program would not owe $1,770 in tuition for Spring Semester. Northwestern State University provided the same security. In contrast, though, LSU opted to do nothing for its undergraduates.
In fact, as UNO and NSU acted, Louisiana State University President F. King Alexander penned a column which received national attention calling for expanded federal aide to universities. He predicted that state underwriting of public colleges would end by the mid- to late 2020s, and the nation ought to prepare for a world where state colleges go private, having only federal grants as added support. Yet, in the midst of this conversation, when asked why LSU did not go to the lengths as UNO to cover the tuition of its most talented students, he said, “We only get $120 million from the state to run the university.”
Alexander tacitly acknowledged a reality. Most of LSU’s undergraduates receive the TOPS scholarship—over 14,000 students—compared to just over 1,000 at UNO and 1,100 at Northwestern State. As such, he was not worried that the students would leave LSU, even if they have to pay more. The draw of LSU is enough to retain enrollment. The LSU President is more focused on raising money elsewhere.
In fact, Alexander’s recent comments mirror his remarks during the legislative Special Session when he mused that the state mandates on LSU amount to almost as much as the funds appropriated for his school. He implied that his school might be better off as a private institution.
So might the other Louisiana Public Universities, if LSU were to follow the path of Tulane, and go from state control to private management.
Were LSU give the right to set its own tuition and management policies, in exchange for a phase out of state funding, the $120 million spent on LSU could plug the $38 million in threatened cuts facing the University of Louisiana system (including UNO and NSU), the $4.6 million in reductions confronting the Southern University System (including devastating cuts at SUNO), and the $20.2 million in cuts for which the Community and Technical College system must account in the coming year. Moreover (after details such as the fate of LSU Alex and Shreveport are settled), more than fifty million dollars would be left over to narrow the deficit in TOPS, covering the full tuition at these schools.
The state is already on the path to LSU privatization, after all, whether legislators publically admit it or not. Whereas most other La. public universities make sure to charge no more in tuition than TOPS pays out, LSU, in the midst of the deficit crisis, has already positioned itself to increase tuition costs above the statutorily funded amount in the TOPS program. The legislature has stymied most of those efforts, approving only moderate tuition increases to the state’s flagship university. Nevertheless, the precedent is set, and it does not seem to be effecting overall LSU enrollment.
Louisiana students want to be Tigers. LSU’s faculty wants the school to reach the vaulted academic heights of becoming a “Research 1” Institution, but state funding will never provide enough resources to turn LSU into UNC Chapel Hill. So, why not take off the shackles, letting LSU fund itself and providing more resources to other schools, particularly the struggling HBCUs, at the same time?
The move is not without historical precedent. Tulane University began its life as the University of Louisiana, a state-funded institution in the early 19th century. With Paul Tulane’s and Josephine Louise Newcomb’s behests, the University opted to withdraw from state funding and go private in 1884. It has flourished ever since, rising to one of the top 50 universities in the nation.
Tuition is expensive at Tulane, but Louisiana students can apply their TOPS scholarships against the tuition bill, and pay the difference. In a potential LSU privatization, a similar practice would occur.
All that would be required would be for the legislature to pass a bill recreating the Baton Rouge campus of Louisiana State University as a private non-profit institution, and donate the buildings and assets on-mass to this new legal creation. All non-medical state mandates would end. The current appropriations could be phased down over a seven-year period, with LSU allowed to increase tuition to cover the reductions. Moreover, recognizing its now independent status, LSU would have the right to further boost tuition a further 10 percent per year, to invest in academic expansion.
The tuition increases would be large, but not so extreme if spread over a decade, that the current student body would be immediately priced out of the school. At the end of seven years, the school would be free to follow its own course, on tuition or other matters, with the LSU Board of Regents presumably elected by the University Alumni, instead of appointed by the Governor.
Satellite LSU Campuses in Shreveport and Alexandria would likely join the University of Louisiana System, a idea that already has support of faculty at both schools. The only subsidized remainder of LSU, the medical Schools, could either remain under state control or form a new public-private partnership with LSU, which would allow for affordable doctor training programs—a state priority. Keeping medical training affordable, and therefore doctors in Louisiana, might prove the one exception to the LSU privatization plan. The medical schools, located in Shreveport and New Orleans, operate in a semi-independent fashion already, and could be spun off with little administrative trauma.
Even if these exceptions would cut into the $120 million in savings from defunding LSU, the monies available for the rest of the University System would still drastically increase. This would be particularly true for the State’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities, which would see many of their recent cuts reversed potentially.
There would be an active motive to boost funding, particularly at the flagship campus. The Capitol City would still have a public university, after all, at Southern University’s main campus. Since this HBCU would be the only public university in Baton Rouge, the legislature would have a harder time ignoring it, lost as it is now in LSU’s shadow.
This article originally published in the November 21, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
