How One State’s Budget Crisis Has Hamstrung Its Public Universities

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Louisiana’s public colleges and universities breathed a sigh of relief in June when the state Legislature passed a budget that held the state’s spending on higher education steady. The state’s scholarship program, known as the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students, or TOPS, was fully funded after being cut back last year.

But the effects of nearly a decade of steep cuts will be hard to shake off. Though most people associated with the state’s four university systems are relieved by the 2017 budget, Louisiana still faces about a $1-billion budget shortfall. It’s unlikely that the state will close the gap by raising taxes.

Most of the cuts to higher education were made during the administration of the former governor, Bobby Jindal, who reduced income taxes and used reserve funds to help balance the budget. But even John Bel Edwards, Mr. Jindal’s Democratic successor, signed off on cuts, such as last year’s TOPS reduction. Meanwhile, rising health-care costs have eaten into higher education’s portion of the budget, and falling oil prices diminished revenues just as the state was beginning to recover from the recession.

Louisiana had already lagged behind other states in education investment and degree attainment before 2008. And while it’s certainly not the only state to force universities to cut programs and consolidate administrative offerings, other states have already begun to restore their funding of public higher education.

Nationwide, that funding is still far from pre-recession levels. But taken as an aggregate, the 50 states have increased their appropriation per student by 3.3 percent over the last five years. Meanwhile Louisiana has decreased its funding per student by 33.1 percent, more than any other state, according to a report released recently by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. (Illinois was not included in the report in part because the state went two years without passing a budget.) Since the recession, Louisiana’s overall higher-education appropriations are down 43.4 percent.

The cuts have forced universities there to become leaner and more efficient. But they’ve come with a cost to students. Here are three ways that university leaders say their campuses have suffered.

Tuition Is Up

The most obvious effect of the declining appropriations has been an increase in tuition. At Louisiana State University, in-state tuition has more than doubled since the 2008-2009 academic year to $10,814 this year. A decade ago, the state funded about 70 percent of universities’ budgets, according to James Henderson, president of the University of Louisiana system. Now it’s only about 30 percent. That leaves tuition to make up for much of the rest of the costs.

“Our institutions, you could say in a good way, are efficient; we have the lowest unit costs,” Mr. Henderson said. “But those units are students. When you think of the value those students are seeing because of the lack of state investment, it makes you question our priorities at a time when a more educated work force, focus on skill development, and the need to adapt to a changing economy is demanding greater investment in higher education.”

Administrators, faculty, and students have expressed concerns that the uncertainty around the state’s budget, and the perception that higher education is not valued in Louisiana, would drive students out of the state. “The volatility could have an effect — and I think it does have an effect on top students leaving the state,” said Jason Badeaux, president of LSU’s student government.

There’s some evidence to support Mr. Badeaux’s impression. Last year marked the first time in the history of TOPS, the scholarship program, that it was not fully funded. The New Orleans Times-Picayune recently profiled students who said that last year’s cuts to TOPS drove them to look out of state for college.

Enrollment in Louisiana’s public institutions is not keeping pace with the national average. There could be many reasons for that, but administrators say universities in nearby states — Texas and Alabama in particular — have been recruiting heavily in Louisiana. According to the SHEEO report, since the recession enrollment in public higher education in Louisiana has grown 1.3 percent, compared with an 8.5 percent national gain.

TOPS is a fairly generous and popular program. Students who earn a 2.5 GPA in a prescribed core curriculum and score 20 or higher on the ACT can qualify. Last year the state spent about $200 million on the program, which served 50,809 students.

As the state appropriation has decreased and tuition has increased, the TOPS program also grew because, until recently, award amounts were tied to tuition. But Mr. Henderson said a dollar in TOPS is not the same as a dollar sent directly to a university. “It offsets a dollar that might have come from a student,” he said.

Faculty Morale Struggles

Among the most vocal critics of the budget cuts have been faculty members at universities and colleges across the state, many of whom have gone years without a raise. Critics say the fiscal situation is making it difficult to attract good colleagues and encouraging some to look for positions elsewhere.

“It almost creates a cannibalistic culture,” said Sonya Hester, an associate professor of English at Southern University at Shreveport. She said she feels her campus is in “constant survival mode.”

A morale survey of faculty members at Louisiana’s public institutions, released in May, showed that many are ready to leave the state. Of the 575 professors who responded, roughly two-thirds said they were looking for positions outside Louisiana. Nearly 52 percent said they would leave for a lower-paying position if it came with the possibility of a raise. Most said they did not think their positions were secure and would not expect them to be filled if they left.

The average full-time faculty salary at a public four-year university in 2014 was $65,400 in Louisiana, according to the Southern Regional Education Board. The U.S. average was $79,300, while the averages in Texas and Alabama are both over $80,000.

Debra Dolliver left her position as a chemistry professor at Southeastern Louisiana University for a job as an instructor at the University of Alabama last year. Many factors contributed to her decision, she said, but high on the list was her feeling that she could not teach and run a lab to her standards with the resources she had.

“I still had planned to be there another nine to 10 years,” she said. “I just looked at the circumstances of my life and thought, When you really pillage the educational system and you don’t give any institutional support, the morale gets pretty poor.”

Since 2008, administrative positions in her department were eliminated, which meant Ms. Dolliver was ordering her own equipment, cataloging her accounts, and planning trips with students. Ms. Dolliver said that left her with less time to apply for grants and train undergraduates to work in her lab, both tasks she cut back on.

The faculty members who created the morale survey, Matthew A. Butkus, an associate professor of philosophy, and Jacob Borden, an assistant professor of chemical engineering, both at McNeese State University, are working on another report that they hope will track student outcomes since the budget cuts. They plan to look at student scores on professional exams, such as the GMAT and the licensing exam for nurses, to see if there is a correlation between their performance and the lower budget.

Mr. Butkus said he hopes to make the case to the governor’s office, state lawmakers, and the public that Louisiana’s higher-education funding shortage is “not just a year-to-year crisis.” The budget cuts, he said, “are impacting the state 20 years down the road.”

Curriculum Has Narrowed

Louisiana is rich in natural resources, but by some metrics the state’s economy has struggled in recent years, largely because of the decline in oil prices. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the number of jobs in manufacturing, mining, and logging, which includes the oil and gas sector, has dropped, but the state has a burgeoning technology industry and a need for skilled laborers in each of its sectors.

“They have demands for computer-science people, software people, and engineers that our institutions need to produce because it’s hard to recruit into our state,” said Barry Erwin, president of the Council for a Better Louisiana, a nonprofit public-policy organization. “We need to have the dollars to invest in those programs.”

Louisiana’s community and technical colleges are graduating more students than ever, said Monty Sullivan, president of the Louisiana Community and Technical College System. But the system has felt the effects of year after year of budget cuts. Administrative functions such as admissions and payroll have been centralized at the system-office level, and hundreds of programs have been eliminated.

“Our curriculum is more narrow today than it was eight or nine years ago, so there are less options for students,” Mr. Sullivan said. “Many of the options are things that we would love to be able to do and just simply aren’t in the budget.”

Programs in cybersecurity and process technology, whose graduates operate manufacturing equipment, are expanding. But programs training people to be secretaries, barbers, and cosmetologists are on the decline or gone, Mr. Sullivan said. The growth of TOPS has done less to help the community-college system, which has relatively few students who qualify for the program.

Years of budget worries have left many campus officials and professors in an awkward position: They do not want to appear too successful at accommodating cuts, for fear that doing so will create a public perception that they are not in a state of fiscal crisis. Kevin Cope, an English professor and the Faculty Senate president at LSU, said some universities may be able to offer faculty raises this year, but the details are still unclear.

“Because our state is so hostile toward academe, we’re treating this gently,” said Mr. Cope. “Faculty have to walk on a tightrope, keep quiet, stay out of view.”

With funding restored to the financial-aid program and a stable budget this year, administrators are hopeful that the worst has passed. But the state budget was approved this summer in part because a temporary increase in sales tax increased revenue.

“The big question is, how are they going to fund $1.2 billion?” said Mr. Erwin, of the Council for a Better Louisiana, referring to the budget shortfall. “Who’s going to get cut? It’s hard to think higher education won’t be the target.”

Nell Gluckman writes about faculty issues and other topics in higher education. You can follow her on Twitter @nellgluckman, or email her at nell.gluckman@chronicle.com.

Correction (7/27/2017, 3:10 p.m.): The original version of this article incorrectly listed Sonya Hester’s job title as assistant professor of English. She is an associate professor, and the text has been corrected.