A new survey by LSU’s Public Policy Research Lab contains some interesting results when it comes to budget cuts in higher education and the impact it would have. According to the survey, citizens in Louisiana value higher education, they believe our colleges and universities are doing a pretty good job and they don’t support major cuts to post-secondary education.
That said, 53% believe our colleges can absorb major budget cuts without affecting the quality of academic programs and two-thirds oppose the idea of reducing costs to higher education by consolidating programs or closing some campuses. For policymakers trying to decipher the winds of public opinion on this issue, it creates something of a challenge because the conflicts in those positions equate to an unsolvable puzzle: Higher education is important, it should not be exposed to major cuts, but if need be, it can sustain them without consolidating programs, closing institutions or affecting quality.
Those last couple of perceptions may represent wishful thinking more than anything else because the truth is that higher education cannot sustain the level of cuts that are being proposed without some major restructuring. How can we say that? Let’s take a look at a couple of hypothetical situations.
The total state budget cut to higher education is $219 million. How could you get to that?
1. Close all of the LSU Baton Rouge campus. The savings: $233 million, a little more than the total cut needed.
2. Close Louisiana Tech, the University of New Orleans and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The savings: $217 million.
3. Close Southern University in New Orleans, LSU-A, NichollsStateUniversity, the University of Louisiana at Monroe, GramblingStateUniversity and Southeastern Louisiana University. The savings, $221 million.
Of course, no one is suggesting any of this. But the point is this type of exercise does put some perspective on the enormity of the cut to higher education and the difficulty of arriving at $219 million in budget reductions. It also shows that simply spreading this level of cuts across the board will create gaping holes in all of higher education leaving it badly wounded and of questionable quality. And this doesn’t even take into account that higher education could be facing an additional $200 million in cuts in a couple of years when the federal stimulus dollars go away.
That’s why we need to tread very cautiously and very deliberately when considering how to make these cuts. We don’t pretend there are any easy answers to this, but as lawmakers continue to look at the magnitude of these budget cuts they need to do it with their eyes wide open and the knowledge that their final decisions will have a major impact on our future.
Why? Because these cuts are transformational and citizens and lawmakers need to come to grips with that reality. No matter what we do they will change higher education as we know it in Louisiana. The question is whether we arrive at these changes in a thoughtful, constructive manner that preserves some bastions of quality that will still be attractive enough to lure our best and brightest children. Or, we choose the path of lease resistance leading to a state of mediocrity from which higher education in Louisiana will never recover.
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