re: Athletic Dept. Giving 5.5 mill to academics

I fully agree that the state legislature and powers that be have made it extremely difficult for LSU to continue to be successful and competitive from an academic side. Unfortunately, there is no willpower to make changes from a structural standpoint, cuts can basically only come from higher ed and health care, and we have way way too many four-year schools. The funding of higher ed in Louisiana is outpaced, as a percentage of the budget, by that of Missi-fricking-ssippi. That is unacceptable.

But when you can't merge a school of Southern of New Orleans out of existence because it has an 8% passage rate because it happens to have minority students is a testament to why change will never occur and this state will continue to fail along the higher public education front. Political willpower will never exist to do what is fundamentally required to move this state forward.