TOPS

It was supposed to be a trust fund set up to keep the beat and brightest home. Then the legislature got ahold of it, dumbed down requirements, and allowed fees to sky rocket because now tuition was covered with interest free, no payback, free money

TOPS, from what I understand, is actual socialism in Louisiana

quote:

---

My question is has it artificially inflated tuition and put more kids in college as a side strategy of building wealth for the state through huge real-estate investments

---

I don't understand the real estate investments part. But what the legislature did with TOPS, especially during the Jindal years, was that they reduced direct funding for the universities while maintaining TOPS. They treated TOPS as kind of a portable block grant that would go to the universities where the students enrolled.

The reduction in general funding for the universities cash starved the universities, forcing the shifting of operating expenses to students through higher tuition and increased fees.

So it wasn't TOPS driving up the cost of tuition. It was the shifting of the funding structure from general funding to TOPS grant funding, and making cuts which were greater than the TOPS funding. The net result is that the general funding was reduced in an amount greater than TOPS, eliminating TOPS as being any sort of benefit in real dollars to either the students or the universities.

quote:

---

I don't understand the real estate investments part.

---

TOPS has been an economic engine for Baton Rouge as it has funded a large increase in student enrollment at LSU. Just from Fall 2009 to Fall 2018 there was an increase over just over 2,300 extra students.

Due to this extra population we've seen an explosion of growth along Burbank, especially at Burbank/Lee. Ten years ago there was the McDonald's and the shopping center and then nothing until you got to Gardere, now there are restaurants, stores gas stations and more apartment complexes than you can shake a dead cat it.

You've also had growth and reinvestment just north of the campus along Nicholson as wealthy families whose kids got TOPS used what was originally their kids' college fund to buy condos there for their kids (especially during periods where LSU hasn't had enough housing).

This was all built due to TOPS. Were TOPS to go away tomorrow the vast, VAST majority of those new apartments along Burbank would go Section 8 within 5 years, the Nicholson properties would take a bit longer to degrade.