LA Higher Ed Cuts "end of an era"

quote:

---

DiCharia describes how when given a choice, like our legislators (supposedly) faced, between TOPS and the potential closure of our safety net hospitals or life-saving waivers to families of disabled children, he would now sacrifice TOPS. I could dissect the false dichotomy that has been constructed here (not by DiCharia, but by our legislators and their corporate handlers) but I won’t. It won’t make any difference. We’ve already decided what kind of state we are going to be and it isn’t one that values education, or health, or people.

We can’t have it all because we gave it all away, our revenue, resources, and the future of our state and children, and we aren’t taking it back. And there is no guarantee that next time safety net hospitals, waivers, or anything else that doesn’t contribute to the Bottom Line won’t be on the chopping block or pitted against something else we currently deem Too Important to Cut – For Now.

---

quote:

---

Combine this [TOPS cuts] with reducing Louisiana’s 15 colleges by closing or merging institutions with six-year graduation rates under a set percentage. Along with reducing the number of institutions, those which make the cut should be directed to consolidate programs across the state and eliminate duplicate specialized areas of study. Academic departments not producing more than, say, 40 majors a year need to go. In this time of continued fiscal crisis, the luxury of low-producing programs is expendable.

These measures would increase higher education funding and, in turn, stop universities from having to increase tuition rates.

The three systems (LSU, UL and Southern), along with the Legislature, would investigate how to cut and consolidate the state higher education system. One of the indicators would be graduation rates.

---

quote:

---

While I very much believe in community colleges and workforce training in principle–I am a product of a community college myself–and that not all students can or should go to four-year universities, the growing workforce rhetoric I’m hearing out of Baton Rouge makes me very afraid that we’ve decided that four-year universities will no longer be a viable option for increasing numbers of our students, not even as transfers, and that we will start seeing even more African-Americans and other students of color pushed toward getting low to medium credit workforce credentials while white and affluent students will go to a shrinking number of universities offering a shrinking number of “high demand” programs that will be “state” in name only.

---

quote:

---

I’m afraid it won’t be long before we see one or two of our HBCUs close, merge, or privatize–or at the very least, before we see new proposals to do so. They are, after all, near or on the bottom of the graduation rate list according to DiCharia’s article.

---