re: Louisiana legislators compromise to fully fund TOPS

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There are a metric shite ton of fees and charges that are not tuition that have to be paid. It’s not a free ride.

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yeah...if you do well enough on the ACT, you have money left over from TOPS

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require some time of work in the state

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Dealbreaker. How long will you require people to stay and what would be the consequence? Life intervenes. If I want, or need, to move because of health, family, etc. is the state going to hold me hostage for $50k?

The Road Home program after Katrina had similar requirements. If you took the money, you had to live in the house for four years. Between the time people got the money, completed the construction and moved back into their 1,000 sf, 2 bedroom home, they might have gained twins and a mother with Alzheimer’s. Life intervenes.

If you get to the point where you have to threaten people to stay post degree, you are doing everything else wrong.

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I B Freeman

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1) end TOPS

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Our Budget is $33,000,000,000.00 (USD) for this year. I'll admit to not having the total expenditures required for TOPS funding, but based on last year ($291 million in the article I saw), let's assume (dangerous I know) that it's going to run us $300,000,000.00

Congrats, IB Freeman. You've just erased .009 (9/10th's of 1%) of the total Budget woes of the State of Louisiana.

That your #1 bullet point doesn't actually raise to the height of 1% of the budget issue this state faces pretty much tells me the rest of this Top 5 isn't going to do any better to structurally stabilize our funding issues.

If you have any leanings towards fiscal conservatism whatsoever, the Constitutional Convention is the hill you die on ideologically.

Period. Point Blank.

For kicks, I looked up SUNO's FY2017-2018 Budget

I'm not the smartest man in the world, but it appears that they receive less than $7,000,000 in Total State Funds.

So #1 and #5 on your list still fail to even amount to 1% of the State's recently passed operating budget based on figures I can find.

Congrats. Nice going.

F*ck out of here with your idiocy man. You're a dilettante and always have been. We need solutions...and the ONLY real solution is a Constitutional Convention.

(no message)

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When did TOPS become need-based?

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It is not technically "need based" at this time, but the standards have been lowered through the floor to give lower income students, who will obviously have disproportionately lower academic records, a piece of the pie.

I have no problem with some sort of program to help "disadvantaged" students, but that is never what TOPS was meant to be.

The benefits to top performing students are suffering to allow kids who never should be going to college in the first place go waste a year or two chasing that degree.

I looked up SUNO's budget a while ago, and it was small comparatively speaking, but the campus and school are both very small. The land isn't worth a damn unless sold to UNO, and another research and tech park can be built.

Also, starting somewhere is still a start. It's an acknowledgement from the state that there is a problem in that area. Take a page from The Book of SJW, and slowly whittle away what you don't like (or start big, end small, and still win)

16 years

Don't forget Southern has the LOWEST graduation rate (5% !!!) of any university in the USA!

Effectively, 95% of the funding for Southern is wasted.

If students don't qualify for TOPS, isn't enough free money like the Pell Grant, work study programs available to pay for most of the college expenses. The Pell Grant has to pay damn near enough.

Students that can only afford to go to college with Gov't help should stay close to and live at home and use the gov't assistance to further their education.

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If students don't qualify for TOPS, isn't enough stuff like Pell Grant, work study programs to pay most of college.

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You spent too much time banging your English teacher and not enough time learning grammar.