At the very least every 4 year institution should be paired with one or more LCTCS schools in the area and have all remedial and many entry level courses that are taught at the LCTCS school be done through the LCTCS school, or at least as much as possible, instead of being taught at both schools.

The LCTCS school, when possible, should be using graduate level students from the 4 year university to teach the remedial courses (obviously cannot go wholesale due to acceditation standards requiring sufficient # of master and phds level educators).

This reduces the duplication of services (extra cost to state) in a region and reduces employment costs for both schools.

These are essentially state agencies and not independent entities like municipalities, therefore there is no reason that the State through the Board of Regents shouldn't seek to promote collaboration and avoidance of duplication where possible to reduce the costs to the State.

There should be three higher education boards; one for four year universities and professional schools, LCTCS, and the Board of Regents to coordinate between the two. I'd let LSU BR and its satellite entities (Pennington, etc) be its own deal, but LSU-A, LSU-E, an LSU-S all get moved into one of the other respective systems. Cut unnecessary administration costs. Southern doesn't need its own system and accompanying administration; Grambling is part of the ULS after all.

Essentially, lets work on making them more efficient before going all out closure.

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Posted by Lsuhoohoo

Member since Sep 2007

102447 posts

Posted on 1/22/16 at 5:35 pm to Lionnation1993

For starters, the constitution needs to be amended to allow cuts outside of healthcare and higher ed. The citizens of this state have taken a raping in those areas the last several years.

As mentioned, several universities need to be consolidated or flat out closed. We're well beyond over served in the way of higher ed. If we consolidated the system, the funding could then be used to strengthen a core sytem of Louisiana research universities. Ideally, we maintain and grow our largest universities (the flagship LSU, UL Lafayette, LA Tech, UNO and I'm torn on Southeastern).

I think its important for our population centers to be served by higher ed. BR, NOLA, Lafayette are all currently served by 4 year universities. Shreveport has LSUS but the feeling is that the community based on its size is underserved by LSUS in its current state. There was a proposal a few years ago in which LSUS would have been merged into Louisiana Tech. It wouldn't have been Louisiana Tech-Shreveport but simply an extension of Louisiana Tech University. I thought it was a great idea to grow one of the states research universities as well as offer a better 4 year institution to the people of Shreveport-Bossier. In my mind I also think Lake Charles and Monroe as significant enough to be served by higher ed but not enough to save McNeese and ULM. I think the needs of non traditional students could be met by small affiliate campuses. LA Tech in Monroe and UL Lafayette in Lake Charles.

Also, in reducing the level of redundancy in 4 year institutions, we place a new emphasis in the opportunities presented by community colleges. Develop collaborations between the community colleges and their regional 4 year institutions.

There you have it. We get 4 core research universities serving the population centers around the state. Eliminate the under performing and unnecessary 4 year institutions and strengthen our community colleges as feeder programs into their designated regional 4 years. Who has the balls to do it?

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