Christel Slaughter, a consultant who appears to consult with every significant entity in Baton Rouge, stood before a group of officials tasked with charting LSU’s consolidated future and delivered the hard-truth news: Not only is LSU not one of this nation’s elite institutions, but its chances of ever becoming one are exactly zero percent.
“The sobering reality, and it’s extremely clear, is that we’re underfunded,” Slaughter was quoted in the media as saying. “We’re not in the big leagues.”
Slaughter’s assessment was made more than a week ago, and we’re still waiting for the first voice of dissent from those serving on the university’s Transitional Advisory Team. Given the nods of agreement during the meeting, none apparently will be forthcoming.
Connect the reality dots discussed during the meeting and it’s clear LSU’s situation will get worse before it begins—hopefully—to get better. LSU is not a top 100 school in the U.S. News & World Report list, nor is it in the top 100 on the more respected National Science Foundation rankings. The current trajectory is research grants are declining dramatically as top faculty, tired of an institution held together by duct tape and rubber bands, are leaving for universities in states where higher education is actually taken seriously.
All of which makes reaching the goal of LSU2015—transforming the state’s flagship institution into a nationally recognized research university able to attract and retain the world’s best academic and research talent—about as likely as finding Bo Rein’s plane in the Atlantic Ocean.
Jim Firnberg, a member of the committee and a former consultant for the NSF, says LSU should focus on six research areas where it has a legitimate chance to compete nationally—environmental science and coastal research, biomedical sciences, energy, arts and humanities, computation and digital media, and natural and renewable resources. Yet, he warns, the tomorrow of LSU becoming a top 50 research university will never come. At best, LSU could become a top 75 institution.
Putting that in sports terms—which seems to be the only thing associated with education that people in this state understand—LSU will never be a BCS-caliber academic school; the best it can hope for is mid-major status.
Just one day after this somber reminder of LSU’s place in the world of higher education, a bid to end almost 20 years of tuition control by the Legislature died when the same elected officials who, over the past six years, have cut some $650 million in higher education funding, did not see the need to give university boards the right to increase tuition rates that, by national standards, are pathetically low. In other words, the actions of Gov. Bobby Jindal and legislators are loudly telling university leaders they need to find a way to operate with minimal state subsidies, but legislators aren’t about to let them do it with much-needed tuition hikes.
We now have a new definition for “moronic.”
Even with the most optimistic Jindal-backed accounting method, higher education has been whacked some $300 million over the past six years, much of that absorbed by LSU. Yet we hear nothing from those wielding the ax about the resulting job losses, or the fact that higher education is supposed to be the key to our economic success in a world powered by knowledge, research and creativity. When officials at LSU and other state universities complain, those who complain too loudly are eased out of their jobs and those that remain are told to shut up and figure it out.
In contrast, when a bipartisan group of rogue legislators has the gall to suggest a partial solution to our state’s fiscal nightmare is to cut 15% ($91 million) from our annual corporate welfare tab, the governor and an armada of business lobbyists scream such a move would 1] break promises made to business, 2] be a “job killer” and 3] irreparably damage Louisiana’s fragile reputation.
Let me get this straight: Cutting 80% of higher education funding is good, necessary and transformative, according to our elected leaders, but a 15% cut to corporate welfare sends us back to the dark ages of the 1980s?
Given this, LSU officials shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for employment applications from the research elite of academia.
When it comes to my alma mater, we may be bleeding purple, but what we’re living is pyrite.
