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On this point, there’s wide agreement. Louisiana has too many public four-year higher education institutions. But things break down when you become too specific about which university stays, which university goes, which universities merge and which university is demoted to two-year status.

Radical changes to higher education—despite how good it might look on paper—historically is a third-rail issue, a metaphor for a topic that is so charged or untouchable that anyone who dares to broach the subject would invariably suffer politically.

For example, LSU’s Alexandria campus has been singled out in recent weeks as an example of what’s wrong with the system. In 2001, the Legislature approved changing LSUA from a two-year school offering associate’s degrees to a four-year institution granting bachelor’s degrees.

Last month, Sen. Mike Michot, a Lafayette Republican who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, was quoted as saying it was wrong for the Legislature to make LSUA make the transition. Several days later, Michot clarified his remarks—after being criticized by members of the Alexandria area’s delegation—and apologized to Sen. Joe McPherson, the Woodworth Democrat who helped LSUA become a four-year school.

Charlie Weems, an Alexandria lawyer and former member of the LSU Board of Supervisors who also was instrumental in helping LSUA achieve four-year status, was not happy to read Michot’s comments but was “delighted to see the backpedaling that went on the next couple of days.”

LSUA’s conversion was needed to fill what Weems called a “black hole” in higher education in central Louisiana. He argues a “last-in, first-out” approach is not a thoughtful way to revamp higher education. That’s assuming a serious revamp is possible, which from a practical point of view Weems doubts—even if it’s a good idea.

If it was possible, a more logical place to start would be in north-central and northeast Louisiana, where Grambling State, Louisiana Tech and the University of Louisiana at Monroe are less than 40 miles apart on Interstate 20; Grambling State and Louisiana Tech are just four miles apart. Weems understands each institution has its own history, identity and impassioned supporters.

“You can’t intellectually defend the way we’re organized or the way campuses are in one system or another,” he says. “Much of it is a historical accident. The fact is we can’t start over. We’re not working from a clean slate, which makes it practically impossible to do the things that are the most logical.”

Speaker of the House Jim Tucker, a Terrytown Republican, will file legislation to form a commission to study the state’s higher education from undergraduate to graduate to technical schools. He couldn’t predict what the commission might find, but says, “I don’t think we should take any option off the table.

“I don’t know if we’re right-sized. It’s fairly inefficient the way we provide services now.”

Mark Emmert, who as LSU’s chancellor from 1999-2004 would have preferred Louisiana had fewer mouths to feed, doubts the political dynamic has changed much despite the state’s looming budget cuts. So good luck changing or merging campuses.

“You do have too many,” says Emmert, who left LSU to become the president of the University of Washington. “There’s no question in my mind you have too many.”

But closing a public college is even worse than closing a factory. It’s like prying out part of a community’s soul—they’re that important in terms of economic development and cultural identity.

The number of four-year public institutions that have been closed? Zero. It’s too difficult, Emmert says. And knocking a school down to two-year status nearly is almost as unlikely, he adds.

“I’ll describe it as a rarity,” he says. “What that means is I’ve never seen it happen. They don’t ratchet it down very easily. That’s why making these decisions carefully in the first place is very important.”

Higher education should be proportioned to population size and growth—or lack thereof—as well as the needs of business and industry that supply the jobs, Emmert says, noting that Louisiana has 14 public four-year institutions to serve a population of about 4.4 million. To compare, Washington only has four public four-year institutions to serve 6.5 million residents.

While Louisiana might find closing or merging its way to a rational structure more difficult than it sounds, “it doesn’t mean you can’t coordinate and consolidate more effectively,” Emmert says.

E. Joseph Savoie, a former Commissioner of Higher Education and current president of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, says it’s important to eliminate unnecessary duplication at institutions. Joint academic programs and shared faculty appointments, shared administrative operations like financial aid and maintenance, and bulk purchasing among institutions—something ULL already is doing with neighboring community colleges—are ways to maximize efficiency, he suggests.

That said, the state’s higher education system has been more efficient since the Board of Regents won more long-term planning authority during the Foster administration, Savoie says. Meanwhile, the creation of the community college system and establishing admissions criteria for four-year schools has expanded access to higher education at a lower cost.

“As far as the institutions themselves, while theoretically you may want to close or merge or do something like that, the political reality of that makes it almost impossible,” he says. “What do you do in lieu of that? You try to be as efficient as you can with the structure that you have.”

Sally Clausen, the current commissioner of higher education, doesn’t rule out radical changes despite the political realities, but says closing campuses shouldn’t be part of the discussion.

“You’re talking about a solution before you’re talking about a goal,” she says. “And the goal is not necessarily to go see what you can close. The goal is to see how you can educate more students. Whatever that means should be on the table.

“The focus has to be on students, outcomes, faculty research, collaboration and getting the job done. We’ve got the lowest educated population in the country. That’s where we have to focus.”