With the state once again in budget crisis mode and higher education on the chopping block—this time facing cuts as large as $400 million—LSU President F. King Alexander has put together “a doomsday budget” for the coming year at the flagship campus in Baton Rouge that is about $60 million down from this year’s, notes Business Report Editor Stephanie Riegel in her latest column.
“Should such an anemic budget actually become reality, Alexander predicts the university would lose 300 faculty members, $130 million in research dollars that would follow them and 500 graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, programs,” Rigel writes, noting the LSU AcGener and Pennington Biomedical Research Center would also be hit hard by the cuts. “We’ve heard this kind of talk before over the years, about institutions closing for good and professors packing their bags. This time, there is something chilling about it. It feels more real.”
Riegel says this year’s budget crisis is also more maddening than ever because we have been here so many times before, “and yet state leaders have steadfastly refused to take the difficult and politically unpopular steps needed to restructure our system of higher education to make it truly more efficient and effective.”
“Instead of merging institutions and creating strategic alliances and centers of excellence among the many four-year colleges and universities in the state, they have left them all open to wallow in mediocrity, or worse,” she writes.
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