LSU could declare exigency if it cannot meet payroll this semester, university President F. King Alexander said today.
“If we can’t meet payroll, we’re filing for exigency, plain and simple,” Alexander told the Press Club of Baton Rouge.
The school last year considered filing for exigency—the equivalent of college bankruptcy—during a round of budget talks in the Legislature, but never did after lawmakers found a way to fund higher education. Now, with higher education on the chopping block again, and state higher education officials bracing for another round of cuts, Alexander says LSU AgCenter facilities across the state cannot make payroll in April, and the flagship campus and medical schools cannot make payroll in May if the Legislature does not find a way to minimize the higher education cuts.
Higher education officials have said they face a best-case scenario of $70 million in cuts and a worst-case scenario of $230 million if nothing gets done during the current special session. But that worst-case scenario was before the session began, and Alexander said the Legislature has only accomplished about, as he puts it, 30% of what it needs to get done.
“This is as real as it gets,” Alexander said.
And this mid-semester budget cut could happen at a time when 39 of 50 states are increasing higher education funding, he said.
“Not only is this unprecedented in Louisiana, this is unprecedented in the history of funding public higher education on the part of every state,” Alexander said. “So we’re going to our public colleges and universities mid-semester, last semester, and saying we need what you have and you figure out how to make it through graduation.”
Alexander has been vocal about the devastating effects the potential budget cuts would have for LSU. He has authored several letters, which were posted on LSU’s website, that give students, faculty, staff and alumni who have not followed the Legislature’s movements an idea of what has happened and what still needs to be done.
After eight years and 13 budget reductions, Alexander said LSU has learned to make do with less. The school ranks 46th in the country among flagship universities in what it spends per student, meaning only four schools spend less. LSU spends about $13,000, compared to Penn State at $38,000 and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at $30,000. But the school has continued “punching well above our weight,” Alexander said, and ranks in the middle of the pack in terms of starting salary right out of college (27th out of 50), graduation rates (26th) and mid-career earnings (22nd).
“All we’re asking for is quit cutting our legs out from under us,” Alexander said.
One effect of all the budget talk and doom-and-gloom scenarios is that institutions across the country have begun poaching researchers from LSU and other Louisiana universities. Alexander says a top researcher recently left for the University of Florida and another left for Oregon State University.
“We’re talking about staying open and making sure that we can turn the lights on and paying our people, while they’re aggressively pursuing our faculty, our students, the whole human capital of this state,” Alexander says, adding he can do nothing but play “prevent defense” instead of pursuing top researchers for the university.
—Ryan Broussard
