Formation of yet another state commission to study the governance of higher education should induce such yawns as elicited by your most boring professor. Can’t we just cut to the chase to where the Legislature kills the bill and skip the dreary futility in between? True, any serious attempt to form a single board to replace the five that currently govern state universities and community colleges can be set aside for now. The legislatively created Governance Commission already has decided not to go there; and the Legislature, after kicking around the issue off and on for about three decades, is weary of it. Yet some big changes could be at hand, not from a top-down solution decided by experts and state politicians, but rather by what is bubbling up from local communities, from New Orleans to Shreveport, where leaders seek more influence over how their area institutions work and work together. Read the full column here.
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
