Gov. Bobby Jindal sailed into office on a wave of post-Hurricane Katrina reform fervor, and his people tout changes to ethics rules, workforce development, taxes and other areas in arguing he has made good on the unprecedented opportunity he was handed.
But some former supporters grumble that Jindal could have been more aggressive during his honeymoon phase.
“He had an opportunity for foundational, structural reform,” says demographer, pundit and prominent Jindal apostate Elliott Stonecipher. “He never even tried.”
Many good-government types say the state’s underachieving and often underfunded higher education system would be a great candidate for structural reform. When Jindal resurrected the idea of merging the University of New Orleans, part of the LSU System, with Southern University at New Orleans, then placing the combined school in the University of Louisiana System, he was met with some approval and even a few cheers for publicly suggesting a concrete change that some people say is obvious and overdue.
Not everyone is happy, of course. Southern University System President Ronald Mason says he was “shocked” by the governor’s proposal. A group of Southern students has filed suit to stop the possible merger, which so far is only an idea being studied. The Legislative Black Caucus has denounced the proposal. A 2006 study found the schools are too dissimilar to merge.
But despite the controversy, Rep. Rick Gallot, a Grambling Democrat, was quoted saying the proposal involves little political risk for the governor, and it’s hard to find a knowledgeable observer of Louisiana politics who disagrees. Here’s why:
First, UNO would be happy to leave LSU behind. New Orleans, a proud and provincial city, doesn’t get the same charge out of hosting an LSU campus as, say, Eunice. UNO could get out of the flagship’s shadow and become one of the stars of the UL System. Thomas Kitchen, board chairman of UNO’s foundation, says higher education and the state’s economy would be better served if the university is grouped with peers like Louisiana Tech and Louisiana-Lafayette.
Some SUNO officials and students feel their school is being picked on, but hardly anyone else is likely to stick up for a university with a single-digit graduation rate. Black voters, especially in New Orleans, might get upset, but since they typically don’t support Republicans under any circumstances, Jindal loses nothing by ignoring them. The New Orleans delegation doesn’t have the clout it once did, and some of them won’t be returning to the Capitol after this year, thanks to redistricting and the city’s population loss after Katrina.
“Jindal is maybe feeling some heat that maybe he hasn’t tackled a couple of tough issues,” says Pearson Cross, head of UL-Lafayette’s political science department. “By introducing this, which is the most obvious, low-hanging fruit in terms of higher ed reform, he at least can have something to respond to his critics and say, ‘I’ve opened this discussion, and nobody else has.’”
Given Jindal’s history of mostly avoiding unpopular positions, it stands to reason his team looked at the UNO-SUNO merger idea carefully and couldn’t see a downside, Cross says.
If Louisiana does in fact have more universities than it can support, it might be fairer to conduct a broad study and consider the possibility of mergers or closures throughout the state. Baton Rouge has two universities, two law schools and even two agricultural centers, and north Louisiana has its share of colleges within spitting distance of each other—Grambling State and Louisiana Tech are about six miles apart in Lincoln Parish. So is it cowardly that Jindal’s people are thinking so small? Or just prudent?
“As soon as you start prodding the beast that is higher education, you’re going to get a lot of pushback,” Cross says, “not only from people in higher education, but from state legislators in those areas. You could just look at this as being pragmatic.”
Some observers hope this is only the beginning of a broader conversation. Others fear that if you can’t merge UNO and SUNO, the whole idea of streamlining higher education is a lost cause.
An ambitious agenda
Taken as a whole, Jindal’s higher education agenda is lengthy and arguably pretty ambitious. It includes tuition and fee increases, as well as another try at merging the five boards that govern higher education. Many measures will require two-thirds votes.
“It’s going to require some heavy lifting and some use of political capital to get some of these things passed, but I don’t think it’s bad politics,” says Council for A Better Louisiana President Barry Erwin. “I think he’s trying to do the right thing, and I think it’ll be perceived that way.”
Jindal has endorsed some of the proposals of the Louisiana Flagship Coalition, which is backed by powerful businessmen like Sean Reilly and Lane Grigsby, and supports incorporating their ideas throughout the system. The coalition says cutting red tape in areas like procurement and facilities management could save tens of millions over five years at LSU’s Baton Rouge campus alone.
But Jindal hasn’t echoed their call to exempt new hires from civil service and state pension rules, although he supports greater flexibility for certain personnel and says his administration is looking into the civil service issue.
When Jindal proposed constitutionally dedicating $43 million of tobacco settlement money to TOPS to “protect the program even during times of budget reductions,” Capitol watchers laughed. But while reporters and columnists might call the move hypocritical, since Jindal has long complained about the budget inflexibility such dedications create, the governor’s team knows the program is popular with white, upper-middle-class voters, who are more than happy to let taxpayers send their children to college.
There’s also a bit of budgetary sleight of hand taking place. Most of the money for TOPS comes from the state’s general fund; theoretically, the program is cuttable, but in practice has always been a sacred cow. Dedicating more money from the Millennium Trust Fund to TOPS frees up general fund dollars, which can then be used for other purposes.
Eddie Ashworth, director of the Louisiana Budget Project, writes that capping the fund and reallocating the money to TOPS means the fund would no longer continue to grow.
“The state would, in effect, be eating its TOPS seed corn,” he says, comparing the move to other stopgap measures like selling state facilities.
Erwin says the state may be inching toward having an actual grown-up conversation about higher education.
“I might be the only one who thinks that,” he says.
Since the budget crunch, Erwin says, the state has been talking about funding. He says with last year’s GRAD Act, we started talking about funding and performance. Now, the budget picture is forcing a larger discussion. The Board of Regents has identified 459 low-performing programs for possible elimination; even if it only kills 300, that’s something that wouldn’t have happened before, he says.
Some of Jindal’s early supporters say he missed his opening. The honeymoon is over, and 2011 is both an election year and a redistricting year, which conventional wisdom suggests doesn’t bode well for sweeping policy changes.
On the other hand, the state was flush with cash at the beginning of Jindal’s term. Maybe the prospect of a $1.6 billion shortfall is enough motivation to do things that were once unthinkable. The real magic trick would be improving outcomes, which everyone says is necessary if Louisiana is serious about competing in the global economy, while simultaneously meeting the funding challenge.
“The questions that need to be answered around higher ed are such that it’s going to force some change, and it’s going to start this year,” Erwin says. “I don’t think it’ll finish this year.”
