Often called “disinvestment,” some blame state cuts for Louisiana’s tuition hikes, low per-student spending and poor academic attainment.
But a report released this month challenges that assumption, The Town Talk reports.
“State subsidies appear to have little, if any, effect on tuition levels at public colleges,” American Enterprise Institute analyst Preston Cooper concludes in his report.
While Cooper admits cuts in state subsidies have coincided with tuition increases, he argues it’s a “weak” connection and that higher state subsidies wouldn’t change tuition much.
Others argue Louisiana could be the exception.
“In Louisiana there has been a direct connection in the decrease in state support and increase in tuition,” says Jim Henderson, president and CEO of the University of Louisiana System.
From 2010 to 2016 the state did what Henderson calls “the tuition swap” through the GRAD Act, which allowed institutions that met certain benchmarks to increase tuition by 10% each year.
“It was originally designed to give resources to institutions, but in its execution, every time an institution increased 10 percent the same amount was taken away from the institution,” he says.
Louisiana cut its annual higher education budget by more than $459 million between 2008 and 2012, according to a 2014 report from the Center for American Progress.
That’s a drop of 28% in four years, and the downward trend has continued.
In-state tuition and fees at public universities increased 59% over five years, which was more than six times the national average, a report by The College Board says. Tuition and fees in Louisiana went up  more than any other state between 2011 and 2017.
