Because we are working frantically to meet the deadline for publication of our book about Bobby Jindal, we have scaled back on the frequency of posts for LouisianaVoice. Instead, we are relying heavily on several guest columnists. The following post was written by Michael Kurt Corbello, Ph.D.
He is an associate professor of political science at Southeastern Louisiana University where he has taught since 1987. From 1991 to 2011, he was the founding director of the Southeastern Poll. He teaches courses in American politics, research methods and statistics, polling and public opinion, Louisiana politics, the Louisiana Legislature in Session, political parties, environmental policy, American foreign policy and European politics. Since 2004, he has run a three-week summer study abroad program for SLU in Salzburg, Austria.
He has volunteered the following column from his own political blog, Dr. Kurt Corbello on Politics:
By Dr. Michael Kurt Corbello (special to LouisianaVoice)
In the current battle in the Louisiana legislature over how to fully fund public higher education while not raising the ire of the Jindal/Norquist anti-tax axis, it is heartening to witness comments by leaders in the business community drawing a direct connection between business opportunity and broad, affordable access to higher education. Still, politicians and ideologues in Louisiana often show an openness to diminishing, if not destroying, the great strides made in Louisiana to increase access to higher education. Frequently, this tendency to limit access is born out of well-intentioned ignorance, as in October 2009, when Louisiana House Speaker Jim Tucker called for a study to explore closing some of the public college “facilities on every corner” of the state.
At other times, calls to reduce the number of public secondary education institutions are clearly born out of malice and deceit. Recently, a rabidly ideological blogger rallied the bandwagon to eliminate a few colleges and universities in Louisiana, arguing that our “14” public four-year institutions are too many to serve a population of 4.6 million. According to the blogger, Louisiana should take a lesson from the “12” public colleges and universities serving the “four times” more populous state of Florida. The implication is that public post-secondary institutions in Louisiana do not carry a heavy enough burden in serving the state’s population to justify having “so many” institutions.
Of course, we’ve heard these arguments before, repeated enough that they are widely accepted as true. Yet, it does not take a tremendous effort to discover that the basic assumptions behind the “downsizing argument” in Louisiana are false! Perhaps it is a bit petty to suggest that higher education policy “thinkers” get their facts straight (Louisiana has 17 public four-year colleges and universities, while Florida has 39), but while we’re at it lets look at the “counterintuitive” side of the debate: that Louisiana’s public system of higher education isn’t just grossly underfunded to the point of bankruptcy, it is overburdened, should be expanded and should be returned to a level of affordability for the average family in this state!
As a point of public disclosure, the reader should know that I am a Louisiana-born, raised, and public-educated political science professor with a nearly thirty-year career at one of the state’s four-year universities. This is to say that I have a bias, but it is one based upon experience and data, not upon ideological deceit, intellectual sloppiness, and a lack of transparency! First, I alter some basic assumptions about the structure of higher education in Louisiana.
My view is that post-secondary education should be thought of as a system with many interdependent parts, public and private, large and small, four-year and two-year, general and specialized, each serving different needs and communities in order to serve the state as a whole. Further, I argue that a good and basic way to measure the burden on the system within each state is to divide the state population by the state’s total number of post-secondary institutions. I used Census data and information available from the U. S. Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics to compare the population burden upon the higher education systems for each of the fifty states, plus Washington, D.C. Data on State Populations and Institutions of Higher Education as of 2010 to 2015
Nationwide there are 718 public four-year colleges and universities (avg. 14), 1705 private four-year institutions (avg. 33), 1173 public community colleges (avg. 23), and 284 private community colleges (avg. 6), for a total of 3814 post-secondary institutions (avg. 75). Yet, not all states are the same! Louisiana has 17 public 4-year colleges and universities (rank=11th), 12 private four-year institutions (rank=34th), 16 public community colleges (rank=27th), and 6 private community colleges (rank=12th), for a total of 51 post-secondary institutions (rank=28th). Since critics like (and misstate) the comparison, Florida has 39 public four-year colleges and universities (rank=4th), 79 private four-year institutions (rank=6th), 63 public community colleges (rank=3rd), and 12 private community colleges (rank=8th), for a total of 193 post-secondary institutions (rank=4th).
Combining all public and private four-year colleges and universities yields a different set of results. The national average is 48 institutions per state (New York, 215; California, 200; Pennsylvania, 155; Florida, 118; Texas, 109; Ohio, 108; Massachusetts, 98; Illinois, 97; Michigan, 83). Louisiana (29) and most of the remaining states of the South have a range six to 66 public and private four-year colleges and universities per state.
But the picture of higher education in the United States, Louisiana, and the South would not be complete without considering the impact of the 1,457 public and private community colleges across the country. Nationwide, the average number of these institutions per state nationwide is 39. California has 133, Texas 83, New York 79, Florida 75, Ohio 69, North Carolina 67, and Pennsylvania 63. In the South, there are 540 public and private community colleges, with an average of 32 per state. While Louisiana ranks a low 11th with 22, the range is from a low of 2 in D.C. to a high of 83 in Texas.
In all, there are 3,814 public and private post-secondary institutions across the United States, and each of them plays a critical role in educating a valuable constituency; you, me, our children, and those yet to breathe the air of curiosity and creativity. The question is, does Louisiana have a glut of higher education institutions? The best available data clearly shows that Louisiana doesn’t have enough post-secondary institutions, particularly community colleges that can provide access for people in more remote areas, as well as to individuals not ready for urban four-year institutions! Here is why!
Nationwide, Louisiana ranks 25th in population size and 26th in the percentage of urban population. These are factors that help to define economic activity in a state, the training required of its workforce, and the distribution of educational facilities. In addition, Louisiana is 28th in the total number of post-secondary institutions. Yet, Louisiana ranks 12th (91,170) in population per post-secondary institution. Again, I see this as a measure of the burden on the state’s higher education system.
Comparing Louisiana among the 17 states of the South is even more telling. Louisiana ranks 10th in population size (4,649,676), 8th in the percentage of urban population, 12th in the total number of colleges (51), but 6th in population per institution (91,170) per state. Only Texas (140,401), Maryland (117,184), Florida (103,074), Georgia (99,974), and Virginia (99,122) impose somewhat heavier burdens on their higher education systems than does Louisiana. But each of these states has made a commitment to higher learning that continually fails to gain traction in the morass of Louisiana politics. Nationally, 77% of states are less burdensome to their higher education systems than is Louisiana. In the South, Louisiana’s higher education system is more heavily burdened than systems in 65% of all other states.
Talk of closing public colleges and universities in Louisiana raises the question of access. Critics argue that public institutions “crowd out” potential private ones that would fill any vacuum created in their absence. Yet, public post-secondary institutions exist precisely because private institutions are unaffordable and inaccessible. The argument in favor of creating a vacuum in public higher education is a fraudulent one.
The average college student at a public institution in Louisiana is struggling to fulfill dreams. Tuition and books are increasing in costs, and so are debts for attending college. Most students have little money, even though they often work one, two or three jobs. Many have families. Most are able to go to college because they can drive to one within 30 miles of their families, children, and jobs. Closing public colleges and universities negatively alters the logistics and deprives them, and us, of the promise of a better life!
There is no genius in taking an ax to a budget. There is no brilliance in talking fast and saying nothing. There is no fiscal responsibility in refusing to pay the state’s bills in a way that is prudent. Previous state leaders grappled with Hurricane Katrina and left a $1 billion surplus that the current crop depleted in the blink of an eye. Tax cuts did not generate magic, as they never do. More pockets of “surplus” money had to be found and depleted. The once dependable “Charity Hospital” system is gone, sold off to the highest bidders, its replacement over budget, in legal limbo, and leaving thousands without care.
Post Katrina, bright, young, and talented college faculty came to Louisiana, especially to the University of New Orleans, wide-eyed and full of energy to build a life and a career in an exotic new frontier. Then we began hearing the smart-ass mantra, “Do more with less!” In response, these new creative souls did more with more by leaving the state, in the case of UNO, destroying its brand and making its future more troubled than Katrina ever did.
It is mind-boggling that anyone can think that it is good for business when we refuse to pay our bills and rip the heart right out of our future! We need responsible budgeting and more tax revenue! That is how government pays its bills. It is also how we take care of the multitude of things that, large, medium, or small, add up to a quality of life to be envied!
In the end, the now recurring crisis of higher education in Louisiana is a manufactured crisis. It is a crisis, the prevailing solutions to which run counter to “common” sense. After the players change, it will take us at least a generation and many hundreds of millions of dollars to reverse the damage done by this generation of “leaders.” The alternative is a state cannibalizing itself into unspeakable backwardness.
Without courage and resistance in the State Legislature, the current crop of leaders will continue to destroy what others in Louisiana took generations to build. Thankfully for us and for them, it is wanton destruction that they will never be around to “fix.” Where higher education is concerned, closing public institutions, or privatizing them, alters the mission and leaves people without access!
Thank you for this article. I feel that this “wanton, destructive Legislature is laying waste to more than just high education in Louisiana. In fact, I can’t think of a single good thing that has been improved or supported by this wrecking crew. I just don’t know how much longer we can stand to allow this kind of “non-governing” to continue.
Good article, I am really enjoying the guest writers to LouisianaVoice.com. all offer interesting, commentary on important issues, that face those of us, who give a damn.
I am one of many beneficiaries of Louisiana’s higher ed system from years gone by. I entered LSU in the 1970’s without a scholarship or support from my family. As a young person with no previous job experience, the only work I was able to find paid the minimum wage. And somehow I managed to scape by and earn my degree. This would have been impossible for me without the investment that society made in my future. I believe that the result over the long haul has been a win for both me and my fellow citizens.
My heart goes out to today’s youth. Instead of making a world even better for them than the previous generation, it feels as though the bargain has been broken. Young people are graduating with crippling debt only to find a lack of opportunities available to them.
The generation of WWII has often been referred to as the greatest generation because of the great sacrifices they made. My generation, not so much.
Its not often you see an article based on facts, well done
The one important statement in this entire article is this one : “The best available data clearly shows that Louisiana doesn’t have enough post-secondary institutions, particularly community colleges that can provide access for people in more remote areas, as well as to individuals not ready for urban four-year institutions!”
Particularly community colleges.
We do not need to close schools, but we do need to restructure the higher education system to put more emphasis on community colleges, which serve to both provide vocational training and to funnel students into four-year schools, than on providing a “university” to every community that wants bragging rights.
That might result in merging some schools in some areas which could result in a reduction in the number of schools without actually reducing access. Why is the two-year school in Eunice called “LSU?” Why is it not part of the community college system?
Why is there a Community College and a Technical College in Baton Rouge?
Every commission and every study comes to the same conclusion — increase the number of community colleges, reduce the number of four-year schools, and significantly reduce the number of universities.
Then we began hearing the smart-ass mantra, “Do more with less!”
Beautifully stated Professor. The spin meisters doing the bidding of the likes of Grover Norquist, the Kochs, and others of that ilk offer these simple slogans for simple minds. And sadly it seems to work in this information age of 15 second soundbites. You’d think our legislators would know better, and they might. For them it’s just another way to get a few drinks and a steak dinner from a lobbyist. For the rest of us it is the rape and pillage of our communities and the snuffing of our dreams for a better tomorrow.
The problem is that these conservative politicians are successfully selling themselves to voters by telling these voters pretty much what many of these voters, if not most of them, want to hear and want to believe, i.e, that their taxes are too high such as they are and for the reasons that their tax money is being mostly wasted, that most politicians (and state workers along with those in higher education) are essentially if not actually crooks out to waste or steal the taxpayers’ funds and finally that the crooked politicians have bought their way into power by promising “money for nothing” in the form of “welfare,” etc. for certain minority groups who are believed to be perpetually lazy or prone to criminal activity that would seem to be the most sizable and significant item in the state budget. Of course, yes, one definitely cannot deny that taxpayers’ dollars have indeed been wasted and stolen and quite often throughout the years and that the William Jeffersons, Ray Nagins, etc. of this world have existed and will likely continue to do so. On the other hand, if you’re out to make the more well reasoned case that taxes are the price of living in a civilized society and having a future (education and infrastructure being investments in that future) and that there simply have to be adequate revenues in order to fund services that really are important for everyone and that everyone should be paying their fair share, bearing their part of the burden, well, that’s what you’re up against as regards what’s in peoples’ minds. At the root of the story is not really Grover Norquist or the Koch brothers or even the politicians, but rather the voters themselves who staunchly believel in these notions as I have laid out. I would say that we need to adopt a mentality of “let’s mend it and not end it (since if we do end ‘it’ we end ourselves as a civilized society with a vibrant economy and future).” However, one suspects that most of the state’s voters take a stance of “we don’t see how it can be mended and so therefore it must be ended.”
I wish there were about 1.5 million more people like you registered to vote in Louisiana. We would not have the problems we do. Unfortunately, your point about why we allow the current system to perpetuate itself is extremely well-taken. If we had more legislators like John Bel Edwards, Karen Peterson and a handful of others, we would have a shot. Let’s hope more people like them will offer themselves up for true public service.
But the large majority of legislators would take a strident stand to cut taxes or against tax increases well before they’d take a strident stand to increase taxes so that services could be improved…because that’s what they think that the voters in their districts will respond to…and they’re not wrong about that at all.
Jindal’s largest campaign lie to Louisiana was his intention to keep our brightest here. Instead he has destroyed every public institution and scattered our brightest, sent them scrambling.
Many of the finest physicians and educators have fled too and could not be lured back even if a saner leader could magically reappear the physical plants (schools & hospitals) Jindal is selling off for pennies on the dollar
And yes Edith, the corrupt and cowardly legislators have bowed to every Jindal-whim. DUMP ALL THOSE WHO VOTED WITH THE LOON.
For verification look no further than yesterday’s cowardly capitulation to Jindal’s petulant demands to include his childish SAVE or DUMB ACT, whichever you prefer. When faced with chance to pass their own budget and dare the absentee, don’t let the door hit you in the rear governor to override it, our legislators once again rolled over and played possum. For the life of me I cannot understand what they fear from this impotent political fool whose mantra,”I am a nationally ridiculed idiot”… I’m sorry I meant “I will be an excellent commander in chief.” It’s true the passage saved higher ed from another year of crushing cuts but so did the much more ambitious budget put forth by the legislature. Missed their last chance to call out Jindal for his actions and give him the false apparition of tax neutrality built on a lie. Vote these spineless destroyers out at the first opportunity.
Really and truly it’s the voters’ mentality, the mentality of very many if not the majority of the voters, that’s at the root of this. The legislators realize that very many voters won’t be willing to forgive, no matter what, almost ANY sort of tax increase, no matter how reasonable. Though increasing tuition and fees on students would be OK. And, yes, the voters also did re-elect Piyush Jindal. But, again, the basic fact is that the voters believe what they want to believe, which is that having low taxes trumps everything, period. Which, by the way, is absolutely not to argue that taxes should necessarily be high (so that some politician can steal funds or spend them on something that’s a pure waste). Nonetheless the notion of “let’s mend things, not end things” is just not in line, for better or for worse, with how most voters seem to be thinking these days.
Here’s one of the base causes for lack of sufficient state revenues having an effect from the national level. Not that the state governments of Louisiana, Kansas Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and New Jersey aren’t quite busy shooting themselves in the foot. It’s an educational experience. Enjoy –
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/modern-monetary-theory-primer.html