As the academic year begins for most Louisiana public universities, we get another dose of alarmism: tuition is going up and Louisiana is among the quarter of
states not increasing state funding of higher education; indeed, it continues to
reduce that. It’s assumed that these ought to be worrisome trends and therefore
should be altered by state policy, meaning stop raising rates (or at least as
much) and start shoveling more state money at Louisiana higher education. Wrong.
When a condition is misdiagnosed, you get the incorrect treatment. And
beyond increases in tuition and fees over the past few years (for example,
tuition and fees at my institution for a state resident taking a 12-hour load have
gone up a third from three years ago) and a decline in state support (of four-ninths
over the same time period for all Louisiana higher education), it’s another set
of data that provide insight into guiding higher education policy in the state
in the near future.
The latest data
from the Southern Regional Education Board, which tracks particularly the 16
states considered with Louisiana as part of the region, that are fiscal year
2012, confirm the downward trend of state-funded spending, even relative to all
other states. Since FY 2009, Louisiana in percentage terms has had the second
highest reduction among SREB states and fourth highest among all states.
Yet despite this, Louisiana still ranked eight highest in the SREB in state
money spent per capita on higher
education, and 18th nationally, even as for baccalaureate institutions it’s the
sixth highest in the SREB – and eighth highest in the country – in terms of the
proportion of a state’s tax dollars going to fund these institutions. So it’s
not a matter of the state neglecting higher education for other things, and
that also means, all other things equal, that if taxes were raised to give more
to higher education, that proportion would rise even higher relative to other
states.
The reason why Louisiana – and southern states generally – seem to plow
in a disproportionate amount of state support relative to other needs and in an
absolute sense is because they ask for relatively little in tuition. The state
ranked third lowest in the SREB and eighth lowest nationally in tuition for
baccalaureate study. So, even as tuition in it was spiraling upwards, the same
was happening in other states to keep its a relative bargain. Despite this
inexpensiveness, the state ranked fourth from bottom in the SREB in progression
(staying in school regardless of school location) and second-to-last in
completion and nationally in completion ranked fifth from the end.
Still, these have produced the odd situation where Louisiana ranked
second-to-last of SREB states in total support per baccalaureate student, among
the lowest in both state funds and self-generated (tuition and fees
essentially) funds. Further, it has created the situation where in the SREB it
is tied for the highest median student/faculty ratio, and tied for fifth
through eleventh nationally. Yet in terms of proportion of money going to
instruction relative to administration, the state does not compare that compared
to its peers, ranking tenth.
These numbers tell us the following:
While some continue to lament that state support has dwindled, at the
same time relatively it comprises one of the highest proportions of tax dollars
(and that would increase if tax increases dedicated to it occurred) spent among
the states, meaning even at these lower levels it is at an appropriate amount.
Yet Louisiana institutions suffer, because with the relatively high per capita burden put upon its citizens,
this indicates there are too many institutions; fewer institutions at the
baccalaureate level would mean more dollars for each.
This is confirmed by the per student numbers, because too many
institutions chasing too few students try to expand the number of students
attending, inevitably sucking in students not ready for bachelors’ degree study,
which then gets reflected in poorer progression and completion rates – and is compounded
by the entitlement nature of the Taylor Opportunity Program for Scholars, which
is received by a fifth of all enrollees to Louisiana public colleges.
All of this is happening despite the relative inexpensiveness of
student costs in tuition and fees – or perhaps because of it, for the more students
are asked to invest in their own educations, the more seriously they will take
it and the less likely marginal students would be attracted, changes which
would raise both progression and completion rates.
Compounding money woes is difficulty in translating dollars for
instruction into results, for even though Louisiana outranks a few peers in
spending proportionally more on instruction than administration, somehow it ends
up with the highest median faculty/student ratio.
So it’s not such a bad thing that state support has diminished because it
has been above average to begin with. And it’s not such a bad thing that
tuition has gone up, because it was so low to begin with. But paying attention
only to these things outside of context tempts one to miss the real problem –
inefficient delivery of higher education given a structure that until recently was
input-oriented, or trying to have as many schools and programs as possible with
policy to try to stuff as many students as possible into them, rather than
output-oriented that discounts system needs to aggrandize resources in favor of
better uses of those resources. Rather than fixating on support and tuition
rates, this delivery problem is what policy must address.
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