Welcome to the party, Louisiana policy-makers, decades late but maybe, finally, after over two decades of hammering you all over the head, you’ll actually do something productive about one of the great wastes in state government.
That would be our overbuilt higher education system, which this space relentlessly has advocated its pruning. And I do mean relentless: a quick search, which likely misses some instances, brought up over the past 21 years 73 different posts about how too many schools chasing too few students needlessly drives up costs to state taxpayers (here are the latest couple).
And, it now appears, policy-makers may have gotten this concept through their skulls. Some legislation has popped up for the Legislature’s regular session this year dealing with alignment of higher education administration and programs to match actual demand. As previously noted, some of it like paring programs is good, some of it like doing away with the Board of Regents is bad.
Yet even as the conversation starts, it remains too limited. Apparently, the only ideas concerning reconceptualization are shuffling the pieces around – doubtful to do much to align demand with supply and recognized as such – and the continuance of a two-decade process to drop low-completer programs intensified by a move towards campus specialization, which makes sense.
But, isolated as such, these savings will be just a drop in the bucket. To understand why, it’s necessary to know why demographics make meaningful retrenchment more necessary than ever, compounded by the explosion of spending that has occurred in state higher education, and the stagnation of Louisiana resident students in classroom seats that has accelerated in recent years.
As far as demographics go, Louisiana has suffered a double-whammy, starting with the legacy of the Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards era. That was one featuring people fleeing the state for better government and economic opportunity, as on most measures his two terms left the state worse off on both accounts: fewer jobs, below-average income and wage growth, and much larger and more expensive government. This was as a consequence of seeking to grow government first and increase resource redistribution, an agenda against which Republicans insufficiently fought.
Insofar as higher education went from the early months of his entering office through just before the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, higher education spending ballooned from $2.3 to nearly $3 billion dollars, or almost four times the rate of inflation. And the canard that was driven by tuition increases is discredited when understanding that more than that gap was accounted for by general fund increases and Taylor Opportunity Program for Students higher spending that totaled together over $900 million. Taxpayer dollars drove just about all of that.
By 2024, just after Edwards had left office, higher education spending had increased another $400 million, although his time self-generated funds (including TOPS) accounted for about half of that increase. Fortunately, the total spending hike was just two-thirds the rate of inflation over that time.
In other words, the system continues to suck money out of state taxpayers (and, with tuition increases, students and federal taxpayers through student loans) at a high rate and well over price inflation, an expenditure escalation only recently slowed, because of its built-in inefficiency. So much so, that legislators finally may be coming to realize this. Solving for it by lopping off some programs is just a drop in the bucket due to this.
Making matters worse is the “enrollment cliff” that is a national and state trend. Simply, birth demographics are that, beginning about now,” the national supply of 18-year-olds or the “traditional” student, will begin dropping an estimated 5 percent by 2030, stabilize a bit, then drop around 8 percent more over the next decade. Louisiana is estimated to be slightly less hard hit.
However, the state does have another worrying trend. In 2016, the 15-24 years age group comprised 13.5 percent of the population. But by 2020 the state had 17,000 fewer people and that proportion had shrunk to 13 percent, and while the proportion rose by 2024 to 13.2 percent the raw number was only 1,000 higher because population had fallen 53,000 more. And keep in mind right now is considered the peak of a category that already was insufficient to justify having 14 senior institutions, or even the 15 junior institutions, for of the 14 of the latter that existed in the fall of 2016, by the fall of 2025 eight of those had lower enrollments and enrollment change overall was flat.
A comparison of the first year of Edwards and second year of GOP Gov. Jeff Landry further illustrates how even an increase in enrollment overall really doesn’t solve for the overbuilt nature of Louisiana’s higher education system. Between the fall of 2016 and fall of 2025 (including all graduate-only campuses), about 19,000 more total students enrolled (note: this is warm bodies in seats or staring at screens, the impact from which probably is overstated by the fact that student credit hours have declined by about 4 percent over the period, likely from getting more credential-seeking students into the system who take only a few hours at a time), which seems encouraging.
Yet digging deeper shows some exceptionalities are driving this while much of the rest of the system is stagnant or worse. First of all, despite the big emphasis on appropriate alignment of degrees to workforce needs (including credentialing), as noted junior institution enrollment has been flat (a loss of exactly one student). Second, the University of Louisiana System is down some 10 percent, a bit of which is taken up by the Southern University System, but most of it coming from the Louisiana State University System.
The LSU system has driven this for three reasons: (1) LSU Alexandria has instituted a successful undergraduate online program portfolio that has driven enrollment to new heights, (2) LSU Shreveport (my employer) has instituted a successful graduate online portfolio that has driven enrollment to new heights, and (3) LSU A&M (Baton Rouge campus) has seen a surge in out-of-state students. To this last point, LSU enrollment has increased about 13,700, of which around 9,200 were out-of-state-students. Meanwhile, the combination of LSUA undergraduate increases and LSUS graduate increases are about 10,000, a healthy majority of which (there aren’t obviously-available statistics on this, but is based on anecdotal information I’ve heard about it) are from out-of-state and in any event don’t take up physical space or use of most physical amenities on Louisiana campuses (although it’s likely that some of these increases came out of bodies in seats, although, again, anecdotal evidence leads me to believe the overwhelming majority came from distance education sources).
To restate, almost all of the entire enrollment increase over the past nine years in Louisiana higher education as whole has come from out-of-state and/or online students. That makes absolute sense if the traditional resident student population over that span fell nearly five percent. At present, we have a stagnant LCTCS, declining ULS, and barely growing SUS and LSU System, for the latter aside from distance and/or out-of-state students. And with demographics running against higher education, it’s only going to get worse for years to come.
This reality doesn’t trend to solving the problem of too many campuses chasing too few students. Until those dynamics change with real solutions – such as merging institutions and downgrading some senior to junior, or at the very least getting rid of the separate systems in favor of making the Regents both a coordinating and governing agency – Louisiana taxpayers will continue to waste money on overbuilt higher education.
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