Colleges coping with cuts

By Icess Fernandez • http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20090213/NEWS04/902130330/1063 • February 13, 2009 2:00 am

With the economy in flux, funding for higher education from state government isn't looking too good in Louisiana.

It isn't looking good in other places either.

Most Southern states had midfiscal year cuts to their budgets. Colleges and universities in 10 out of 16 states took hits, according to information collected by the Southern Regional Education Board.

And it's only going to get worse.

"In the 30 to 35 years I've been in higher education, I haven't seen it quite this bad," said Gale Gaines, vice president of state services for the Southern Regional Education Board.

Louisiana's higher education system hasn't been immune to the economy's spiral. After sustaining midyear cuts of $55 million, campuses are seeing fewer courses taught with more students sitting in classrooms. Adjunct faculty was cut on some campuses and travel was frozen for faculty and staff.

But next fiscal year, more cuts are on the way.

In January, the Louisiana Board of Regents was told to prepare for a budget decrease that could be anywhere from $212 million to $382.2 million. The LSU system announced additional cuts recently for its campuses in an attempt to trim $175 million from its budget. At schools like LSU-Shreveport, that means as many as 64 faculty and staff positions could be eliminated.

What Louisiana has seen is common to other states, Gaines said.

"Anecdotally, I've heard of layoffs, re-educated class sections, reduced the entering freshman class, furloughs," she said. "In general, institutions are trying to protect instruction as much as they can."

But it's not all bad news out there, said Jeff Stanley, senior policy analyst for the State Higher Education Executive Officers, a national organization that represent statewide higher education governing and coordinating boards.

The group is in the middle of conducting a survey of higher education funding. Although the group is in the early stages of its work, they know of only a handful of states that have increased their funding for colleges and universities. Of the surveys they have received so far, no state has increased its funding above one percent, Stanley said.

"So far only a handful have released their budgets," he said.

Around the nation:
-In Missouri, Gov. Jay Nixon vowed to keep higher education funding static as long as university officials did not raise tuition or fees for the 2009-10 academic year.
-Maryland Gov. Martin O'Mally has a proposal to fully fund his state's higher education system and set aside money for the university system to freeze tuition. The freeze would be in its fourth year.