Dr. Kurt Corbello, PhD, Political Science
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.[1] 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.[2]
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, 4-year and
2-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. [3] (Click on the accompanying link to access my complete Data on State Populations and Institutions of Higher Education in the United States as of 2010 to 2015, Compiled by Dr Kurt Corbello, Spring 2015).
Nationwide
there are 718 public 4-year colleges and universities (avg. 14), 1705 private
4-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 4-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 4-year
colleges and universities (rank=4th), 79 private 4-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 4-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 6 to 66 public and private
4-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 4-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!
