• By JORDAN BLUM
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Oct 21, 2009 - Page: 9B

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Is Louisiana actually too educated for its own good?

That’s a question almost no one would ask in a state that ranks in the low 40s in most performance and education measures.

Some thought that was the point made last month when Louisiana Workforce Commission Executive Director Curt Eysink said the state may be producing too many bachelor’s and graduate degrees and not enough associate degrees and certificates to pump out a skilled work force faster.

“We’re producing a work force that we cannot employ in Louisiana,” Eysink said, referencing the so-called brain drain of university graduates leaving the state for greener pastures (or the concreted pastures of Houston and other cities that employ many Louisiana natives).

Eysink was speaking at a Postsecondary Education Review Commission meeting, also known as the Tucker Commission after state House Speaker Jim Tucker, who sponsored the legislation that created the panel.

With such comments by Eysink and others, the commission meetings are teetering on the edge of falsely pitting the state universities against the growing two-year community and technical colleges.

The commission is to recommend ways to restructure Louisiana’s higher education to be more efficient in a time of continuing state budget cuts.

Board of Regents Chairman Artis Terrell argued Louisiana cannot have too many educated people and university graduates, comparing Eysink’s comments to a rich man saying he has too much money.

Eysink later clarified his remarks more to indicate he was speaking of a needed shift in the state’s higher education enrollment and was not maligning universities.

“Louisiana has a shortage of about 4,000 workers a year for jobs that require career or technical education. At the same time, many university graduates are leaving Louisiana to find work,” Eysink wrote in a letter to the editor. “This tells me that our system of higher education is producing a work force for jobs that do not exist in our economy, while we have open jobs for skilled labor that we cannot fill.”

Where Eysink and Economic Development Secretary Stephen Moret have erred somewhat is in their claim that only about 25 percent of the state’s public college students are in community and technical colleges.

They want more of a 50-50 balance between two-year schools and universities, such as Texas and other states have.

Nearly 35 percent — not 25 percent — of the state’s public college students are in two-year institutions — about 75,000 — and that number jumps to almost 40 percent when graduate students are not counted.