Regents finalize La. college cuts

• By JORDAN BLUM
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Jul 1, 2009 - Page: 1A

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Louisiana’s colleges can now start cutting more than 8 percent from their state budgets for the fiscal year that begins today.

The Louisiana Board of Regents on Tuesday finalized the shares of cuts for each college system with the Southern University System getting hit the hardest by an 11.5 percent budget cut.

The final cuts are nearly 45 percent less than the original $219 million in proposed reductions to higher education by Gov. Bobby Jindal because of reduced state revenues.

State funding for public colleges was more than $1.4 billion and now stands at about $1.3 billion.

The governor, the House and the Senate worked out a last-minute compromise last week to limit the cuts so colleges could downsize more slowly in anticipation of more budget reductions at least through 2012.

LSU Chancellor Michael Martin said Tuesday that the changes could represent the difference between close to 100 layoffs versus several hundred laid off at LSU.

The LSU System is facing $56 million in cuts, which is reduced to about $52 million when extra line-item appropriations are factored in, such as $2 million to the LSU Agricultural Center.

The main LSU campus in Baton Rouge is expecting a $19 million cut — about a 9 percent decrease.

These budget slices do not factor in $55 million already cut from higher education in January.

While other systems were initially looking at 15 percent budget cuts, the Southern System was staring down more than an 18 percent slash.

Now, the other systems are having their cuts reduced by 45 percent while Southern’s is only being lessened by 37 percent.

That is all because of the state’s new performance-based higher education funding formula that rewards strong graduation rates.

Southern officials have contended the measurement is unfair because the average Southern student starts college less prepared and with lower test scores than the average LSU student.