Lombardi: Higher tuition will help fix budget problem

• By SARAH CHACKO
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Sep 24, 2009 - Page: 1B

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LSU System President John Lombardi said Wednesday raising tuition would help solve the state’s higher education budget problems.

Lombardi, who spoke at the Rotary Club of Baton Rouge, said state officials refuse to pay for high-quality higher education out of the tax base. But those same officials also don’t want the people who attend universities to pay either, he said.

“So out of nothing we’re going to have a high-quality higher education system,” Lombardi said.

Gov. Bobby Jindal last week asked cost-cutting panels to help him identify nearly $1 billion in state budget cuts, including $146 million for the state’s public colleges and universities.

Lombardi oversees 11 institutions, as well as 10 public hospitals, throughout the state.

Lombardi mocked the reasoning behind the Postsecondary Education Review Commission. The so-called Tucker Commission was created by the Legislature earlier this year to streamline higher education. Its first meeting is scheduled next week.

“Commissions are a device designed to recognize that we don’t have a clue,” he said. “Or if we do have a clue, we don’t want to do what the clue tells us to do.”

Ultimately, commissions propose things that are undoable, Lombardi said.

“They will propose dramatic and radical transformations of the world in ways that our political process can’t possibly comprehend and that our fiscal resources can’t possibly afford,” he said. “And so at the end of the day we’ll have a nice report, and it will be uplifting reading but nobody will read it, it will be hard to lift, and so no one will ever pay attention to it.”

Nicknamed after House Speaker Jim Tucker, R-Terrytown, the review panel has to report by Feb. 12, 45 days before the 2010 legislative session.

Lombardi said after the Rotary speech that while the commission will hopefully offer good advice, the Legislature and governor will ultimately have to address the issue.

Lombardi suggested “deregulating” higher education so universities could better compete for professors and students. State legislators, for instance, must approve tuition increases under certain circumstances.

Lombardi said university officials, rather than legislators, should control the decisions made by the institutions.