Closing the Gap: Higher education
18- to 24-year-olds enrolled in college:
25- to 34-year-olds in college:
Intellectual property at Louisiana colleges:
First-year college retention rates:
College students graduating within 6 years:
Median tuition and fees in 2006 for a four-year college:
Median tuition and fees in 2006 for a two-year college:
Source: Southern Regional Education Board Fact Book on Higher Education 2007
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When Louisiana’s petroleum-based economy tanked in the mid-1980s, the state’s colleges and universities were among the biggest victims.
Just before the oil bust, funding for Louisiana’s higher-education system had risen enough to be on par with many other states in the region. That success was short-lived.
Higher education — one of the most vulnerable parts of the state budget — has long been a prime target for cuts.
By 1990, state funding for state-supported colleges and universities had slipped to 61 percent of the Southern regional average, according to the Louisiana Board of Regents.
Now education officials are celebrating funding boosts approved by the Legislature last month that put Louisiana higher education back on equal footing with other Southern states.
But that does not compensate for years of neglect, warns Joseph Savoie, Louisiana’s commissioner of higher education.
“That gap for so many years is lost,” Savoie said. “I don’t know if we’re ever going to regain it.”
Yet Savoie said he is confident higher education in the state has been moving in the right direction for several years. He emphasizes the links between a strong higher education system and a strong state economy.
That can best be accomplished, he said, by attracting more good students to college, by building a stronger Louisiana work force and by creating the type of jobs needed to keep educated graduates in the state.
Those strategies can help offset the tremendous loss of population caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Savoie said.
The recent infusion of state funds — about $300 million more annually and $150 million in one-time money — will help pay for new financial aid scholarships, faculty hires and other strategic initiatives, he said.
Stephen Moret, president of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, said he hopes people do not assume higher education now has everything it needs. Louisiana’s colleges have a long way to go to develop into a true economic engine, Moret said.
“I hope this becomes a big issue in the fall elections,” Moret said. “I fear it won’t.”
