Strengthening, improving higher education

As the Commission on Streamlining Government continues to look for ways we can trim government waste and save taxpayer money while protecting vital services to our people, the Postsecondary Education Review Commission (PERC) is also continuing their analysis of ways to strengthen our higher education system.

Whatever specific reforms the PERC recommends, our commitment to investing in and improving higher education remains unwavering. In fact, since taking office less than two years ago, we have worked with the legislature to finance an incredible total of $492 million in critical higher education infrastructure investments – including construction, renovations, and major repair projects.

That is nearly half a billion dollars invested in higher education institutions in less than two years.

This is an historic investment that includes, $225 million for Louisiana Community and Technical College campuses, $75 million to address higher education deferred maintenance needs across the state, $61 million toward the new clinical research building center at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, and more than $98 million toward critical capital outlay construction projects for higher education institutions.

PERC is analyzing ways to further improve our higher education system with three specific goals: first, strengthen our higher education system so that we are reducing our unacceptably low college graduation rate; second, cultivate areas of excellence at higher education institutions so we can compete for students with the best universities in the country and are not trying to be all things to all people; and third, tie funding to performance so we provide incentives for colleges to cultivate their areas of excellence and improve dropout rates, while improving academic achievements as well.

To the first goal of improving college graduation rates, I cannot overstate the disservice we are doing to Louisiana students if we do not immediately reverse our weak graduation rate of only 37 percent from four-year colleges.

This is the lowest graduation rate in the Southern region and perhaps the country.

It’s simply not fair for the overwhelming majority of our college students to begin their careers with debt for degrees they did not receive, and without the skills they need to succeed in today’s global workforce.

Secondly, we must also cultivate areas of excellence at our universities.

By strengthening Louisiana’s strongest academic programs and research centers, we can go from average to excellent and make our schools, our students and the state more competitive for attracting investments from funding sources around the world.

The University of Texas’ M.D. Anderson Hospital, for example, has become a world-renowned cancer research institution, and there is no reason why we cannot model our pharmacy program at the University of Louisiana in Monroe, the micro-manufacturing program at Louisiana Tech in Ruston and the chemistry program at LSU in Baton Rouge after these best successes in the nation.

We cannot afford the status quo, which leads to duplication and mediocrity.

PERC’s third goal is continuing our reforms of funding formulas to incentivize better outcomes in retention, graduation, and research productivity.

While Louisiana ranks high in postsecondary education spending increases, we continue to lag behind the rest of the nation in performance scores.

In fact, Louisiana ranks third in the nation, behind only Wyoming and Nevada, for the percentage increase in state tax appropriations for higher education for fiscal years 1998 to 2008.

For 2008, our state ranked sixth in the nation in appropriations per $1,000 in personal income, and eighth in appropriations per capita. The percentage increase in state appropriations for higher education funding per student has risen 16 percent more than the southern regional average during 2003 to 2008, but yet our 4-year college graduation rate of 37 percent is the lowest in the region.

The southern regional graduation rate exceeds 50 percent. Simply throwing more money at the problem is not going to improve our education system.

While we will continue to build off of our $500 million investment in our state’s higher education institutions in the years ahead, we must also commit to strengthening and improving our universities to better serve our students.

The bottom line is that if we are serious about growing our economy and giving our children opportunities to pursue their dreams right here at home, we have to give them a great education, and that means ensuring our colleges and universities are among the best in the country.