Jindal aims to improve state’s faulty college system

Local university leaders are cautiously optimistic about the reforms Gov. Bobby Jindal announced as part of his higher education legislative agenda late last month.

“While the devil is always in the details, especially when an election cycle looms ahead in November 2011, the legislative agenda as presented reflects a real leadership stance,” Nicholls State University President Stephen Hulbert said. “All in all, the governor’s proposed legislative agenda is a great next step. However, the results of the legislative session and the effort of the administration to fully implement its agenda will be the ‘proof in the pudding.'”

Among the initiatives the governor’s office will take on in the 2011 legislative session: granting more institutional independence through enhancements to the Grad Act, recalculating the Operational Fee to correlate with tuition hikes in the last seven years, standardizing the tuition for community and technical college and raising the tuition cap to 15 hours.

For months, Hulbert asked legislators to have the tuition cap – currently set at 12 hours, allowing students to sign up for excess classes and drop them with no financial consequence – removed.

“I am pleased to see emphasis on charging for credit hours taken and moving against students enrolling in courses that they never intend to complete,” Hulbert said. “Nothing in life is free, and students need to know there is a cost to not taking their studies seriously.”

The governor also said that schools would be asked to instill tougher drop penalties to “address the problem from both sides.”

Nicholls students are also subject to a $24 increase in fees per semester. The governor announced each school’s Operational Fee – instituted in 2004 to charge 4 percent of tuition in order to cover mandated costs and cost-of-operating increases – would be updated to correlate with tuition increases in the past seven years, pending the legislation.

Based on its 2005 fall tuition schedule, Nicholls has charged students $5 per credit hour with a $60 max in operational fees since it was introduced.

If updated, the cost would rise to $7 per hour with an $84 max based on the spring 2011 cost to attend.

The Louisiana Granting Resources and Autonomy for Diplomas Act was the keystone piece of 2010 higher education legislation.

In exchange for stricter admission standards, higher graduation rates and the elimination of unsuccessful programs, Louisiana’s universities were given more operational independence and the control to raise tuition by 5 percent annually should the educational guidelines be met.

One year later, Jindal said he plans to enhance the Grad Act. On the university side, the governor proposed to allow schools to carry forward self-generated revenue from one fiscal year to the next, increase the threshold for independent purchases of academic and research items from $100,000 to $250,000 and grant more autonomy in controlling auxiliary employees and capital development projects.

Nicholls State Vice President for Finance Michael Naquin said the university typically “breaks even” with self-generated funds at the end of a fiscal year.

“If we have any savings, it’s going to be through attrition and not filling positions,” Naquin said. “The more we do that, then hopefully, we’ll end up having some money that typically through year-end, we would have to send back to the state. If they allow us to carry it forward, then that would be fine.”

Due to the pending budget cuts and subsequent scrambling to increase tuition, universities will become increasingly dependent on self-generated funds as they are weaned off the state’s money.

The lessened reliance on state money comes with the natural progression of being able to retain what is brought in through student enrollment.

“Hopefully they will give us the ability to manage the university and to do those things – in private industry when you take money in and you spend it wisely and you have a little left over, you get to keep your money and use it for expenses down the road,” Naquin said. “If they would allow us to do that and if we had some money that would be leftover as a result of good fiscal policy, that would really help out.”

In return, the administration wants to prioritize the “Student Success” metrics, which include graduation, retention and completion rates, and reward schools for raising admission standards higher than the Board of Regents’ baseline.

He also proposed a reliance on data-driven efforts to intervene when a student is lagging behind and better manage a school’s resources.

The governor also announced that he would work to “bridge the disparity” and “phase in the standardization of community college tuition across the state to that of the highest allowed rate.”

Jindal said the average increase per student would be about $190, but it is not immediately clear which schools would see the increase or if the proposal would be weighted with the lowest-charging schools increasing the highest.

L.E. Fletcher Technical Community College has had the authority since 2004 to increase tuition, something Chancellor Travis Lavigne said the school has done with consideration to “market and student impact.”

Lavigne said he didn’t know what Jindal’s proposed increases would entail and won’t know until specific legislation is introduced.

“I think he just was simply making a general statement that there would be an increase that would allow us to be more competitive in terms of being able to allow more services consistent with that which is offered in other two-year schools in the Southern Region Education Board (SREB),” Lavigne said.

Jindal said the highest-allowed increase would still be below the SREB average of $2,578.

Fletcher ranks sixth out of nine schools Louisiana Community and Technical College System with a $1,072.20 tuition for resident students per semester. The Houma-based institution’s tuition is $1 less than the LCTCS average.

Fletcher ranked ninth, or last, in enrollment for LCTCS schools in spring 2011 with 2,014 students.

The tuition increases could be weighed more heavily on Delgado Community College in New Orleans, which has the highest enrollment (19,258) and the second-lowest tuition schedule ($944.00). Baton Rouge Community College has the second-highest enrollment (8,135) and highest tuition schedule ($1,237.00).

The governor has long-lauded the two-year college system for its ability to prepare graduates for the modern day workforce and recently stressed that amid the budget crisis, two-year schools need increased attention.

“We can use the resources we have more effectively by supporting key components to our economic success, like our technical colleges, while continuing to focus on our No. 1 goal: ensuring our students succeed in college and are prepared to enter the 21st century workforce,” the governor said.

Lavigne echoed Hulbert’s reaction, taking an optimistic-but-too-early-to-be-sure approach to the governor’s announcement.

“The governor has put forth what I think is a very positive agenda,” Lavigne said. “Whether you support the governor or not, you have to give him credit for at least coming out and saying, ‘Look, here are some things I would like to put on the table for the legislature to consider,’ and obviously the legislature appropriates and so we’ll just have to see what happens as they work their will.”