Louisiana's higher education leaders and advocates had big goals for the just-ended legislative session, asking lawmakers to give up their authority over tuition, to tweak the free college tuition program called TOPS and to stop hitting campuses with budget cuts. They got very little of that.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Louisiana's higher education leaders and advocates had big goals for the just-ended legislative session, asking lawmakers to give up their authority over tuition, to tweak the free college tuition program called TOPS and to stop hitting campuses with budget cuts.
They got very little of that.
Lawmakers stonewalled many of the requests and continued to shrink state financing for the schools. Louisiana remains the only state in the nation that requires two-thirds backing from lawmakers for tuition increases at public colleges.
Campuses won a smaller fee hike instead that Gov. Bobby Jindal will allow to become law.
The real winner among higher education groups was the Louisiana Community and Technical College System. It won legislative backing for a $252 million construction borrowing plan that sidesteps the traditional budget process - and the other university systems.
Despite the roadblocks, Commissioner of Higher Education Jim Purcell said Monday that he sees the legislative session as positive.
He noted that lawmakers boosted higher education funding from Jindal's budget proposal, adding $40 million in piecemeal dollars for one-time expenses, and the fee increase that will produce an estimated $18 million annually for building maintenance on campuses.
"It's not the systemic solution that we were asking for, but I think it will give a reprieve to campuses," Purcell said.
He also said lawmakers understand that public colleges need a stable, long-term funding stream.
"I'm optimistic that the conversation toward the end was all about 'How does this impact higher education,' and I think that's good place to move forward next year," Purcell said.
Higher education officials were still crunching the numbers to determine how their campuses fared, and they're still waiting for Jindal to issue his line-item vetoes of the budget to see how it all pans out.
But they said they are grateful to lawmakers for keeping the schools from another round of steep slashing after five years of such reductions. In the upcoming 2013-14 fiscal year, tuition increases that were approved several years earlier by lawmakers are expected to cover any cuts to state financing.
"It's fair to say we've not had dramatic reductions. It looks to us at least like a stable budget for the moment, but we haven't completed our analysis yet," said LSU Interim System President William Jenkins.
Sandra Woodley, president of the University of Louisiana System, said while she hoped for additional flexibility to raise tuition, she was pleased with how lawmakers treated her system.
"They worked really hard to make sure we didn't suffer any kind of deep budget cuts," she said. "My general feeling from the legislative leaders that I talked with, they do believe that it's important to stem the cuts, and they do believe it's important to find a way to invest more state funds in higher education."
However, some of the higher education dollars in next year's budget remain tied to property sales and other contingent items that haven't happened yet, a situation that could create cash flow issues for campuses if the money doesn't come in as anticipated.
Attempts to get lawmakers to relinquish their tuition-setting power and let the colleges instead determine the rates they charge students again failed to gain traction.
"I anticipated that. That's a hard bill to get through," Jenkins said.
Opponents said they disagreed with continuing to shift costs to students who have faced several years of tuition and fee hikes, and lawmakers also worried about the impact on TOPS, because any increase in tuition raises the state's price tag for TOPS.
Talk by House Speaker Chuck Kleckley and other legislative leaders about the need to control the costs of TOPS went nowhere, however.
While most schools budged little from the status quo, Louisiana's community and technical college system achieved a political coup of sorts, winning approval to borrow money for a list of projects totaling nearly $252 million outside of the traditional construction process and against the wishes of Purcell and the Board of Regents.