Open Letter to State Rep. Tony Ligi, District 79

First I’d like to thank you for forwarding a copy of Members of the Louisiana House of Representatives letter that was sent to the Louisiana Board of Regents. Secondly, I’d like to personally thank you as my representative for getting involved in finding a long-term solution to our problems with Higher Education in the State of Louisiana.

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Management at UL Lafayette. I went back to school late in life and got my PhD in 1996 when I was 47 years old. After a career as a Mortgage Banker and Real Estate developer teaching college students Entrepreneurship has been and continues to be an extremely rewarding experience.

I was born in Northern Louisiana, raised and lived in the River Parishes/New Orleans area for the past 53 years, and taught in Southwest Louisiana for the past 10 years. I have committed my personal and professional life to educating future generations of our children in Louisiana. I have provided this background in order to validate my support and commitment to Louisiana and its Higher Education.

This commitment doesn’t merely stop when our children graduate. It is a two-step process:
• First, Higher Education must, without excuses based on funding, provide our students with a quality education as good or better than they can receive anywhere else. This quality education should compare favorably with any private or state university regardless of location. Our students and the citizens of our state should not accept anything less than a world class Higher Education program. They deserve and should accept nothing less than world class Higher Education system.
• Secondly, state & local governments and business & industry in the state must step up and provide realistic opportunities for our graduates. We desperately need our young, intelligent, motivated graduates to stay home and take a role in the turnaround of our state. How can we have a future when we continue to send our brightest to other states?

The members of your group (LA House of Representatives) who have signed on to this process should be commended for their participation. However, as they begin the process it is imperative that they include as core components of the process Higher Education faculty and students in the process. Members of the Board of Regents, administrators at the universities, and many of the political players may have politics and “protection of their territories” as their primary objectives. These are indeed desperate times and politics and favoritism must take a back seat to the complete overhaul and restructuring of Higher Education. This must be s a complete and total structural reconfiguration of Higher Education and not just another media ploy by politicians.

Politicians have recently discussed several proposals they would demand before allowing Higher Education to raise tuition at their institutions. Two of these are requirements that they increase the graduation rate for students in 6 years and increase the retention rates for second year students. Although these two approaches may make good press, their true impact is to “Dummy Down Higher Education in Louisiana.” The following is a frank discussion of each:
• Reward Institutions that graduate students in 6 years:
o Before this proposal the typical degree at most 4 year colleges in LA required students to successfully complete 128 hours. The very first thing most programs will do to reduce the requirement to 120 hours (8 semesters @ 15 hours per semester). Does this improve the quality or depth of knowledge of our students? Or does this merely get them out quicker to meet new guidelines?
o Many schools will merely combine/eliminate degree programs to meet this requirement. For example, UNO has proposed eliminating Economics, Finance, Marketing, & Management degrees and offering all students a general business degree (BBA). Is this fair to the students? In a tough economy, are better served to offer generalists or majors that provided exceptional strength in a focused area (Economics, Finance, Marketing, & Management)? Or will our students merely go to another state where they can study their degree of choice? Remember several states offer our students “out of state” waivers for tuition.
• Higher retention rates for second year students:
o In Kentucky at the beginning of each school year the president had an opening convocation for faculty. His speech always including his pitch about “not ready yet.” He explained that many of our young students should have a tag stuck on their chest that said “not ready yet” and then sent back home to their parents! Let’s be realistic, we were all college freshmen and sophomores at one time or another, is it reasonable for academic institutions to be held wholly responsible for the failure of college freshmen and sophomores?
o What do you think will happen if these guidelines are implemented? Change occurs in academia just like it does in business and industry. Administration will demand higher passage rates for freshmen and sophomores. The most venerable faculty (often non-tenured professors or instructors) will be “strongly encouraged’ (i.e. if they want to keep their jobs) to increase the number of students passing their courses. In order to increase the passage rates in their classes they will have to “dummy down” the content. What impact will this have on the brighter students in these classes?
o We all have kids and we know when they see an easier way out they jump at it! So exactly does this increase the quality of Higher Education?

Huey Long was famous for his saying about who would be responsible for paying for things. His saying was “Not you, not me, but that guy behind the tree!” That “guy behind the tree” has been the Oil & Gas industry and then the adoption of gambling. Remember the promises of how education would benefit dramatically if only we approved statewide gambling. Well, we did but somehow as it always does in Louisiana politics, the gambling monies just got absorbed elsewhere. That “guy behind the tree” has disappeared and now “you and me” have the spotlight on us and we’ve got to pay! And now that we’ve got to pay we’re all of the sudden interested/concerned about how our dollars are being wasted on Higher Education.

In my Entrepreneurship classes I always explain to students that the best opportunities are those that solve existing problems. So here are my proposals to help solve our problems in Higher Education:
• Eliminate Multiple Boards of Higher Education – we can no longer afford the cost associated with multiple Boards of Higher Education.
o Bobby Jindal promised to stop allowing the funding of NGOs (Non-Government Organizations) in his first campaign for governor. For all practical purposes the existence of multiple Boards of Higher Education are merely bastions for political patronage.
o Multiple organizations are not only expensive they offer competing often controversial programs and standards in their competition for students. The answer to this problem should be simple.
• Eliminate Universities Increase Community Colleges – the cost of going to a 2 year community college is approximately 50% of the cost to attend a 4 year university. Currently the programs and courses at our 2 year community college are completely transferable to our 4 year universities.
o Several of our smaller 4 year universities should be converted to 2 year community colleges. The remaining 4 year colleges should dramatically increase the minimal ACT/SAT scores and high school GPAs required for acceptance.
o The students’ costs and the state’s cost for the community colleges will be half the costs of the 4 year colleges. If many of these students drop out of college the state will reduce their costs by 50%. Students on the other hand will end up with on 50% of the college debt if they had unsuccessfully attended a 4 year college.
o The community colleges should be required to offer programs that have acknowledged value to the business community. Recently the new superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department said all new incoming candidates to the police academy would be required to have a minimum of 60 college credits. Perhaps other state government agencies could also implement this requirement. Government agencies would get better prepared workers, community colleges would be encouraged to increase the quality of their programs, and students that decided not to pursue a 4 year degree would get something of value for their 2 years of college work.
o For 4 year universities this system would offer many benefits. The quality of incoming students would be much higher and offer a better success rate for graduating in 6 years. Students that made the decision to continue their education after 2 years of community colleges would be better prepared.
• Incentive Programs for Business & Industry – Business & Industry should be provided incentives to provide internships and hire 2 year & 4 year graduates from Louisiana colleges. Internships are a win/win for businesses and students. These are “trial marriages” that allow each to try each other out without a long-term commitments! Research indicates that 85% of interns get offered full-time employment. As universities we can educate them but Louisiana businesses have to also accept their responsibilities.