Crisis presents a golden opportunity – Editorial

Louisiana’s recent funding crisis in the state’s dysfunctional higher education system is a golden opportunity to reform it.

In the average state, 60% of students in the higher education system attend community colleges, while 40% attend universities. In Louisiana, an inexplicable 80% attend universities, while only 20% attend community colleges.

Taxpayers can no longer afford the cost of supporting such an absurdly top-heavy system of multiple universities offering essentially the same degrees on multiple campuses.

We think the creation of the Tucker Commission is a crucial step in the right direction. House Speaker Jim Tucker proposes outside experts to work with local appointees to study and analyze our higher education system from the outside with the objective of developing a plan to revamp it. After years of simply talking about “too many four-year colleges” and unproductive turf battles, the commission has a rare chance to attack the root of the problem.

However, the commission can only succeed if it’s given the authority to produce a plan that is to be voted simply up or down, and not subject to being picked apart and diluted by the kind of politics that helped create this mess in the first place.

Gov. Bobby Jindal has said the commission’s guiding principals should be to support LSU’s flagship agenda, to move more students from four-year institutions into two-year colleges, and to create so-called centers of excellence so various schools specialize in different degrees.

Higher education’s funding woes will only grow, while a comprehensive, collaboritive revamp of the system promises long-term gains for both taxpayers and students alike.