Gannett Capital Bureau
BATON ROUGE -- The unified front usually put forward by university officials in public discussions of college funding fell apart Tuesday.
Tension between the heads of the LSU, Southern and University of Louisiana systems and Commissioner of Higher Education Jim Purcell over the way state funds are divided in a formula developed by the Board of Regents spilled out into testimony over the proposed budget that's to go into effect July 1.
The funding formula was developed at a time when university funding was growing. It shifts from primarily enrollment-based budgeting to allocating 15 percent of the funds according to performance. Included are graduation rates, course offerings that are job-oriented and research offerings.
Funding has been dropping the past four years and this year just over $1 billion is being split up. Purcell said that is roughly 65 percent of what universities should be funded.
The Southern University System is the hardest hit, with the biggest cut falling on the system's flagship campus in Baton Rouge.
System President Ronald Mason said the campus has declared a financial emergency, allowing it to make severe cuts to programs, downsize operations and lay off tenured faculty, and "you only declare a financial emergency when you run out of options."
Yet the proposed budget cuts another $4 million from the campus, he said, when the university "needs a little breathing room to dig itself out.
"We just need a little help," Mason said. "We feel like Frazier in a fight with Ali. We're in the 15th round. If we don't get a little help, we have to rely on a lucky punch. But we're still standing."
LSU System President John Lombardi also complained that "we weren't part of the process (of working up the funding schedule) as we should have been." He said he knows it's difficult for the Board of Regents to fit the funding to the formula and "we know we're going to have to work with shortages."
But the requirement to keep the Pennington Biomedical Research Center and the AgCenter whole forced more cuts on other campuses.
Colleges and universities were given authority to raise tuition but in many cases, the increases were offset by reductions in state funds. All campuses combined can raise tuition a total of $87.4 million.
But the campuses that don't meet the requirements of the GRAD Act not only don't get to increase tuition up to 10 percent but lose out on a 15 percent performance bonus in the formula.
Another factor in the proposed budget is if an increase in retirement contributions imposed on university employees is not approved, campuses would be cut $110 million.
Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Fannin, D-Jonesboro, asked "Am I hearing that the formula you helped devise isn't working? Or is it fatigue from year after year not having enough?"
Randy Moffett, president of the UL System, answered "We all know we need to support the concept of a performance formula" but it's difficult after years of an enrollment-based formula.
"We've got a declining set of revenues; therefore it's going to create tension over the distribution," Moffett said. And it's aggravated by campuses being cut more because "some things were held harmless" and not cut.
"We should have had the opportunity to sit down and discuss how we were affected," he said. "We didn't get to participate in the process."
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