Board Of Regents Takes Up Funding Formula- LSU's Lombardi: 'The End Is Near'
by JORDAN BLUM - Advocate (excerpt)

Louisiana’s colleges are preparing to implement a new higher education performance-based funding formula despite claims by some that the change is coming too fast. The formula would withhold 25 percent of the state money used to pay salaries and fund programs until institutions can show they have met criteria.

Louisiana Board of Regents member Roland Toups of Baton Rouge questioned whether they should go to Gov. Bobby Jindal and ask for the changes to be phased in instead. “Logic is gone now. Emotion takes its place,” Toups said Thursday of the push for dramatic changes that should be done during a time of fiscal viability rather than budget cuts. “This is the real world — let’s get there, but let’s get there chunks at a time,” he said.

On Thursday, LSU System President John Lombardi said whatever formula is implemented will be followed. But Lombardi warned that changes in higher education are a “cumulative process.” When a lot is rearranged at once, “All you do is destruction,” Lombardi said. Higher education officials discussed fears of another $289 million in federal stimulus dollars running dry next summer. A worst-case scenario developed by the LSU System this month showed the state’s eight smallest universities could be shut down to fill the void. It may not be the apocalypse, Lombardi said Thursday, “But we have to tell people, ‘The end is near,’ like a sign in Times Square.”

COMMENTARY: These folks have told us the 'Sky is Falling' so many times over the years, yet they always seem to find a way to fund huge administrative salaries and other outrageous expenditures. Maybe they should spend as much time focusing on how to efficiently run our universities as they do squawking for more money for these institutions that aren't giving us our money's worth now.