Why the LSU will not go bankrupt (for now):
“The poor,” he said, referring to the severe cuts headed to public health.
“I don’t want to sound naive here,” I said, “but isn’t that extremely unjust?”
Kenneth raised his eyebrows. “That’s a good question, but here’s the sad reality: the poor don’t vote.”
So who is going to pay the price for saving LSU? Actually the students – last Thursday, June 11th, the Louisiana state legislature forestalled the higher education cuts by implementing a program with the acronym of SAVE, Student Assessment for a Valuable Education, which assesses every public college student a fee of $1600 for the coming year.
“Nobody would actually pay this assessment because a student would also be granted a tax credit against that assessment. The student’s tax credit, in turn, would be transferred to the state Board of Regents, the body that runs higher education. The board would then use the credit to draw money from the Department of Revenue.”
The article doesn’t really explain this convoluted financial transaction but Louisiana has been trying to attract a higher percentage of out of state students who pay higher tuition so I suspect that this is a backdoor capital transfer from other states but I’m open to contradiction. With the commoditization of college, students are now seen as conduits of capital transfer from federal loan programs to university administrators who are marketing the college experience rather than learning. This is one reason for LSU’s current construction of a $55 million dollar “lazy river” swimming pool in the shape of the letters – LSU while faculty are cut.
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I agree completely. Weird financial schemes, weird projects while the actual learning suffers.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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