A commission in charge of improving Louisiana’s higher education system said the state should strengthen two-year schools and technical colleges by raising admissions standards at four-year institutions. The Louisiana Postsecondary Education Review Commission, also known as the Tucker Commission after its creator, House Speaker Jim Tucker, met in October to discuss how to best align college training with the state’s economic workforce needs.
According to the Louisiana Workforce Commission, the state is producing about 10,000 more four-year graduates than it is producing jobs that call for a bachelor’s degree. Meanwhile, about 4,000 jobs requiring a technical certification or an associate’s degree remain unoccupied because the state does not have enough graduates to fill them.
Of the jobs in the state that require more than a high school diploma, only about one-third require a four-year degree or higher. In contrast, about 70 percent require vocational training, certification or a two-year degree, according to the Louisiana Workforce Commission.
To meet the state’s workforce needs, the commission said the state needs to produce more two-year and vocational graduates and fewer four-year graduates via higher admissions standards.
“When resources are limited, you should put those resources where you get the greatest bang for your buck,” Curt Eysink, executive director of the Louisiana Workforce Commission, recently said. “I think the place to invest money is in the two-year schools.”
Raising admissions standards would lead to lower dropout rates, keep students from acquiring loan debt and help less prepared or underprivileged students attend two-year and vocational schools, where they can gain training geared toward jobs available in Louisiana, Gov. Jindal said.
But Mike Gargano, Louisiana State University System vice president of student and academic support, said higher admissions standards would be a “God-awful idea” because they would only decrease the number of low-income and first-generation students attending four-year institutions. These are usually the students that perform better at four-year universities due to better family support systems, Gargano said.
“Let me tell you what raising admissions standards does – all it does is mask the performance of the campus,” Gargano said, adding that freshman grade-point averages have changed little after toughening entrance standards less than 10 years ago at LSU.
But commission member and former LSU Chancellor James Wharton disagreed, saying that the new standards had improved college graduation rates at LSU and raised the bar for high school students. However, the standards are still too low, he said.
Raising admissions standards would put those less-prepared or underprivileged students, who cannot afford tuition at a four-year institution, into the state’s cheaper two-year schools, where admissions standards are much lower. These students are more likely to graduate than those students simply seeking specific training or skills, who dropout after their first year, Joan Lord, South Regional Education Board’s vice president for education policy, said. This would, thereby, improve admission and graduation rates.
If the Board of Regents chooses to approve a rise in admissions standards, thereby forcing many students to attend two-year schools, many vocational schools will be forced to expand to accommodate extra students-something that Joe May, president of the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, said would not be a problem since the community college system is flexible and can find additional space and instructors with the right funding.
On the other hand, if more students move into two-year institutions, four-year universities would see lower admission rates, Nevers said. “We have to discuss how we can better utilize our existing colleges and universities, even if it requires mergers or closures.”
Essentially, putting money into two-year institutions might also mean cutting four-year programs, merging universities and closing down campuses, Kyle Plotkin, a spokesman for Gov. Jindal, recently said. He said the best solution is to create “centers of excellence,” making four-year institutions, like Nicholls, focus on their most successful programs and cutting those programs that are least successful.
“As the governor has said consistently, we need to support our colleges and universities, but they cannot be all things to all people,” Plotkin said. “Our higher-education institutions should focus on their unique areas of excellence, not supporting duplicative programs and research. In short, we should focus on what each institution does best.
