Public higher education trends and funding in Louisiana were topics Louisiana Board of Regents Commissioner of Higher Education Joseph Rallo addressed Tuesday at the Public Administration Institute Student Association’s Public Policy Panel.
Rallo, former vice chancellor of academic affairs for the Texas Tech University System, has served as LSU’s higher education commissioner since October 2014. PAISA president Mason Hess said Rallo has served Louisiana’s public education system well and led it in the right direction.
Rallo said education in Louisiana is not valued. He also pointed out three current trends in national higher education, the first of which regards tenured track positions.
In 1969, 75 percent of U.S. faculty positions were tenured or tenure-line, Rallo said. The other 25 percent of these jobs were adjunct, meaning the employees filling those positions were not distinguished as full-time faculty members.
As of 2014, however, the numbers flipped. Rallo said faculty members nationwide are now competing for fewer jobs because of it, especially in humanities fields.
The second trend, he said, involves valued propositions among various fields, and the third focuses on competency-based education – a teaching and learning approach that centers on concrete rather than abstract skill.
“The third is the most interesting and difficult to cope with,” Rallo said. “Now, you can get cheaper costing degrees online from very good universities like Northern Arizona.”
Rallo referenced Clayton Christensen’s disruptive innovation theory when speaking about online degrees and the challenges distance education – one of the fastest growing areas in education – poses for today’s students and teachers.
According to Christensen’s theory, distance education was not developed to compare with “bricks and mortar” but to reach out to underserved adults and sight bound students. Since the advent of badges and the push for credentials, student-teacher engagement is no longer necessary to earn what Rallo calls a “micro master’s [degree].”
“Distance is an enormous challenge,” Rallo said. “By 2019, Christensen said 50 percent of high school classes in this country will be taught via distance.”
Regarding Louisiana’s financial budget for higher education, Rallo said the state’s GRAD Act is a concern. Under the GRAD Act, public universities can raise tuition by 10 percent or higher if the legislature allows, but tuition increases such as this causes an increase in TOPS, forcing the budget for other public education services to decrease.
Rallo said students not receiving TOPS funding are the ones negatively impacted. Since the award’s creation, Rallo said the money available to them for expenditures has significantly decreased.
“Students are the ones now paying what used to be state support. The institution has shifted the burden of public higher education to you,” Rallo said, referencing a student audience member.
The state budget for public higher education was roughly $1.5 billion in 2010 – a number that has decreased to $700 million since then. The $250 million TOPS allocation was not originally included in the higher education budget, Rallo said, so people would not worry about a budget reduction.
Other issues facing Louisiana’s higher education system include an undereducated adult population and job mismatching — trends that are expected to change as the U.S. moves toward converging its degree programs with those of foreign nations. Rallo said the American trend is for students to begin studying liberal arts and finish their college careers studying STEM curriculum. Soon, the opposite will be the majority to achieve what Rallo calls “upward mobility.”
“American institutions do graduate school well, but that doesn’t mean we should be complacent,” Rallo said. “Higher education is always going to be there, but it is changing rapidly – I’ve seen more change in the last two years than in the last 35 years.”