There is a 50 percent chance students will pay $1,000 more to attend the University next year, Chancellor Michael Martin told The Daily Reveille Tuesday afternoon.Martin said because of a dire economic outlook for higher education next year, the University may be forced to institute a flagship fee of $500 per semester to keep from cutting University programs.Because of a $1.9 billion shortfall in state funds for the next two years, higher education is looking to take about $150 million in cuts during the next fiscal year. Martin said the Baton Rouge campus will likely take a cut of about $22 million next year.Martin said if this situation becomes reality as Gov. Bobby Jindal sets his budget, a flagship fee would be the best way for the University to protect its academic core.”Would I rather have the state at least maintain or increase that funding? Absolutely,” Martin said. “I would rather not have to increase tuition or fees.”Robert Kuhn, associate vice chancellor of budget and planning, said the still-hypothetical flagship fee would be able raise approximately $26 million in funding to offset cuts.Passing such a fee takes a two-thirds vote by the legislature, which could be problematic, Kuhn said.”It would be harder to pass it through the legislature if you had greater cost to the students and greater cost to the legislature through the TOPS account,” Martin said. “Fighting the legislature over the TOPS issue right now is probably a losing proposition, so I suggested a fee to at least neutralize that argument.”Martin said although the hypothetical flagship fee would not be covered by TOPS, administrators would try to exempt students considered in financial hardship from the new fee.Kuhn said the University considers a student in a financial hardship if a student qualifies for a full Pell Grant.Currently, students who are considered in financial hardship are exempt from the academic excellence fee and operational fee among other smaller fees.Although it is almost certain the University will face a budget cut of some amount for the next fiscal year, it is not certain that legislators would pass the flagship fee to offset cuts, Kuhn said.It is also likely the University will be facing similar cuts even the following year, said Bob Keaton, supervisor of internal audit for the LSU System.”If we have serious budget shortfall this year, and we cover it by putting it on the backs of students and it happens again, then I believe we are going to have to take that cold, unfortunate look at some program eliminations,” Martin said.Program cuts and eliminations are the worst-case scenario, Martin said.”I’m hoping that I don’t have to exercise fully the prospect of fundamentally reducing the scope and size of LSU, and I hope the people out there who pay attention know it’s a real possibility and keep us from having to do it,” Martin said.Kuhn said the only other option aside from cutting programming and increasing the revenue of the University — by increasing fees — would be to make the University operate more efficiently.But Martin said the University already runs a very efficient operation.Kuhn said cutting University faculty and staff salaries are not an efficient method for recouping funds. Kuhn said the University would have to cut all University employees’ salaries by more than 10 percent to raise the $26 million that could be raised by a flagship fee.—-Contact Xerxes A. Wilson at [email protected]