LSU System President John Lombardi asked members of the Baton Rouge Rotary Club on Wednesday to walk through the University’s student parking lots. There, they will find one of the fundamental problems in Louisiana’s higher education system, he said. “There are a significant number of students who attend LSU who are capable of paying a higher tuition rather than buying a fancy car,” Lombardi said.  Lombardi suggested tuition be raised and TOPS be restructured as ways to combat higher education budget woes.Public colleges and universities went through about $146 million in budget cuts this summer.   The Postsecondary Education Review Commission, headed by state House Speaker Jim Tucker, R-Terrytown, meets for the first time today. The commission’s goal is to identify problems and inefficiencies in higher education and report back to the Legislature. “Commissions are devices designed to recognize that we don’t have a clue,” Lombardi said. He said commissions ultimately suggest expensive measures, which are “undoable.” Instead, Lombardi suggested “deregulating” higher education, allowing institutions to better compete for professors and students. Right now, legislative approval is needed for certain kinds of tuition and fee increases. “I’m for charging tuition,” Lombardi said. “In fact, I’m for charging high tuition.”Lombardi said Louisiana gives too many scholarships to students who have the money to attend school without them. He said tuition should be raised and a strong, need-based financial aid program be established. TOPS is a performance-based financial aid program. He said legislators don’t want to pay for higher education out of the state’s tax base but should charge what it costs to produce high quality higher education. “TOPS is a terrific idea that is past its moment in its current form,” Lombardi said. He said TOPS should be a fixed, one-time award.
“The result will be that we’ll be able to deliver high quality higher education with state support at a level everybody’s willing to pay and an individual support at a level people are willing to pay matched to the quality that they’re going to receive,” Lombardi said. He said the state should be focused on its students, teachers and research right now. State Treasurer John Kennedy and other government leaders have suggested the state reorganize and eliminate several of the boards which govern higher education in Louisiana as a way of dealing with budget issues.”Anybody who tells you that reorganizing the way in which people sit around the table is going to fix higher education is in search of an escape from dealing with the real problem,” Lombardi said.- – – -Contact Kyle Bove at [email protected]