This semester, local media have featured countless headlines calling attention to budget cuts in several different areas of the University. The government and administration have apparently made the relief of the current debacle, as well as a future solution to the budgetary shortcomings, a priority.The Louisiana Postsecondary Education Review Commission has suggested solutions, and the LSU Board of Supervisors is doing its best to execute the orders handed down. One of their assignments is “a rigorous statewide review of academic programs for unnecessary duplication and excess hours required for degree completion.”Their plan is to standardize the number of credits at 120 hours. If you’re in either the College of Arts and Sciences or the College of Business, you probably see no difference in the suggested change. If you’re in the College of Engineering, you might gasp in fear.Why fear?A quick citation of numbers is revealing. The average number of curriculum hours in Business is 121; in Arts and Sciences, 121; in Engineering, 129.5. Shaving almost 10 hours doesn’t happen without reduction in quality of education.That can’t happen, so there’s a catch. The committees and commissions are clever in their diction. The condition on the standardization is the retention of accreditation and certification requirements.              The problem is their measuring stick. The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) both deem LSU a sufficient school in engineering with their accreditation.This is a great standard to meet, but when you look at our company it lessens the significance. Mississippi State University, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Southern University and the University of Mississippi, none of which are top tier universities are ABET accredited. The two Mississippi universities also have SACS accreditations.If LSU is going to maintain and pursue excellence in all of its endeavors, it needs to avoid naïveté in settling with these academic rulers. This isn’t a back-handed insult to LSU’s “rivals” but an objective look at reality of our receding standards. The commission said accreditation should be retained, and it is — accreditation is one thing, actual quality is another.The professors who choose the curriculum aren’t morons and implying that they’re requiring extra classes is naïve. Engineering students are prepared for work applying math and science “with judgment to develop ways to utilize the materials and forces of nature economically for the benefit of mankind,” according to the general catalog. This may come as a surprise, but there’s a lot of science and math to know to perform adequately in the real world industry — see British Petroleum and the Gulf of Mexico.The suggestion that adequate engineers will come from LSU after 120 credit hours is not only naïve, it’s a move in the wrong direction. Engineers are underappreciated and unnecessarily stigmatized for taking five years to graduate. There’s almost one extra semester in most engineering degrees and more than that in some.Based on an engineering student’s average of 16 class hours per semester, 20 hours of work per week and accounting for “3-4 hours of work for every 1 in the classroom,” there’s just over 30 minutes per meal and no travel time—that includes the weekend and excludes the reality of over four hours of work outside of class.That’s the math. Do you think anyone will graduate in a sane condition?Adding a ninth and/or 10th semester merely levels the playing field for engineering majors who need to know more information upon graduation because of the demands of the industry.Frankly, engineers perpetuate the comfortable existence and societal advancement of everyone else. Yes, I’m “tooting my own horn,” but the world operates on technology.Whether it’s the printer that produced this paper or the turbine that generated the electricity to save your friend/family member with a defibrillator, engineers made it possible.It’s just common courtesy to give us the time and resources to learn what we need to know to make your life easier.Matt Lousteau is a 20-year-old mechanical engineering junior from Laplace. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_mlousteau.____Contact Matt Lousteau at [email protected]