Students following the ongoing budget cuts saga are used to administrators complaining of the serious damage cuts have done to the University. But in recent weeks, Gov. Bobby Jindal has challenged the depth and damage of those cuts.
Neither group is lying — they’re just using different numbers from the same complex budget.
University administrators have repeatedly warned that funding cuts to higher education have caused serious damage to the University’s ability to educate students.
In a recent e-mail to alumni, Chancellor Michael Martin wrote “LSU has had $47 million cut from its budget. That’s an average of more than $2 million per month. And in the last several months LSU has been asked to prepare for cuts of 23 percent to 33 percent.”
Meanwhile, the governor’s office has given much less drastic numbers about the budget cuts to higher education.
“LSU’s main campus, in fact, has seen a reduction of 1.5 percent in funding,” Jindal wrote in an Oct. 21 Facebook post addressed to students.
Jindal’s Press Secretary Kyle Plotkin went even further Wednesday, after Student Government President J Hudson and Vice President Dani Borel met with Jindal. Plotkin said LSU’s budget has actually increased by 0.3 percent, if tuition raised from the LA GRAD Act is counted.
Jason Droddy, University director of external affairs, said the state is using different numbers from the University administration.
When University administrators talk about an impending 33 percent cut, they’re talking about a cut to the state’s general funding for the Baton Rouge campus. But the state’s funding is only one component of the University’s overall operating budget.
Michael DiResto, communications director for the governor’s Division of Administration, says it makes more sense to look at the operating budget.
“I believe it is very important for people to put it in context,” DiResto said.
DiResto said, while the state has indeed cut direct funding to higher education, the state has also granted institutions leeway to raise funds independently through tuition and fee increases. He pointed to the LA GRAD Act passed in the last legislative session, which allows higher education institutions to raise tuition by a total of 10 percent per semester.
“When you have the legislature giving institutions more flexibility for self-funding, you have to take that into account,” DiResto said.
Droddy doesn’t challenge the assertion that tuition increases have taken some of the edge off of decreased funding.
“While that’s not optimal for the students, that’s what the policy seems to be,” he said.
But he says tuition may not necessarily be an adequate substitute.
First, the amount the University brings in for tuition increases shrinks because of scholarships and hardship exemptions for tuition. So while the state says the University has brought in $13.2 million more in tuition, the actual amount the University brings in is less.
Droddy also said the state is using end-of-the-year numbers when calculating higher education’s total budget. Those numbers are the most accurate, but they aren’t the numbers the University uses to plan its budget.
When the University plans its budget, it uses beginning-of-the-year numbers, which are estimates of how much the University will have to spend. If the budget ends up lower than the estimates, the University has to scale back spending.
When the state uses end-of-the year numbers, those numbers are accurate — but they don’t reflect budget adjustments administrators had to make.
“If I say I’m going to give you $10 for coffee, you plan to spend $10,” Droddy explained. “So what happens if I show up with $5? You technically only got $5, but that doesn’t give you the whole picture.”
Finally, Droddy says “unfunded mandates” have eaten up much of the increased tuition dollars. These are programs that the state forces the University to pay without providing funding, including increases to the University’s retirement payouts and risk management.
“The unfunded mandates are the phantom costs we’re struggling with,” Droddy said. “They don’t show up on any budget sheet.”
Droddy says the unfunded mandates amount to $16 million, which neatly eats up even the gross amount raised from tuition increases.
But DiResto counters that such mandates aren’t an uncommon practice.
“All departments, not just higher ed, have been asked to absorb these cuts,” he said.
DiResto said the funding gaps are a result of the state not providing funds to account for inflation.
 
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Contact Matthew Albright at [email protected]