Though I was born and bred in Louisiana, I can’t help but admire the state of Texas, particularly for its recent stance on budget cuts.
To be fair, our neighbors to the west have had their fair share of gaffes in recent years. The Andrea Yates fiasco was unforgivable, and I still haven’t decided if I can forgive the Lone Star State for bringing us the Bush family.
But overall, I reluctantly have to admit I’m grateful to our friends to the west. After all, any place capable of breeding Drew Brees should be held in a similar regard as Nazareth.
While Louisiana politicians and higher education officials twiddle their thumbs and wait for some sort of Brees-like miracle to blow on through, Texas is taking action in the nationwide collegiate funding crunch.
And rather than skirting around the issue subjectively, as the University and Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration seem to be doing, Texans are coming out guns blazing by putting prices on their professors’ heads.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the chancellor of the Texas A&M University System recently put out a 265-page profit-and-loss statement for each of its faculty members.
The  statement analyzed faculty salaries against students taught, tuition generated and research grants obtained.
The move has received mixed reviews in the state, ranging from praise for its emphasis on productivity to criticism for its limited measurements and time frame.
The results are quite interesting, however. For example, one metric in the report compares professors’ salaries to the number of students they teach. While some non-tenured professors were paid less than $100 per student, others cost more than $20,000 per student.
Even more striking are the actual cash flow figures from the report.
The three most profitable departments at the university were chemistry, history and English.
Considering the significant criticism liberal arts programs are enduring, especially the University’s own English department, it’s incredible to see the fund-generating potential within those fields of research.
And while the specific figures from A&M don’t directly apply to LSU itself, the schools have quite a bit in common.
Both are the flagship universities of their respective systems, both are A&M institutions, and both are large public universities suffering from a shortfall of funding — Texas A&M is preparing for $60 million in cuts and reallocations for next year.
Criticize the move all you want for its questionable criteria and relatively small window of time, but at least the report is an objective measurement of productivity within the Texas A&M System.
It makes me wonder why we haven’t done anything similar. I fail to see why the flagship university one state over, which has more students and more faculty, can put out such a report but our University can’t.
It wouldn’t be too difficult to calculate the figures. Hell, if an Aggie can do it, a Tiger can do it.
Perhaps the University doesn’t have the data for such a report.
Maybe A&M is simply more pragmatic about budget cuts and wants real, definite answers for why its universities aren’t as productive as they can be.
Maybe A&M is simply working harder to find real solutions to a complex issue. While I hope that isn’t the case, the alternative is worse.
Perhaps the University doesn’t want the public to know these figures because figures like these are powerful.
They provide a standard index for judging which professors are providing more value to their colleges.
Figures like these reveal the best and the worst of university employees, and if the worst are tenured professors or certain administrative puppets, the public outcry could get ugly.
But enough speculation — consider this a University-wide challenge.
Let’s look at the example set in Texas and apply it here at home.
Let’s throw away stigmas of subjectivity and actually look at budget cuts from an objective stance by valuing our professors — and better yet, our administrators.
If nothing else, it will at least give us a common ground for discussion of a pretty scary matter.
Otherwise, it’s going to take a miracle even Breesus himself couldn’t pull off to save our institution.
Cody Worsham is a 21-year-old mass communication senior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_Cworsham.
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Contact Cody Worsham at [email protected]