University students return to campus this semester already weary of hearing about budget cuts. However, as grim as Louisiana’s higher education budget scenarios seem, public universities throughout the country — and the world — are suffering similar fiscal pain.
 
“Many, but not all, institutions are suffering as bad or worse than we are,” Chancellor Michael Martin said last week.
 
Louisiana’s higher education budget cuts, like everywhere else, are a result of shrinking state budgets. The infamously slumping economy resulted in decreased tax revenues and other sources of income.
 
Louisiana, for example, faces a budget deficit of $1.6 billion for the coming fiscal year. How much of that deficit will be passed to higher education is unclear.
Yet Louisiana is hardly alone in struggling with budget cuts. In fiscal year 2012, which begins July 1, 2011, states are expected to face a combined deficit of $140 billion, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
 
That’s more than the $130 billion total deficit for last fiscal year. But it’s less than the $191 billion total deficit two years ago, when the economy first precipitously plummeted.
 
Louisiana, however, is different. The state faces its biggest deficit of this crisis — what state leaders have called the “cliff year” — in the coming fiscal year. That’s a result of expiring federal stimulus money, especially from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
 
Most of the money from the act is running out in the coming year. About $60 billion of federal funds were available to the states in this fiscal year — for the next year, only $6 billion will remain.
 
States that used the money to buffer against cuts are now left to face continued deficits alone.
 
Martin said Louisiana’s case is especially “tricky” because much of the stimulus money went to pay for higher education.
 
“I do believe we created a cliff” by using stimulus to prop up higher education budgets,” Martin said.
 
Still, other states’ budget problems are threatening higher education. In Texas, newspaper headlines eerily echo those in the state next door.
 
Texas’ comptroller announced last Monday that its legislature will have to fill a $27 billion budget deficit.
 
While that number is significantly higher than Louisiana’s, Texas’ total budget is also much larger — this year it was $182 billion, compared to Louisiana’s $25 billion — so the numbers are more comparable.
 
Like Louisiana, Texas’ government refuses to raise taxes, which means the cut has to come from a reduction of state services; higher education is expected to bear some brunt of that.
 
“I’m very worried,” William Flores, president of the University of Houston-Downtown, told the Houston Chronicle in December. “We’ve got to make higher education possible.”
 
Flores’ comments echo comments made by Louisiana administrators, including Martin.
 
The same article includes descriptions of higher education cutbacks that could easily describe Louisiana.
 
“Schools will react by increasing class sizes, cutting class sections and, maybe, offering fewer degree programs. Many schools will order layoffs or furloughs,” the article read.
 
But Texas and Louisiana are by no means the worst-hit states. California’s budget deficit bears even more grim hard numbers than either, and it’s resulting in even more drastic cuts to higher ed.
 
California faces a budget deficit of more than $26 billion, which comes after years of similar deficits. Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed budget for the coming year, released last Monday, includes drastic cuts to most parts of state services.
 
That cut means a reduction of more than $1.4 billion for California higher education and $500 million to the University of California System, according to the Associated Press.
 
For a sense of scale, that means California’s higher education system alone could be cut almost as much as Louisana’s entire budget.
 
That $500 million cut means that, like LSU, UC is for the first time funded more by self-generated revenue than by state funding.
 
The cuts are forcing California universities to turn away qualified students, increase tuition and slash classes.
 
Before the crisis is through, it’s hard to know how Louisiana’s higher education budget cuts will compare to the rest of the country because the severity of the looming cuts remains to be seen.
 
LSU administrators have been told by the state to prepare for wildly different budget cut scenarios, from 32 percent last semester to less than 10 percent this semester.
 
“I can tell you that no other state has announced exigency,” Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Jack Hamilton said, referring to the process of academic bankruptcy. “If we face more than a 10-percent cut, we might very well have to do that.”
 
 
 
 
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Contact Matthew Albright at [email protected]