For department of mathematics chair Robert Perlis, the current budget crisis is just one more disaster in a series of setbacks that have prevented the University from achieving its full potential.
“For 36 years, I’ve been saying we’re about to turn the corner, we’re about to become a great university — and it’s still that way,” Perlis said. “We’re just about ready to move into the big time, and then something like this happens and you take a step backwards.”
The flagship campus has suffered a 55 percent reduction in state general fund support over the past six years, cutting University state support from $254 million to $114 million. In response, the University has eliminated 180 faculty positions and 170 staff positions and cut or consolidated 35 academic programs since fiscal year 2009, according to a Jan. 25 administrative report.
The cuts have hindered department functioning across the University.
In recent years, the mathematics department has grown smaller while teaching loads have increased. In response, the department has consolidated courses such as Calculus I and Calculus II, into sections averaging 160 students instead of the 40-person class size preferred by faculty and students, Perlis said.
The larger class sizes prevent professors from providing students with individualized attention and make the education process more impersonal, he said. If more cuts come in the next fiscal year, more classes will likely be consolidated.
Overloaded faculty is a concern in many departments.
Department of petroleum engineering chair Karsten Thompson said budget cuts may prevent his department from filling open faculty positions and decrease faculty flexibility. The department may be forced to consolidate classes, cancel certain electives and contract courses out to adjunct professors to ensure class availability, he said.
And course loads likely won’t lighten anytime soon. Hiring during the budget crisis has been difficult because of a lack of funding options and questions surrounding the University’s stability, Perlis said.
Perlis said positions vacated by retiring professors can only be filled with permission from University administration. In recent years, the department has often been denied permission to fill its open faculty positions.
When permission is granted, potential hires are often concerned about the state budget crisis and its effect on the University’s future. Every candidate interviewing for a current position in the mathematics department has raised concerns about the budget deficit and the security of a potential position, Perlis said.
Though the University has not reneged on contracts before, fear exists among young academics, he said.
“You are thinking about accepting a job at LSU and say, ‘Okay, I’ll show up in August and be a new assistant professor,’” Perlis said. “But what if the job is not there? Then you pretty much ruined your career, haven’t you? The fear of that happening is a big worry for young people starting their careers.”
For the engineering department, the budget crisis’ coincidence with the current hiring cycle is also a hindrance to filling available faculty positions, Thompson said. Petroleum engineering departments around the country hire in the same cycle, so potential faculty may be recruited to other universities if budget limitations put a freeze on new hires, he said.
Attracting graduate students, like faculty, is another ongoing concern.
Graduate students are vital to the University, both as students and as course assistants. Graduate students assist in grading upper division courses, leading recitation sections and teaching lower-level courses in some departments, Perlis said.
The University’s graduate stipends aren’t competing with the national average, and the non-competitive awards make it more difficult to attract exceptional candidates, he said. Candidates with several offers may be enticed by other universities’ more generous stipend offers.
The lack of competitiveness in graduate student stipends is mirrored by the average pay of University faculty, which has fallen behind the national average for comparative universities.
Ten peer institutions identified in the Flagship 2020 Agenda surpassed the University in professor salaries for the 2014-2015 school year. Twelve exceeded the University’s average associate professor salary, and nine offered higher assistant professor salaries.
During the 2014-2015 school year, the University paid professors an average salary of $116,334, associate professors $82,125 and assistant professors $75,051, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Some salary differences were small; Colorado State University paid professors an average salary of $117,018. Others were significant; the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign paid its professors an average salary of $144,927.
Most of the 10 peer institutions exceeded the University’s average professor salary by approximately $5,000 to $10,000, according to the NCES.
Prior to a 3 percent pay raise in the 2014-2015 school year and the 4 percent pay raise in the 2013-2014 school year, faculty members didn’t receive a pay raise for five years, according to the Office of Budget and Planning.
The state of faculty salaries, combined with the possibility of an estimated $940 million state budget shortfall for the 2015-2016 fiscal year, is not helping to boost faculty and staff morale.
“Each year it’s always just been a struggle to make sure there’s enough paper for the Xerox machine and that all the computers in the offices are working,” Perlis said. “It’s been six years of just trying to make ends meet.”
The fear that ends may not meet plagues staff members and faculty in academic departments across the University, Perlis said. Staff members in the mathematics department are anxious about job security following staff furloughs in previous years, he said.
Thompson said faculty in the petroleum engineering department are taking a more pragmatic approach to the cuts, pushing forward despite a widespread sense of uncertainty.
“I think the general sentiment is, ‘You have to wait and see,’ and there’s just not too much sense in worrying about it until we understand what is going to happen,” Thompson said.
Regardless of the unease across campus, both Perlis and Thompson voiced a dedication to maintaining student services as best as possible to shield students’ education from the effects of budget cuts.
Both chairs also agreed research in their departments would likely be insulated from the financial impacts of the budget cuts. Much of the research funding in both departments, and across the University, is funded through federal or privatized funding, Perlis and Thompson said.
Research outside of academic programs may not be as insulated. The LSU AgCenter, whose core mission includes agricultural research, could face an $11.5 million cut, equivalent to 32 percent of the AgCenter’s budget, according to a 2016 fiscal year budget message from the AgCenter.
The cuts would dramatically impact the AgCenter’s ability to conduct research, hindering ongoing projects in nutrition and crop variety development that benefit Louisiana’s agricultural industry, the budget message said.
Since 2008, the AgCenter has eliminated 400 positions across its academic departments, extension offices and branch research stations. One hundred positions are slated to be eliminated in the 2015 to 2016 fiscal year, and another 160 filled positions are at risk if the 32 percent cut is implemented, the message said.
“Everybody is sick and tired of budget cuts,” Perlis said. “Everybody fears the worst case, but the worst case seems to keep getting worse and worse.”