Louisiana’s population is about 4.6 million people, and the state has a whopping 14 four-year public higher education institutions to support.

Florida’s state population is a little more than 19 million people. America’s retirement home state is supporting 15 four-year public universities. Only seven of them even specialize in anything more than a bachelor’s degree.

This reveals the problem with Louisiana higher education: There are too many options.

Want to go to LSU but can’t get in? Try the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. It turned you down, too? Try Northwestern State University. Still no luck? That’s OK LSU at Alexandria will take you.

It’s too easy to get into a four-year college here. Our philosophy on higher education, which seems to be that everyone should go to a four-year public school immediately after high school, is wrong.

In a state doing so poorly in primary and secondary education, do we really think graduating from high school is proof of the abilities needed to go to a four-year school?

I think not.

States that have successful higher education programs, such as Florida, have extensive junior college systems. If a student isn’t ready to go straight into a university when he or she graduates, he or she simply attends junior college for a year or two.

In fact, it’s incredibly common in a lot of other states for a majority of high school graduates to attend a community college before attending a university. Of course, they have better options than the mismanaged-from-the-state-down choices Louisianians have, namely Delgado Community College and Baton Rouge Community College. 

There’s no shame in that — unless you live in Louisiana. 

We are setting students up for failure.

We should raise admittance requirements across the board in our public universities. In a state like ours, more students should be going to community colleges first instead of to four-year universities.

When we admit students with poor GPAs and ACT scores to four-year schools, we’re not only holding back those schools, but we’re also wasting student and taxpayer money.

Southern University at New Orleans and LSU at Alexandria both have exceptionally low entry requirements for four-year universities. Both schools only require 2.0 GPAs and at least a 20 on the ACT. Their six-year graduation rates stand at 8 and 9 percent, respectively.

Meanwhile, LSU’s 67 percent six-year graduation rate is the best in Louisiana.

It should be noted that although Southern University at New Orleans and Louisiana State University at Alexandria are four-year public universities, many students who attend them aren’t necessarily aiming to get a degree from those institutions.

A good number of those students are planning on transferring to a better school or taking a few courses to pad their résumés. 

While these goals are positive, the fact that some of our institutions are funded like four-year universities and are being treated like community colleges is negative.

We need to convert some of these schools to junior or community colleges so they can focus more on their students’ needs and develop a more appropriate budget.

I know “merge” is a dirty word here, but it’s the right course of action in some cases. 

Louisiana Tech University, Grambling State University and the University of Louisiana at Monroe are practically neighbors. Dare I say the University of New Orleans and Southern University at New Orleans are, as we’ve heard over and over again, right down the street from each other. 

It’s simple oversaturation. These schools’ locations, curriculum and goals are redundant, and redundancy is costly.

Louisiana also needs a TOPS overhaul. 

Louisiana loses money each time a student fails to graduate from college after using TOPS. TOPS students should have a little skin in the game.

TOPS should be treated like a subsidized loan until the student graduates. This means that students would not be charged interest while they’re in school. If the student doesn’t graduate, he or she would have to pay back at least some percentage of what they “borrowed.”

There isn’t enough money in our budget to waste it on people who don’t take college seriously.

If Louisiana takes these steps, it can finally work out a decent funding formula that provides financial support to institutions based on what they’re actually doing instead of what their name is.

Momma always told me there’s a difference between stupidity and ignorance.

Louisiana’s education system is stupid, and it’s causing a lot of our children to be ignorant. 

Let’s take the necessary steps to smarten it up.

John Parker Ford is a 22-year-old mass communication senior from Alexandria.

Editor’s note: This is the second part of a two-part series on how to fix Louisiana public education.