The TOPS Task Force heard testimonies from presidents and other administrators of Louisiana college and university systems on Wednesday, and members were urged to make changes to the TOPS program that would make the program more sustainable in the future.
Monty Sullivan, president of the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, said the state should develop a statewide financial aid policy that would expand the funding of need-based aid– an area he said only receives a “paltry” amount of $26 million in state funding each year. TOPS, a merit-based program, costs the state $220 million each year, by comparison.
“It is also important to note that we have changed fundamentally in terms of the environment of higher education,” Sullivan said. “We are fundamentally a different state today, financially, than we were 10 years ago… We have gone from a state that was a low-cost, low needs-based aid circumstance, to a state that is moderate in cost, if not high cost…”
Jim Henderson, president of the University of Louisiana system, agreed that the state should implement a financial aid policy that would benefit students of all demographics.
Sullivan said the task force should aim need-based financial aid at adults, to engage adults across the state that do not have college education and help them obtain their college degrees.
Students in the LCTCS system use both the TOPS award and the TOPS Tech award, which allows students to qualify for the scholarship with a lower ACT requirement and use that award at a technical or community college in the state.
From the LSU system, Vice President for Finance and Administration and the Chief Financial Officer Dan Layzell was requested by the task force to speak on the LSU system’s institutional financial aid program. He informed the members that the price of tuition, forces on the student marketplace and institutional financial capacity all affect the amount of institutional financial aid that can be given to students.
Layzell said, as an example, the University of Alabama currently provides three times the amount of institutional financial aid than LSU does per student. While Layzell recognizes that Alabama has no program similar to TOPS statewide tuition scholarship, he argues Alabama’s financial strategy here is due to their “long standing goal to recruit the best students, regionally and nationally.”
However, LSU has continued to grant more in unrestricted institutional aid than what is required by state statute, Sullivan said, offering between fiscal year 1999 and fiscal year 2017, the LSU system increased the amount of unrestricted institutional financial aid it provided to students from $17.9 million to $93.4 million in total, an increase of 415 percent.
President-Chancellor of the Southern University System Ray Belton said he supports the TOPS program, despite his system only making up 1.5 percent of the award funding. The LSU system, by contrast, makes up 33.5 percent of the total funding.
“As we see TOPS as being a foundational funding for institutions, for Southern University it imposes on us to be a little more creative in terms of how we support student’s matriculation by way of providing institutional aid,” Belton said.
Belton told the task force the biggest barrier between Southern University system students receiving TOPS is the ACT score requirement, as the national average ACT score for black students is a 16. Per the program’s requirements, students must earn a 20 on their ACT and a 2.5 GPA in the TOPS curriculum classes.
Wednesday’s meeting was the fourth of more meetings to come, but whether the members will recommend any major reforms to the TOPS program is still uncertain.
