The million dollar debate about how exactly Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposed budget will affect the University prompts a question with many answers.
And it all depends on who you ask.
According to the Governor’s Office, higher education appropriations are at the same level as last year, as outlined in the governor’s budget summary.
This is true, when considering part of the governor’s budget — which will be debated, amended and ultimately passed by legislators — includes appropriations from students’ pockets in the form of tuition hikes and fee re-indexing.
This increase includes about $50 million in increased costs coming from students at the LSU-Baton Rouge campus.
The University projects an overall budget increase of $23.6 million in the approaching fiscal year if Jindal’s proposals are implemented, according to University Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administrative Services Eric Monday.
This number does not present the clearest picture, according to University administrators who measure the budget’s impact with a number they call direct student impact, or DSI.
Because the University incurs the increasing cost of operations mandated by the state, known as unfunded mandates, University administrators use DSI to more accurately calculate the impact budget changes have on the University, Monday said.
Unfunded mandates include increases in the University’s contribution to state retirement funds. Monday said the University expects unfunded mandates to cost more than $10 million next fiscal year.
Tuition revenue also plays into DSI because the governor considers tuition revenue in his budget.
In the governor’s budget, $26 million in increases for the LSU-Baton Rouge campus have already been approved partly through the LA GRAD Act. These will be implemented as a 10 percent tuition increase for in-state and 15 percent tuition increase for out-of-state students, according to the LSU System’s presentation to the House Appropriations Committee last week.
The other roughly $24 million in increased student costs could come from reformatting full-time tuition costs and re-indexing the operational fee, according to the governor’s proposed budget.
But the University does not receive the entire amount listed for the tuition increases in the budget because of the University’s financial aid programs.
Monday said if Jindal’s budget and tuition proposals pass, the DSI will be a budgetary loss of somewhere between $3 million and $7 million next year.
Monday said this loss could be incurred without facing the serious damage he says would result if the DSI sank below $10 million.
“This provides us a path to move through this,” Monday said. “No cut is helpful, but it is manageable.”
That doesn’t mean the University is out of danger, according to Monday. Loss could quickly multiply if the governor’s tuition measures fail to pass through the Legislature, Monday said.
Monday said if legislation to raise the full-time tuition cap were to fail, another $16 million in DSI would be lost.
If the legislative measure to re-index the operational fee fails, the DSI would be drop by $3 million to $5 million, Monday said.
“We go from something manageable to something damaging,” Monday said. “Nobody will like the choices we have to make.”

Read more about proposed tuition increases.
 
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Contact Xerxes A. Wilson at [email protected]