Everyone at the University is sick of hearing about budget cuts.
Keirston Besse was so sick of it, she left.
The former theatre major attended the University for five semesters before she decided a degree from a dwindling program with constantly looming budget cuts was no longer worth her time and money.
Her decision may have come at the right time. The Board of Regents released a list Jan. 26 of low-completer programs that might be up for elimination. Thirty-four University programs were on the list, including both theatre graduate programs — the Master of Fine Arts program and the Doctor of Philosophy in Theatre program.
“This is the second round of budget cuts LSU is about to go through, and our department had already been downsized,” Besse said. “It was kind of just my awakening to say, well, if the department’s going to be downsized again, the degree from it is not worth it — because I can get a far more stable and well-rounded training from a program where if I say I have a degree from there, the response is, ‘Oh, that’s a fabulous department,’ not, ‘Oh, they don’t have a department anymore.'”
Keeping the theatre programs off the chopping block has become a priority for Laurence Kaptain, dean of the College of Music and Dramatic Arts.
“In the case of the MFA and PhD programs in theatre, the enrollments and graduation rates only tell a part of the story,” Kaptain said in an e-mail to faculty, staff and students in the department.
The numbers actually paint a somewhat skewed picture of the department’s success. The nature of the MFA program requires that it graduate a group of students every other year, according to Kristin Sosnowsky, associate professor and interim chair for the Department of Theatre. The Board of Regents defines a program as low-completer based on its average graduation rate over a three-year period.
“If you take a three-year average, and the three years happen to be years that there’s only one class graduating, then you have an unusually low number,” Sosnowsky said.
The department has developed a response to the low-completer list, according to Sosnowsky, which the Board of Regents will evaluate between Feb. 28 and April 18.
While the Theatre Department has developed creative ways to deal with its already-reduced budget, it can only maintain its hyper-efficiency for so long.
“It’s very hard to keep doing things on a shoe-string budget,” said Neal Hebert, a graduate teaching assistant working toward his doctorate of philosophy in theatre and former Daily Reveille opinion editor.
Because many theatre graduate students like Hebert teach undergraduate courses, the loss of graduate programs would deplete the quality of the entire department and the University as a whole, Hebert said.
“The MFAs and Ph.D.s, all together, teach like 1,000 students every semester,” said Nick Rhoton, a graduate teaching assistant pursuing his MFA in acting. “And if we go away, there’s no one to teach those. If you want to keep those classes, you have to hire faculty.”
Paying a faculty member is more costly than paying a graduate student, Hebert said.
“A Ph.D. student is significantly cheaper than a tenured faculty member,” Hebert said. “Five of us cost about what one tenured faculty member would cost.”
While Sosnowsky said she believes the programs’ contribution to the community and University will ensure their place in the department, its uncertain future is sending students like Besse away from the University and out of the state. Besse plans to move to New York in June to attend a two-year conservatory-style acting program.
“Classes at LSU that should have been offered every semester are being offered every other semester or once every two years,” Besse said. “The professors are great, and the actual courses are great, but you’re not getting everything you can out of them because of the budget. You’re hurting your own education.”
 
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