Last year, Louisiana lawmakers asked every Louisiana public school to submit a report on their spending related to diversity, equity and inclusion. Based on an Illuminator review of their submissions, there has been minimal spending on these programs.
Attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion – one of the flashpoints in conservative culture wars in the education realm – are often premised on the idea that such programs bloat college budgets and increase student debt. But information every public Louisiana college and university provided shows that about half of its post-secondary institutions spend nothing on DEI. Those that do spent between 0.001% and 0.42% of their respective budgets.
In total, 17 schools spend about $3.5 million on DEI measures out of $2.7 billion in state money appropriated to them in the most recent fiscal year, making up 0.1% of the state’s total higher education spending. The other 16 schools – including every campus in the historically Black Southern University system, most schools in the Louisiana Community and Technical College System and two schools in the LSU System – reported spending nothing on DEI.
The reports are required by Act 641, which Rep. Emily Chenevert, R-Baton Rouge, authored. It mandates school-level reports on all DEI personnel, programs and spending from all Louisiana public two- and four-year colleges. The Illuminator obtained the reports through public records requests. The reports list program names, their purpose and description as well as the number of personnel and the state funding for each.
The personnel metric is interpreted differently by each school and should be taken with a grain of salt. For example, some schools included students or volunteers in the count, others included only employees who were dedicated to the DEI program and others included employees who worked on DEI projects as well as other tasks.
Monty Sullivan, president of the Louisiana Community and Technical College System and a defender of DEI, said a diverse workforce is something industry partners are looking for Louisiana schools to provide.
“The whole diversity, equity and inclusion is nothing more than a firestorm. We don’t need a firestorm right now,” Sullivan said. “What we need is to produce more graduates that go to work and pay taxes in Louisiana.”
Sullivan called the political focus on DEI a distraction from the economic mission of the state’s post-secondary education institutions to produce a workforce that meets Louisiana’s needs.
“But with 58.5% of our people working, we are not accomplishing that goal,” Sullivan said.
What constitutes DEI?
The wording of Chenevert’s legislation resulted in several items being included in the reports that are not typically considered DEI matters, making the reports a liberal estimate of actual spending.
The law specifically seeks reporting on any “program, activity, initiative, event, instruction, action, or policy that classifies or references individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, culture, gender identity, or sexual orientation or promotes differential or preferential treatment of individuals on the basis of such classification.”
For example, eight of nine University of Louisiana System Schools listed their international student centers on their reports. Among other things, these centers help recruit international students and help them with visas and other legal matters. Such centers are not typically considered a DEI undertaking.
The eight schools reported collective spending of $918,803 on their centers, making up about a third of what all universities spent on DEI.
“While we are uncertain if international offices should be included, this is the first time we have completed this report,” Marcus Jones, the UL System’s chief operating officer said in a statement to the Illuminator. “Therefore, we included anything that might fall under the statute’s broad definitions. To be clear, we are not deciding whether international offices are definitively considered DEI programs.”
DEI efforts are not limited on college campuses to race and LGBTQ+ status, which are often named during debates on legislation seeking to curb the practice. They could encompass any number of programs that seek to provide equal opportunity. Because they are not specifically mentioned in the new state law, spending for other groups who benefit from DEI measures — such as programming for students with veteran, disabled, rural, non-traditional or first-generation status — are not included in the reports.
“It’s important to remember that creating conditions which support individual success are not inherently zero-sum, and in fact removing formal or informal barriers which may hinder any one person’s opportunities can have a positive impact on the entire campus community,” LSU Faculty Senate President Dan Tirone said in a statement to the Illuminator.
Itemized spending, cuts
The LSU System’s report also includes many items that have since been eliminated.
Its main campus in Baton Rouge last year stripped language related to diversity, equity and inclusion from most of its websites. Later in 2024, the LSU Board of Supervisors approved a resolution requiring he elimination of DEI programs across the system, which includes two medical schools, a two-year college in Eunice and a regional university in Shreveport.
Across all schools, the largest individual DEI expense was for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Center for Louisiana Studies. The center is described as being “dedicated to researching, publicizing, promoting, and preserving Louisiana’s cultures and history.” The university spends more than $710,000 on the center annually, according to the report.
Other items included in the reports varied widely in cost and purpose.
LSU Health Sciences Center Shreveport reported spending $1,915 on a Mardi Gras celebration.
McNeese spent $10,000 on its “Black Male Initiative” which is designed to help those students build a support network at the Lake Charles School.
LSU’s College of Engineering reported spending $6,244 on the “ExxonMobil Diversity Scholars Program,” which offers funding and mentoring to minority students with the goal of increasing graduation rates for these engineering students.
The LSU Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs at the Manship School of Mass Communication reported spending $180,054 on a lecture series. This included the salary of the director of the center and a note that only one of the lectures was related to equity.
LSU spokesman Todd Woodward did not respond to a request for comment about this item.
Of the 139 items listed on the report, 59 were done at zero cost, including a series of student events at the University Recreation Center at LSU, a “Coming Out Day” event at Grambling and a DEI Workgroup at LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
Other expenditures include small-dollar amounts for student organizations. DEI spending in athletics and Greek life were specifically excluded from the legislation and are not included in the reports.
