BATON ROUGE, La. — Tensions surfaced Tuesday over the Board of Regents’ plans for divvying up dollars among Louisiana’s public colleges as university leaders face lost money for certain campuses.
The board is proposing to split about $1 billion in state funding based on its performance-based formula, which considers graduation rates, skills training for high-need job areas and other benchmarks — rather than doling out dollars solely on student enrollment.
The formula was designed when state funding for higher education was increasing. Now, with repeated drops in state financing, university leaders are at odds about how the formula hits their campuses.
Gov. Bobby Jindal’s budget proposal for 2012-13 would send all the state money to the board to divide, rather than allocating money to the four individual university systems.
System chiefs complained to the House Appropriations Committee that they only had three days to see how the Board of Regents decided to distribute the money.
“We’re probably a little frustrated that we didn’t get to participate,” said University of Louisiana System President Randy Moffett.
The biggest percentage reduction would fall on the Southern University System.
