States Finding Higher Ed Funding a Taxing Issue

When the Louisiana Community and Technical College System (LCTCS) unveiled its strategic plan for 2020 on June 8, the goals it outlined were quite ambitious. Just to start, LCTCS says it wants to double the number of students it serves and graduates. That would mean increasing enrollment to 325,000 students and graduates to 40,000 in 2020. The system also wants to double its $25 million foundation endowment and quadruple the number of students transferring to four-year universities.

It is a tall order, but Dr. Monty Sullivan, president of LCTCS, says that the system has a clear mandate to go ahead with its vision. According to Census data from 2013, there are 2.4 million working age adults in Louisiana, 366,000 of whom have not graduated from high school.

“Frankly [this situation also re­flects] the national skills gap,” Sullivan says. “Louisiana isn’t alone in this discussion. This is a national issue.”

The 2020 vision becomes all the more ambitious in light of the fact that state support for higher education has precipitously declined since the Great Recession. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) found that Louisiana decreased state investment by 42 percent when adjusted for in­flation between 2008 and 2015.