President’s Report – November, 2015
The State Conference Executive Committee met on Saturday, November 7, 2015 at the Student Union of Southern University. Present were Leslie Bary, Al Burstein, Linda Carroll, Brooks Ellwood, Ravi Rau, Steve Rushing, and Sudhir Trivedi. Two guests attended, Gerald Hecht from the Psychology department at Southern University, and Commissioner of Education Joseph Rallo. Commissioner Rallo spoke to some issues facing higher education, saying that the past two years have seen more challenges than ever. Nationally, the tenured ranks have shrunk to 25% of faculty. The humanities and liberal arts are especially out of favor, and competency-based education in the form of online degrees or certificates spreading (N. Arizona university offers now a 6 month $2500 degree.) The debt burden on students has meant, for instance, a precipitous decline in Law School applications. Louisiana, in particular, has special problems. It has a highly under-educated populace with <50% holding high school diplomas. The budget for higher education has, in the past 7 years, been cut in half from $1.5 billion. Worse, two years ago, the TOPS item of $260 million, a separate item before, was moved into the regular budget, representing a further decrease in the $750 million number. Students are now…