to improve the university system. I know you want more money for LSU, but that, in itself, isn't really a goal and is obviousl inefficient.

What I would do:

1)Bring all universities under one board
2)Close Grambling and Southern - open a major school named for grambling/southern at lsu and tech and honor their traditions
3)Establish 3 tiers #1 LSU; #2 UNO, La Tech or Monroe; #3 Lafayette, McNeese, either Tech, Monroe or Northwest (close the other), either Nichols or Southeastern, close LSU-A.
4)Close either Nichols or S/E; close 1 of Tech, NW, Monroe
5)Require ACT of 26 and a GPA to get into LSU as a frosh
6)REquire ACT of 24 and GPA to get into UNO, and the other tier 2 as a frosh
7)Obviously expand the hell out of community colleges (as foster has righly done) - move instructors into cc. All 4 year colleges ACCEPT CC DEGREES AND CORSES EARNED THEREIN.
8)Coordinate all degree programs - what's a 200 class at LSU should be at southeastern etc. Right now, some of the schools have "cleverly" moved classes that should easily be taught at the CCs into the 300 level to discurage the use of the CCs.
8)Coordinate all doctorate programs

Most of what I suggest is politically impossible - however, 5-8 are doable.

You know NOTHING about Southeastern. It provides more quality teachers than ANY SCHOOL IN THE STATE and a lot of quality nurses in a state with a shortage.

That being said, the colleges need to be smaller and more focused.

Many of your other ideas are correct. We need a STRONG tech and community college system made up from the funds saved by shelving over half the courses of study at the "regional" schools. You are correct that a degree from ANY state CC should allow full acceptance into ANY state school. Once we stregthen the CC's, folks who did not have the grades to get into a four year will have proven their mettle.

Eliminate Div 1 football at ULM, ULL and La Tech. They have juggled the books to make these programs look like they are not siphoning state dollars.

Closing Southern, Grambling, and SUNO will help NOPS. MOst of the CRAPPY teachers in the system came from the SUNO program.

No.....

What you do is dedicate SLU to education, school adminstration, and some other areas similar. You take SUNO's education program, which is the worst in the nation, and transfer that to UNO.

JD...I'll admit that when it comes to higher education, you're more of an expert than I am...

You'll never get Southern and Grambling shut down our put under any other umbrella. It's political suicide, and politically is the only way to get it done. You'd have a better shot at doing it at Grambling, however.

Closing Southeastern would be absolutely impossible. It's been the fastest growing University in the nation for the past half decade or so, at least. It's education and nursing schools are the best in the state.

In fact, the enrollment numbers in SLU's nursing school were scaled back by state law, and Southern's nursing school were opened, to force students into the program to help prop it and the school up.

Same thing for law schools around the state in comparison to Southern's.

Southeastern is vital for those that don't want to go to LSU, but do want to go to college. If anything, schools like Northwestern, Nicholls, LSU-A, and SU and Grambling need to shut down.

But, Southern and Grambling would be fought for to the death by minorities in the state. Think of it this way. Those two schools have about as much of a chance of being shut down as homestead exemption has of being repealed.

Your admission requirements are already being implemented at LSU, and will be in place in the very near future. I can tell you haven't paid attention at all to the LSU Master Plan. It'd explain a lot of this stuff to you.

Bringing all universities under one board would be a defeat for LSU, and it would make it "less".

It would have to go to the Legislature hand in hand with the other schools in the system, and to be honest, those of us that favor strengthening and improving LSU simply cannot allow that.

LSU must have the upper hand when it comes to funding. It may not sound fair, but look at our flagship's funding levels in comparison to other flagships around the country. We have to get unfair advantages to make sure we can compete nationally.

Tough cookies to all the lesser red headed 4 year university stepchildren...

If the state

If the State would allow for legal prostitution we wouldn't have all these stupid girls in schools trying to pretend they can compete and all the while using their sinful bodies to distract the boys and making boys act stupid.

Just my two cents.

As always another valuable contribution to the conversation by a fellow young Irishman...

No less than a former bartender at the world famous Sazerac Bar, I might add!

SEN, I have seen with mine own eyes female students that literally asked to see professors during their "office hours" that batted their eyes and obviously had more "hands on tutoring" in mind to help "get a grip" on their grades and "wrap their....err.....minds....around the gravity of the class."...A sad fact of higher education..

I disagree about the one board TE. Uniting all surviving universities under one Louisiana State University System would save the state a tremendous amount of money and eliminate too many redundant programs. The sheer number of bureaucrats that would be sent packing would save the state millions. Of course, that's why it will never happen.

If I were the dictator of Louisiana higher education, this would be my ideal system.

1) Close Grambling State, ULM, McNeese State, and the entire Southern System. This brings Louisiana down to nine four year schools while maintaining a reasonable geographic balance, with every major urban area in the state still being within a 45 minute drive of a four year school.

2) Unite every school under one Louisiana State University System. Continue the system of having LSU the flagship of the system.

3) Make the University of Louisiana (yes, let's just break down and give them the name) in Lafayette and Louisiana Tech University in Ruston the "second tier" of colleges. Both schools will be Doctoral II, Research II (LSU will be the only Doc I, Research I in Louisiana), ULA will be a committed liberal arts institution with a few focused programs in other disciplines and La. Tech will be the state's committed hi-tech, computer, and engineering school.

3) Make a third tier of universities that have a regional focus and a statewide specialty focus: as a hypothetical example, the University of North Louisiana ( currently NSU, in Natchitoches) is the education and social science school, the University of Central Louisiana (currently LSU-Alexandria) can specialize in agriculture and animal/veterinary science; South Louisiana University (SLU in Hammond) can be the state's nursing and health professionals development college; Shreveport State (LSU-S) can be the same for North Louisiana and house the system's major medical research divisions and the state's medical college; Nicholls State can be a major center for coastal research, oceanography, and wildlife management; and the University of New Orleans can perhaps specialize in hard sciences such as physics and robotics. Whatever the schools are strong at now would be the factor. I don't know much about UNO and Nicholls strong points.

4) Expand the two-year technical and community college system, uniting it under one umbrella. This is the destination for those who can't or don't want to go to a four year school but need some kind of education or job training, or who wish to go to college but have some work to do before they can. Stagger the admissions standards of the schools, with the regional universities having relatively simple admissions standards (2.8 GPA, 21 on ACT), ULA and La. Tech having slightly higher standards (3.5 GPA, 25 on ACT) and LSU being world class (3.7 GPA, 27 on ACT). Most doctoral and graduate programs will be at LSU, and the only public law school in the state.

5) An across the board funding hike for all schools, which will be possible with more money to go around AND fewer mouths to feed. Sorry TE, but LSU cannot be the only four-year college in Louisiana, the state is too big. Nor should we make it the only four year college in the state worth a crap; every Louisiana citizen deserves access to quality higher education, and not everyone can just pack up and move to Baton Rouge for four years. I favor keeping LSU the flagship and creating a funding formula that makes us top priority, but I will never buy the stupid, ridiculous argument that LSU can only be top dog by cutting the legs out from under all the other schools in the state. You can't be a flagship if you sink your own fleet. Instead, we should have LSU an outstanding university at the head of an entire system of outstanding universities, that all play a vital role in educating and serving our state. The other schools and the people that live in the hinterlands outside of Baton Rouge deserve the chance to be all they can be and be funded at 100%.

Just my humble opinion.

Good ideas - very similar to mine.
What do you do with UNO? Need to be with tech and la la (although I'd only go with 2 of those 3)

I'm not convinced that CCs should merge with tech schools. In some cases yes - but what is happening now is that tech schools are expanding into what CCs should be doing and forgetting about teaching appliance repair and things like that which they should be doing.

Well, I was thinking, the way you do the two year colleges, have about 20 two year colleges set up throughout the state that are actually two kinds of colleges on one campus; a community college that is more academic in focus, and a vocational/technical school that teaches trade skills and job training, like appliance repair and welding. And never the 'twain shall meet, like the English Dept. and Physics Dept on LSU's campus.