Is LSU Going Bankrupt?

SteveHolt11 years ago

LSU President F. King Alexander announced this week that the university administration is working on an emergency financial plan to keep the SEC school afloat, because no steps have been taken to suspend the $608 million cut to higher education in Louisiana.

The plan, which is equivalent to bankruptcy, would allow LSU more freedom in cutting programs and firing staff, including tenured faculty.

The school’s president spoke about his contingency plan with the LSU school paper, The Reveille:

“Based on the current status of the budget debate, we have decided to begin contingency planning for exigency as many of our campuses may be impacted, as well as other campuses across the state. We know the worst-case scenario, we know the timeframe and we know what’s at stake,” Alexander said in an email statement to students. “We are optimistic that solutions to mitigate the devastation these budget cuts promise are forthcoming from our state legislators; however, we owe it to our students, faculty and staff to be fully prepared for every possible outcome.”

If you think it sounds like political maneuvering, that’s probably because it is. According to one of TFM’s LSU-based writers, the school president has been Chicken Little-ing around campus for awhile now, claiming that if the state legislature doesn’t back off the educational cuts, LSU might not have a fall semester.

From our lovable Bogey Wells:

I’m about 90% sure it’s all posturing. The chancellor has been running around campus for the past few months ranting about how they’re going to completely shut down the university for the fall semester, which I highly doubt. LSU is definitely in desperate financial trouble, though. We’ll see how Jindal’s budget cuts affect us in a few weeks. I’m more worried about one of our shit buildings collapsing than I am am about programs being cut.

What really needs to happen is for the state to close all of the embarrassingly shitty schools such as Southern University, Northwestern State, LSU-S, LSU-A, and Southern University-New Orleans. Not a single one of them should be classified as an institute of higher learning unless the “higher” refers to weed.

When told about the impending doom of his University, LSU football coach Les Miles bent down, took a nice little chomp out of the swamp grass and went merrily on about his day.

With higher education across the country taking dozens of hits over the last year, it’s clear that the institution itself is struggling. But if I were a gambling man, and I am, I would bet the farm that LSU will be fully operational come September 1..

[via LSU Reveille]

Image via YouTube