Dear Governor Jindal...

[Note: This is sarcasm, just in case you can't tell!]

Since you are hell-bent on destroying higher education and healthcare in Louisiana, let me offer some suggestions to quicken their demise.

1. Allow only on-line classes at the state's universities, community colleges, and technical schools, which will result in huge savings. Sure, welding classes might suffer, but having only on-line instruction will allow the shutdown of most or all of the physical plants. Just think--no air conditioning, no heat, no lights, except in, perhaps, the one building that will house the computer server and various necessary humans to push the necessary paper for financial aid, etc. Those professors teaching the classes will provide their own offices, computers, Internet, etc. We won't need physical plants to house them or classes for students, and, thus, we won't need support personnel except to maintain one building on campus (see item 2). We can also eliminate the bookstore by having students order their books on line. Departments can have faculty meetings via Yahoo Messenger or Skype, and they'll be using their own resources instead of college phones and facilities. And the state can sell all of the desks, chairs, etc., that we use in on-campus classes, because we won't need them anymore.

2. In the administration of college services:

a. Have only one person in each department to handle all the work for that department--one financial aid person, one PR person, one dean to handle overrides and course problems. You get the idea. Oh, and only one secretary for all of them. Pare the staff down to the most basic and elemental personnel. This shouldn't be a problem, if you implement item b.

b. Raise tuition exorbitantly, making it impossible for most students to afford it or obtain enough financial aid to cover it. Fewer students will apply to college or attend, thereby making item 2a feasible.

3. Keep chipping away at higher education in Louisiana so that more people will leave and fewer businesses will locate here. That will help with healthcare, too, because, if fewer people live here, fewer people will need doctors or hospitals.

I might be willing to have furloughs, etc., if you and the legislature would do likewise. Governor, how about you giving up 5% of your yearly salary and refraining from work on those days? Many of us would appreciate it if you wouldn't work so hard. And I'm sure that wouldn't be a stretch for most legislators, since they don't seem to do much anyway, except tell the rest of us that we have to tighten our belts. How about cutting all the pork out of the budget? How about tapping into the rainy day fund to ensure that our future workforce gets the education it needs to help Louisiana succeed long after you're out of here? How about looking for better ways to attract more revenue? How about some future-thinking, or is that not a priority for you because, in two years, you don't plan to be here to deal with the mess you've left us?

P. S. In the case of science labs, we could consolidate our classes with the LSUHSC here in town. All of our students could go there to dissect animals. This would be win-win; our students would pay to get the hands-on experience science labs require, and the Med School would get unpaid workers to help with research. In the case of anatomy classes, the students could assist with autopsies, which would provide them with first-hand knowledge of the workings of the human body.

Louisiana Budget BS...

Am I hearing this right?  If Louisiana wants to fund healthcare and education, we have to pay higher gas prices?  Excuse me? 

I ask this question because, every time I read something about the state's budget crises, one of the "reasons" postulated for it is the lower oil prices.  So my understanding (sorry, not an economist here) is that, in order to have the money to fund these two areas, oil prices need to stay high.

Am I not understanding this correctly?  It seems too simplistic.  What I do know is that these two areas are not protected, so they are always the first two categories that are slashed.  That, of course, puts us last or next-to-last in the US in those categories--consistently--crisis or no. 

I think what bothers me the most is Louisiana, as a state, doesn't seem to value education--period.  And, I guess, it doesn't value health, either.  So we have uneducated, unhealthy people living here.  Which doesn't recommend it, does it?

I think my mother captures some of the mentality, as far as education is concerned.  She told me once, "The more educated a person is, the less that person believes in God," as though education and faith were mutually exclusive, something I don't believe at all. 

We need to get over that in order to progress.  If we don't have an educated workforce, the most we can hope to attract, business-wise, are companies that rely on unskilled labor.  And while we may be attracting more non-agriculture jobs, do those jobs make use of college-educated residents?  Not entirely. Do we want that?  Do we want our college-educated, white-collar force to desert the state to find jobs that pay it for its intelligence and education?

This whole situation just chaps me.  State legislators who spent us into this crisis, whoever they are, should lose their jobs.  Any state legislator who voted him/herself a pay raise in the last two years should have to give that money back, especially when many workers haven't received raises in at least that many years.  And any state legislator who filled budgets with pet pork projects should be barbequed over the spit of public opinion. 

We have to start paying attention to what these people are doing.  We have to raise our voices and tell them to pay attention and do what's right for Louisiana and the people who live here.

Welcome to Louisiana!

You know, I can't figure out why, in a state that ranks low in health care and education, the first things to be cut in a budget crisis are--you guessed it!--health care and education.

So, our university is slated for a $1.9 million budget slash beginning on January 1, 2009--in the middle of a year. What I saw on the news (so I'm not giving away any secrets here) is that the chancellor is cutting operational costs (oops! no paper for the copiers!) and some adjunct positions. But the schedule for the spring is already set, and I can't see how cutting adjuncts would help. We don't have enough personnel in our department to pick up all those extra classes, and, even if we did, the staff would mutiny at having to pick up extra classes without extra money. The college can't save money by cutting adjuncts and paying full-time professors for an overload. No savings there.

The U could just cancel some of the classes and up the enrollment in the others. And for someone who teaches mostly writing classes, adding five more people to each class would be the equivalent of teaching another full-time class. I already spend most of my "off" time grading papers. Adding more students to any of my classes, including the on line classes, just increases the amount of time I spend grading/reading papers. [And, actually, the university did increase the number of students in my on line freshman comp class from 22 to 25--the spring class has 26 students, one of which is an AEP high school enrollee]. Well, I guess I could give up a couple of hours of sleep a night, but maybe I'll just reduce the number of assignments I grade.

It's a trade off, I know. But I think the legislators should get rid of all their pork barrel spending before they ask us to lose personnel and services. I wonder how much of their last budget included bridges to nowhere or city parks named after them.