(07-20-2017 12:43 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  

(07-20-2017 12:34 PM)CitrusUCF Wrote:  

(07-19-2017 12:00 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  When you're done asking that about Arkansas, you can move one state south to Louisiana.

Population 4.6M, and off the top of my head has these public 4-year universities:

LSU
L Tech
UL Monroe
UL Lafayette
Grambling
Southern
UNO
NW St
SE St
McNeese
Nichols

and those are all DI !!

And they are running bad budget deficits in Louisiana higher education. They need to fold several of those into other institutions like Georgia has done.

LSU (LSU-Alexandria merged back in as just an extension campus)
Louisiana Tech (merged with LSU-Shreveport, Northwestern St., UL-Monroe)
ULouisiana (former UL-Lafayette) (merged with Nicholls St. and McNeese St.)
New Orleans (merged with SE Louisiana, Southern U-New Orleans)
Grambling (merged with Southern-Shreveport)
Southern

That gives you 3 major universities, a less-selective large university in your major city with a new mission of also serving the African American community, and two HBCUs.

You eliminate a great deal of spending on multiple administrations, athletics, etc. And the increased tuition going into one spot will enable the universities to offer more programs without duplication.

The plans were to keep McNeese State as is.
Grambling State they wanted to merged as part of La. Tech.
NW State, LA. would merge with LSU-Shreveport.

The main campus ideas would be this.
LSU
La. Tech
La.-Monroe
La.-Lafayette
McNeese State
NW State La.

The rest would be merged into those schools and eliminate all the HBCU publics. That was their plan a few years ago.

The HBCUs will never be eliminated because of civil rights laws on the issue. And honestly, for as poor as some of the HBCUs are, they offer a lot of opportunity to the black community.

And yeah, I can see that plan. McNeese and NW St are far enough geographically from other campuses that it would work alright.