(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.

As someone who lives in Louisiana, I think I can help with some political realities that would impede your proposal:

(1) No way in hell will LSU ever allow any other school to be officially named the "University of Louisiana" without some kind of hyphen-modifier tacked on at the end. That would threaten their flagship status.

(2) Good luck trying to fold Grambling in to any other institution other than possibly a merger with Southern. Anything else would be poking a racial hornet's nest.

(3) It's important to know that Louisiana only has a "higher education budget deficit" in the context of the massive Jindal tax cuts of 2008. Since those tax cuts, basically every aspect of Louisiana government has been starved for funding. Before then, higher-ed funding, while never great, was more than adequate and the schools were doing fine.