“You have to remember what you may be losing in the higher education system as you go into deeper cuts,” warns Public Affairs Research Council president Robert Travis Scott.
Scott addressed the Baton Rouge Press Club Monday, focusing on PAR’s new report, “Innovation in Louisiana”, which analyzes state support for university research programs. Those programs bring in grant money up front, and licensing revenue from patents for years afterwards. Scott notes that continued state budget cuts to higher education are impacting the amounts and numbers of research grants Louisiana’s universities are able to access.
“When you start making it difficult to leverage in more money into the higher education system, you’re really going to hurt the state,” Scott says.
Whether it’s new rice strains developed by the LSU Ag Center or cybersecurity programs coming out of Louisiana Tech, Scott says research conducted by Louisiana’s universities benefits the state economy as a whole.
“This kind of goose that’s laying these eggs—hopefully, golden ones—you kill that and you’re really hurting economic development,” Scott points out.
What about the WISE Fund, which was Governor Jindal’s showcase legislation a year ago? Wasn’t it supposed to help leverage more business investment into higher education R&D programs?
“The WISE Fund, generally speaking, is a good idea,” Scott states. “The problem there has always been the source of funding.”
The state budget pulls the majority of WISE funding from leftover hurricane relief funds, and the state has yet to get the federal seal of approval on using that money in this way. Additional WISE funds in the upcoming budget are slated to be drawn from the same federally-unapproved source.
“There is an existing funding source in Louisiana—more than $23-million a year—that could be spent on good, focused research and development efforts,” Scott says.
It’s called the Support Fund, administered by the Board of Regents. It was established by constitutional amendment in 1986, and is supposed to be used to enhance research. But the PAR report notes that nearly 30-percent of the enhancement funding went to community colleges and private universities, rather than being focused into state university research programs.
“The money is just spread to everybody, and spread very thinly,” Scott comments.
The PAR report does say the Board of Regents can change their formula for spending the Support Fund. Doing so does not require legislative approval, either.