Colleges Brace for Budget Cuts

[Cajunrunner]

The entirety of higher education is so off the rails and divorced from reality. There are really only a few majors that can come close to justifying the debt incurred. Most of them are an absolute waste of money.

Agreed.

[BeauCajun]

“There are really only a few majors that can come close to justifying the debt incurred.”


I’ll agree with this. I really don’t think the entirety of higher ed is lost. The few that are successful are engineering, business, nursing and other medical fields. And some liberal arts fields.(Note: all degrees my family finished in)

[MarlinMan3]

Sources of funding:
A- taxes
B- tuition
C- Athletics donors
D- Academics donors
E- Grants
F- Athletics TV money

Long ago anytime F increased, A should have decreased accordingly. Same for B, i fail to see how a univ. Could increase tuition and expect to receive more funds from taxpayer. Probably more sources, feel free to add to list, but bottom line a formula should have been created to account for adjustments in each category.

[ChanceEncounter]

Listening to retired professors Richard Linzen and William Happer on Rogan and they say university administrations tipically use 50 to 60 percent of research money like they wish for administrative purposes. If that is true how on earth does UL make R1 status and not balance the books?

[MarlinMan3]

Wow....ncaa too???

Unless there is a unique harm in this particular case, seems it should all be shut down

https://hbcugameday.com/2025/10/27/f...-against-ncaa/

[MarlinMan3]

Listening to retired professors Richard Linzen and William Happer on Rogan and they say university administrations tipically use 50 to 60 percent of research money like they wish for administrative purposes. If that is true how on earth does UL make R1 status and not balance the books?

We were doing it the "correct" way and nobody else is.???

[MarlinMan3]

It does seem like by the time you have your proposal researched enough to submit, seems the grant money becomes more of a reward for prior work than actual cost of the future research. Granted technical fields and lab medical fields are different i suppose

[60swerethebest]

Listening to retired professors Richard Linzen and William Happer on Rogan and they say university administrations tipically use 50 to 60 percent of research money like they wish for administrative purposes. If that is true how on earth does UL make R1 status and not balance the books?

Our fed overhead rate is usually 48%. Ivy League is more like 60%. State grants overhead is 25% I believe. Majority of engineering is now NSF esp since we’ve made R1. Some of that money comes back to dept for lab support. That’s money we had not seen before. If research drops we’ll be back to trying to scrape up money for basic lab stuff.
I’m really getting nervous about our new CFO. Hearing off campus that he’s saying that Lafayette is too small to support an R1 university. If we lose R1 because of cutting research positions in those colleges that are feeding money back into UL, we’re cooked.
No info from on campus. All tight lipped.
Funny that we don’t hear as much about the 600 hundred new positions we brought in over the last few years. Figured that was bogus. Number keeps coming down.
Also, wonder why no one mentions that this $25 million mountainous debt is about 5% of our budget. Very reasonable to cut out programs/functions that are not core to our mission but gutting strong, growing programs is dumb. We’ll see.
The athletic dept, according to numbers in paper/media, accounts for about one half of our shortfall. Wonder what cuts we’ll see there. So far three positions cut.
Anxious to see what our interim boss does or if our CFO is really in charge.

[HoustonCajun]

Our fed overhead rate is usually 48%. Ivy League is more like 60%. State grants overhead is 25% I believe. Majority of engineering is now NSF esp since we’ve made R1. Some of that money comes back to dept for lab support. That’s money we had not seen before. If research drops we’ll be back to trying to scrape up money for basic lab stuff.
I’m really getting nervous about our new CFO. Hearing off campus that he’s saying that Lafayette is too small to support an R1 university. If we lose R1 because of cutting research positions in those colleges that are feeding money back into UL, we’re cooked.
No info from on campus. All tight lipped.
Funny that we don’t hear as much about the 600 hundred new positions we brought in over the last few years. Figured that was bogus. Number keeps coming down.
Also, wonder why no one mentions that this $25 million mountainous debt is about 5% of our budget. Very reasonable to cut out programs/functions that are not core to our mission but gutting strong, growing programs is dumb. We’ll see.
The athletic dept, according to numbers in paper/media, accounts for about one half of our shortfall. Wonder what cuts we’ll see there. So far three positions cut.
Anxious to see what our interim boss does or if our CFO is really in charge.

Guess I missed appointment of the new CFO. Who is it? Lafayette is too small, but say Durham, NC is not?

[60swerethebest]

The guy that “saved” UNO and I think Grambling. Don’t remember name. Gov appointed him.