By Nathalie Clarke and Dylan Borne
In spite of his 2015 campaign promises to reallocate savings to health services and education, Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who supposedly has our best interests at heart, showed himself willing to slash education before anything else. To compensate for a $1 billion deficit, he declared on January 22nd that he would cut the Louisiana state budget by $994 million.
On January 31st his office announced that he had cut the budget by $672 million since being elected, cutting $11.9 million from higher education—a success in “fiscal responsibility.” Since Bobby Jindal was elected in 2008, funding for public colleges has been cut and tuition has persistently increased, going from 39% of universities’ revenue to 71% in 2015.
This cut is just the continuation of capitalist politics: it targets working families that cannot afford out-of-state or private universities. In 2016, when Edwards threatened the Louisiana Legislature with a $131 million budget cut, SUNO declared that 50% of adjunct faculty would be released, eliminating certain courses. In 2010 UNO faced $13 million in cutbacks. As a result, multiple programs were eliminated.
The cuts will destroy TOPS, a scholarship that covers tuition for hundreds of thousands of students. Although TOPS has its own problems (it’s based on ACT scores, and because of how expensive ACT training is, privileged kids almost always do better), it’s better than nothing, and the new budget cuts will probably cut it by 80%. The last shred of hope for many working families to send their children to college is gone. Costs of attendance have continuously been increasing; LSU now costs $30,000.
We call these cuts “capitalist” because they never fail to benefit the rich at the expense of workers. When the government of Louisiana decides to cut the budget, it never affects the military, the growing prison system, or the NOPD and their surveillance cameras, because those are “mandatory spending.” Schools, mental health services, Medicaid, youth programs, and daycare are all “discretionary,” or optional. While the rich contribute only 4.2% of their income in taxes to these programs, the working class pays 10%. So not only do workers see our programs cut, but because of the regressive tax code that steals wealth from the poor and redistributes it to the rich, we may not be able to afford private services to replace them. In 2012, a study by the Revenue Study Commission found that the top 2.3% of taxpayers raked in 55% of tax credits. These tax credits alone could refund TOPS—film industry tax credits totaled $231 million.
In the past, students and faculty from public universities around New Orleans have fought back against the budget cuts. In 2010 and 2015 at UNO, SUNO, McNeese, and LSU alike, students and professors have rallied to defend the right to higher education. While the government is slow to respond, the 2015 protests led to a partial renewal of TOPS funding. The state doesn’t have our interests at heart, but it gives us what we deserve when we hold its feet to the fire. Only a powerful student movement, with the support of working communities, will solve our education crisis.