Hey everyone,

I know most that post here are students, but this got sent out yesterday to Faculty and Staff and I’m just tired of this University thinking we are all too stupid to realize what’s coming. Email Picture

On its head, Zero-Based budgeting is used to find and eliminate waste in your finances. This is a good thing...but there is a new trend at LSU that makes this a much larger, and unfortunate, sign of things to come. Make no mistake, moving to this budgeting system will make everything grind to a halt. Every item purchased, every electricity bill, every person hired, every student worker employed, everything, must now have a justification. All of this must now be reviewed and approved. There are no overall budgets anymore. If you thought LSU moved slow before, just wait for this.

For starters, here’s some things on campus I’m noticing

• Every college counselor/coordinator is slammed. There are woefully low numbers of them. They simply cannot keep up. LSU has increased enrollment by about 20% each year over the last 5 years or so. They are hiring admissions, enrollment, and retention counselors by the droves, but they have not increased departmental counselors to counter-act doubling the enrollment of campus. Some departments have one or two, with numbers into the thousands. It wouldn’t matter if they worked 100-hour weeks. The job simply cannot be done.

• What about the significantly larger class sizes? This was not normal a few years ago. Why have, literally all, of the intro classes bloomed into these absurd sizes? Dozens of sections available with hundreds and hundreds of spots. Some even over one thousand. They are questionably large even with the increased attendance.

• Why can’t you schedule your classes as a freshman anymore? Why is this now regulated to a group of people you can’t get into contact with and have little to no say on the courses you are signed into?

• Have you all noticed the absolutely absurd number of adjunct professors at LSU over the last two or three years? You should question why your departments are not being allowed to fully hire faculty and instead being forced into hiring mercenary professors. Many of whom are inexperienced or should not be teaching at all.

• Why, right now, are we going to this budget model? LSU has set record breaking attendance numbers, every single year, for the past half decade. This is in conjunction with the rising costs of attending the university. LSU even made boatloads more money during COVID. They are sitting on the largest pile of money the university has ever seen. So, it can’t be because the money isn’t there.

LSU is about to be absolutely gashed by this new president and provost, but more specifically Enrollment Management’s CEO (Chief Enrollment Officer) …but why? My best guess for why they are doing this:

• They have spoken at length about importance of “Scholarship” and the priority of Tate’s “Pentagon” …but when you look at it it’s just STEM fields. Agriculture, Biotechnology, Coast, Defense, Energy. That’s it.

• I believe that we are about to gut or eliminate, over time, all undergraduate programs that do not fall under those five fields. I think we will see a serious drop in the diverse majors you can choose from.

• With the “Intro to…” class sizes getting larger, and overall, most classes and funding being way more undergraduate focused, I also believe we are about to get rid of or seriously defund ALL Graduate level programing.

• They seem to be taking on a Community College approach to their enrollment styling as well. Think about it. What other college in the country, outside of Community Colleges, completely eliminates all requirements to attend? LSU literally champions the fact that they will admit anyone. It does not matter what you received on your SAT or ACT. It does not matter what your high school GPA was. The only thing that matters is if you can pay to attend…and they’ll make sure that you can do that…even if it’s only for a semester or two before they know you’ll fail/drop out.

• The overall system right now seems geared into getting the student on campus and out as fast as possible. Easy courses are about to become the regular thing with more and more of the departments adopting Intro courses that you can take towards your major. I think Departments are doing this because they are about to be paid per head on how many students are in each class. More sections and more seats. They will try and get rid of smaller, more focused classes. If the department doesn’t have a large space, more adjunct professors will be hired to flood the smaller rooms, non-stop.

• The forced Dormitory year and meal plan is not for you to experience college life. It’s just to make money. With the insane admittance rate, easier classes, no-grads, and almost guaranteed 4-year degree and you’re out, it’s just an open checkbook for the university.

• The worst part about this, it’s already happening or has happened. They are just keeping quiet.

TLDR; We are about to become the McDonalds of the collegiate world. You used to get a three course, hearty meal, but it’s about to be a Combo #9 for the same price. Sure, it might fill you up and do the job, but it’s a vapid, uninspired, corporatized version of college.