AAUP

American Association of University Professors

Louisiana State Conference

Academic Freedom for a Free Society

February 19, 2010

Dear Commissioners,

Having reviewed the Commission’s final report, we again wish to express our appreciation for your undertaking a necessary and long-delayed review of Louisiana’s system of higher education.

We appreciate and strongly endorse the goals that you have articulated and your focus on the mission drift and administrative bloat that have plagued and weakened that system.

However, we are concerned about a lack of attention to an issue central to educational quality. We continue to stress the dangers of outcome measures that focus on completion rates without accompanying assurances of quality. Inappropriate administrative pressure to increase completion rates by lowering standards remains a risk that we cannot afford to take.

The ultimate and only effective guardian of educational quality is the academic freedom of those doing the real work of higher education in its classrooms, studios and laboratories. As we write, the Louisiana University system has announced a revision of the policy for declaring financial exigency. No longer adhering to the original policy (congruent with AAUP recommendations) of demonstrated risk to the survival of the institution as a whole, exigency can now be declared at the program or departmental level. The absence of faculty involvement in the development and the implementation of this shocking and dangerous change is a further rejection by the administration of the faculty’s primary responsibility for curricular matters and its role as the guarantors of academic quality.

We are also concerned about the lack of attention to the reality that the state's tax-supported institutions of higher education, privately-endowed institutions, and for-profit institutions have overlapping goals and compete for resources. Means must be sought to enable these three systems usefully to articulate.

Sincerely,

Alvin G. Burstein Ph. D.

President, Louisiana Conference (for the Executive Committee)

Cc: Jordan Kurland, Associate General Secretary AAUP;

Sally Clausen, Commissioner, Higher Education

Bobby Jindall, Governor