Turning a corner

CLASSROOM LIGHTS HAVE BEEN switched on and off thousands of times since hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit last fall. But many IHEs that closed for the semester have stayed in the dark. Now, January marks the start of the first full semester back, and as schools around the Gulf Coast return fully to the business of education, each one has its own approach to the financial recovery.

Many recovery plans include a large number of layoffs. Dillard University suffered some of the worst damage from Hurricane Katrina and let go nearly 60 percent of its workforce in October (although some are now being hired back as more students decide to return to the school, says spokeswoman Maureen Larkins). For Loyola University New Orleans, which suffered little physical damage but had to close for fall, layoffs remain a possibility. "Our president, before he made any decisions, wanted to look at what our enrollment would look like," says spokeswoman Kristine Lelong. (She notes that by mid-December nearly 80 percent of previously enrolled undergraduates and an even greater percentage of law students had pre-registered for the spring semester.)

Tulane University, facing $200 million in recovery costs this school year alone, issued a comprehensive recovery plan in December. The university is streamlining its offerings to remain true to core mission objectives. For Tulane, financial solvency will entail eliminating programs, including the Ph.D. option in Computer Science and the undergraduate curricula in Chemical Engineering and scaling back the School of Medicine. The school is also dropping seven athletic programs to help cut a reported $55 million from the overall budget.

Louisiana's public colleges and universities have had some individual leeway for financial recovery--so long as each institution plays its part in a total $66.6 million budget cut handed down by the state. The Board of Regents met with decisionmakers from each of the state's four public systems to work things out, according to Kevin Hardy, director of Communications for the board. "One of the things we did not want to do was have a clear across-the-board cut," he says.

In spite of many hurts, schools around the Gulf Coast remain firm on their loyalty to the region and its people. The Louisiana Community and Technical College System launched a program to train unemployed workers for participation in the post-hurricane rebuilding effort. And Tulane, said President Scott Cowen when releasing the school's recovery plan, will be "a dynamic engine of growth and change for New Orleans and its citizens."

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