Recent stories on declining enrollments and budget cuts at the University of New Orleans illuminate the challenges of urban public universities, New Orleans' downward slope after Katrina's destruction and Louisiana's zero-sum culture.
Historically, public universities in big cities have a grand mission — to provide a college education to those whose parents lack one. The best example may be City College of New York. By nature, they offer a utilitarian experience — the classroom and the library, not the football stadium or fraternity row. Ironically, a measure of their success is their graduates sending their children to better-known schools.
Whether because of its late founding and physical space or a lack of vision, then LSUNO was never tied to LSU's medical complex and dental school like Alabama in Birmingham. But UNO was often the only college choice of graduates of the city's high schools — public, Catholic and private — and grew. In the 1970s, several of its liberal arts departments in size and prestige were comparable to those at LSU. But unlike their counterparts in cities like Lafayette and Monroe, business and especially political leaders in New Orleans have never fully embraced the university as essential to the growth and vigor of their city. In the wake of Katrina, competing Louisiana universities and regions saw their chance in Baton Rouge to gain by undercutting UNO.
In the school's relatively short history, nearly 80,000 have received a UNO degree — and most were from, and perhaps half have stayed in, the greater New Orleans area. With new leadership, this is a critical time for the university. Indeed, it is time for the university to reach out like never before to the city's business and political leadership, its alumni, and the greater New Orleans community and say we need you — and, regardless of where you went to school, you and New Orleans need us.
RICHARD PETRE
Mandeville