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Sinking Flagship: A new look at LSU’s Middleton Library
The ceiling of room 230-A of LSU’s Middleton Library By Robert Mann LSU’s Middleton Library is a disgusting dump. A building this deplorable would be an embarrassment to a developing country, but...
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Mired in mediocrity, has Louisiana higher education lost the battle?
Plastic sheeting over copies of the Congress Record in the basement of LSU’s Middleton Library. By Robert Mann Imagine you designed a magic building that enabled a young person who stepped inside to...
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Are Louisiana GOP lawmakers budget hawks or chicken hawks?
By Robert Mann After eight years of enabling then-Gov. Bobby Jindal as he mismanaged Louisiana’s budget process, isn’t it remarkable that some prominent Republicans in the Legislature have suddenly...
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The disturbing decline of LSU’s Huey P. Long Field House
By Robert Mann Today, it’s an outdated, dilapidated building beset with a multitude of maintenance problems. But it was once among the grandest spots on LSU’s campus. Built in 1932 at a cost of $1...
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The Louisiana GOP’s budget illusions
By Robert Mann In his 1976 book about the Middle East conflict, “To Jerusalem and Back,” novelist Saul Bellow meditated on the seduction of self-delusion. “A great deal of intelligence can be invested...
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‘Buildings with great bones’: An interview with the head of LSU Facility...
By Robert Mann From the outside, much of the 2,000-acre LSU campus is beautiful. Take a stroll across the grounds and you’ll spot hundreds lovely buildings surrounded by stunning live oaks. Many of...
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Calamitous special session ensures continued chaos, mediocrity
By Robert Mann Now that former Gov. Bobby Jindal is gone and, with him, his lust for slashing university budgets, many assumed state lawmakers and a new governor might begin reinvesting in our state’s...
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Louisiana higher education in 39 charts
By Robert Mann It’s not the whole picture of Louisiana higher education, of course, but these charts from various sources provide some interesting longitudinal information about the trajectory of...
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Guest blogger on LSU Tailgating Tiff: ‘Commence student meltdown’
By Justin DiCharia In January 1555, Queen Mary I of England began a Catholic inquisition of the Protestant faithful and burned 300 men and women at the stake by the time of her demise three years...
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Let’s stop calling Louisiana’s TOPS program a ‘burden’
By Robert Mann To hear some of our state’s leaders, you’d think Louisiana’s college tuition assistance program, TOPS, is a ravenous beast that is devouring the budget. “I’ve watched [TOPS] grow over my...
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Louisiana’s state universities will soon be public in name only
By Robert Mann Their months-long “search” for cuts to solve the state’s budget crisis is over and Louisiana’s House Republicans came up with nothing. Well, that’s not exactly right. They did dredge up...
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Voters to state lawmakers wanting to abandon higher education: Not so fast
By Robert Mann If there was an unequivocal message in the Nov. 8 election returns in Louisiana, it was that voters are tired of rising college costs. They rejected — 57 percent to 43 percent — a...
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Professors aren’t indoctrinating students, but some Republicans wish they would
By Robert Mann “I am now ashamed of my time at LSU with this type of biased writing coming out of the [mass communication] department,” a peeved reader wrote in an email to me last week. “Now I can see...
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LSU grads, on your last day on campus, give your parents a tour of the library
“Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.” ―Walter Cronkite A familar scene in LSU’s Middleton Library By Robert Mann To the LSU class of 2017:...
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Could Louisiana survive without its colleges and universities?
By Robert Mann The differences in opinion are stark but not surprising. “A majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (58%) now say that colleges and universities have a negative...
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LSU has too many Confederates
By Robert Mann Shortly after prosecutors sent then-Gov. Richard Leche to federal prison for mail fraud in 1940, Louisiana State University officials erased his name from campus. The school’s law school...
View ArticleWhat Louisiana’s Nicholls State University and Harvard have in common
By Robert Mann In Thibodaux, some residents call Nicholls State University “Harvard on the Bayou.” Nicholls is a fine school, but it’s not in Harvard’s (Ivy) league, except in one respect: both are...
View ArticleWhy are Louisiana universities so powerless in Baton Rouge?
By Robert Mann How did it come to this sad state in Louisiana higher education? How could venerable institutions with hundreds of thousands of graduates and more than 200,000 students prove so...
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