Equity in the Context of a Crisis: Funding for Higher Education Post-Katrina

Context of higher education in New Orleans

Before discussing the various inequities in higher education funding, it may be helpful to provide a context so that a reader unfamiliar with New Orleans will gain an understanding of the landscape for higher education institutions, particularly in the aftermath of the levee breaches. There are eight postsecondary institutions in New Orleans which includes one community college and seven four-year institutions. Two of the four-year institutions are state-supported universities while three of the four-year institutions have a religious affiliation with various orders of the Catholic Church. In addition, three of the four-year institutions serve predominantly African American populations while the others have a predominantly White student enrollment. The state-supported community college has the most diverse racial composition of students of all of the higher education institutions in Orleans parish. A brief overview of each institution follows.

While most of the higher education institutions in New Orleans did not resume classes until January 2006, the University of New Orleans (UNO) began offering classes during the first week of October 2005 in an attempt to serve the 17,000 students that were enrolled for fall 2005. The main campus of UNO, a member institution of the Louisiana State University system, is located on the site of a former naval air station situated on the southern shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Only the buildings adjacent to the main campus entrances on Leon C. Simon Boulevard received minimal flood damage. The rest of the campus facilities were uninhabitable due to excessive mold that grew at exponential rates because of the extreme humidity and lack of air conditioning. The mold infestation created conditions that required several buildings on the state-supported campus to be remediated prior to the university receiving approval from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to allow employees and students to return to campus. Consequently, the majority of classes offered by UNO in fall 2006 were online with a small percentage held at satellite locations in neighboring parishes. These satellite locations provided cramped office and classroom space and computer access for a limited number of faculty, staff and students who were able to return to their homes in adjacent parishes.

Our Lady of Holy Cross College (OLHCC), affiliated with the Marianites of the Holy Cross Catholic order, is situated on the West Bank of the Mississippi River. The campus was not flooded because all of the levee breaches were on the East Side of the River. After the storm, OLHCC provided food and lodging for the community as it served as a formal command post and operations base for over 2,500 military personnel and government officials. Once the immediate needs of the community were addressed, OLHCC was able to resume classes for its student population of less than 1,000 students.

The three historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in New Orleans (Dillard, SUNO and XULA) were located in close proximity to canals that overflowed or levees that were breached and resulted in these campuses being inundated with storm water. Dillard University, served a population of approximately 2,200 students, is affiliated with the United Church of Christ and United Methodist Church. Situated within 2 miles of Lake Pontchartrain, Dillard is located less than 1 mile from the London Avenue Canal, which had four levee breaches, resulting in 8 ft of water flooding the campus and remaining stagnant for several weeks. Moreover, three residence halls caught on fire and were destroyed while two others were demolished because of their rapidly deteriorating conditions (Hamilton 2006).

Southern University at New Orleans (SUNO) is located just south of Lake Pontchartrain and west of the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal which connects the Lake to the Mississippi River. While the levees surrounding SUNO were not breached, there were five breaches on the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal that submerged the campus in 4–11 ft of water (Hamilton 2006). SUNO is located less than one-half mile from the campus of UNO and is a state-supported institution that is governed by the Southern University System. Prior to the storm, SUNO served a student population of approximately 2,500 students.

While Xavier University of Louisiana (XULA), located close to downtown New Orleans, did not experience a levee breach, it was the overflow of the Washington Avenue Canal that caused flooding to the lower levels of campus buildings. Many of the buildings at XULA have entrances that are raised approximately 3 ft from the ground. Because of the raised structure, the institution was able to resume classes in January 2006 with some staff and faculty housed in trailers on the campus and students residing on upper levels of residence halls. XULA is the only black Catholic institution in the United States and served a pre-Katrina population of 4,000 students. In addition, XULA is one of only two pharmacy schools in Louisiana and is recognized nationally for the number of baccalaureate graduates who annually enter medical school.

Loyola University New Orleans, a Jesuit institution, enrolled approximately 4,500 students before Katrina. The university is located in the section of New Orleans referred to as the ‘Uptown’ area of New Orleans. The President of Loyola, Father Kevin Wildes, did not leave the campus during Katrina and reported that the university received minimal flooding which was not atypical of a heavy rainstorm in New Orleans.

Located literally next to Loyola is Tulane University. The main campus of Tulane in the Uptown area enrolled approximately 11,500 students prior to the storm in both undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Tulane's main campus received minimal flooding but its downtown campus comprising the medical school and hospital received substantial flooding. Prior to the landfall of Katrina, Tulane had the distinction of being the largest private employer in New Orleans.

Delgado Community College is located in the ‘Mid-City’ section of New Orleans. Before the landfall of Katrina, Delgado served over 17,000 students from New Orleans and surrounding parishes at its four locations. However, it was the City Park location in Mid-City that provided educational offerings to over 60% of the enrolled students at Delgado. The West Bank location served 23% of the population and the North Shore location (located on the northern shore of Lake Pontchartrain) served 11%. The nursing school in downtown New Orleans served 6% of the Delgado population. Delgado is situated between the London Avenue Canal and 17th Street Canal and several buildings were destroyed because of the flooding incurred as a result of breaches of both levees.

Damage estimates varied widely across the institutions from $95 million to $650 million with some institutions providing estimates based solely on damage to physical facilities while others considered the loss of students and research expenditures when calculating losses. Initially, Tulane cited damages of $200 million but subsequently increased their projected damages in excess of $650 million. It was unclear if Tulane included a loss of one-third of the student population and $17 million in research funding in the anticipated costs for total damage to the institution (Mangan 2006; Marcus 2007; “Tulane University announces cutbacks” 2005). Due to the heavy flooding experienced by the three HBCUs, these campuses had capital damages that ranged from $95 to $400 million. Specifically, the estimated damages to the physical facilities and structures, coupled with the loss of tuition, were $400 million for Dillard, $350 million for SUNO and $95–$100 million for XULA (Hamilton 2006). Dillard estimated that one-quarter of its student population would return in January 2006 while XULA projected 2,800 of 4,100 students would re-enroll (Fogg et al. 2006). When the official numbers were released in spring 2006, the enrollment of all institutions in NOLA decreased with Dillard experiencing the largest decrease at 50%, XULA had a 25% drop in enrollment, Tulane a 24% decline and Delgado and SUNO experienced a decrease of 19 and 17%, respectively (Mangan 2006).

The Federal Emergency Management Assistance (FEMA) Agency provided partial reimbursement for repairs related to Katrina damage but did not provide any assistance with salary losses. While FEMA provided financial resources to assist with clean-up and recovery efforts there were different rules imposed on state-supported versus private institutions. For example, SUNO received over 400 trailers to house employees and students as well as classroom and campus offices through a streamlined process because of its status as a public university (Fogg et al. 2006). In contrast, the private colleges often cited the plethora of paperwork necessary to negotiate the FEMA bureaucracy may not have been worth the time and effort (Hamilton 2006). To further exacerbate the financial burden that institutions experienced in Katrina's aftermath, the HBCUs did not have enough insurance to cover the projected estimates to repair their campuses. Additionally, the HBCUs did not have business interruption insurance coverage, due to the expensive premiums, which could have provided critical financial resources post-Katrina (Hamilton 2006).

When higher education institutions in New Orleans resumed classes on their physical campuses in January 2006, two historically black institutions, SUNO and Dillard, were unable to do so because of the extensive flooding of their campuses. Dillard University held classes for 1,100 students at the downtown Hilton Riverside which also served as the temporary lodging quarters for 800 students and occupied 30% of the hotel's rooms (Fogg et al. 2006). Likewise, SUNO attempted to establish hotel lodging but eventually set up a makeshift community of trailers on a 38 acre site north of their flooded campus on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. This temporary campus was less than a quarter mile from the flooded SUNO campus. While SUNO served a post-Katrina population that was 63% smaller, the institution experienced its largest increase in enrollment in its history in fall 2008 (Mangan 2008). Three years after Katrina, the low-lying SUNO campus occupied only 40% of its campus operations in 6 buildings with no street level floors being used because of the mold damage and potential for flooding during a typical New Orleans rainstorm (Pope 2008). Classes and the remainder of the operations remained in trailers north of the campus as the State of Louisiana and FEMA came to resolution in August 2009 to renovate the original site and rebuild new structures on higher ground at the current location of the temporary campus on the southern shore of the Lake.

Loyola, Tulane, XULA and Delgado were able to resume classes on their campuses in spring 2006 after making arrangements for lodging for faculty, staff and students. For instance, Tulane rented a cruise ship to provide housing for students and reserved space in several downtown buildings for faculty and staff to reside. Other institutions allowed FEMA trailers to be placed on campus property so employees and students would have lodging. Today, all of the institutions in New Orleans have attained 85 to 90% of pre-Katrina enrollments. This overview of the higher education landscape in New Orleans pre- and post-Katrina provides the context to understand the impact of decisions that were made after the crisis as institutions struggled to rebuild their campuses both literally and figuratively.

Conceptual framework

The conceptual framework guiding the analysis is grounded in disparate impact theory. Based in legal theory, disparate impact occurs when a practice or policy has an unintended negative impact on a minority population. Specifically, the Supreme Court ruled in Griggs v. Duke Power Company that even if there is no intent to discriminate and the practice appears to be fair but it is discriminatory in operation against a minority group then discriminate impact can be proven if there are alternative practices that could have been used by the business (Shoben 2004). While disparate impact theory has been used rarely in higher education (Perez 2004) and is based on evidence of statistical proof (Shoben 2004), it is the core concepts of this theory which lend themselves to a framework for analysis of the distribution of federal funds to post-secondary institutions post-Katrina. Moreover, Perez (2004) posits decisions made independent of race and proponents of diversity can use disparate impact theory as a mechanism to design policies and practices that do not have an adverse impact on any population.

Inequities in educational funding

Since the landfall of Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005, the inequities in funding for New Orleans area educational institutions serving the K-12 and postsecondary student populations have occurred at multiple levels from the federal to state levels. A 2007 report published by the Southern Education Foundation estimated it would cost $6.2 billion to repair hurricane-related property damage for K-12 and higher education institutions. Yet, the federal government provided only $1.2 billion for the repairs (Suitts 2007). Moreover, the $2.5 billion disseminated to the recovery of educational institutions represented slightly more than 2% of all federal funding allocated for disaster relief and recovery post-Katrina. Even the Department of Education provided only 2.5% toward funding for reinstating educational entities to some semblance of ‘life as they knew it’ before Katrina. To provide a point of comparison, the United States government spent $2.5 billion on the War in Iraq over a 10-day period.

While colleges and universities in New Orleans were the focus of this paper, it is important to call attention to the distribution of federal funds to post-secondary institutions in Mississippi and Louisiana. Even though higher education institutions in Mississippi received minimal flood or wind damage, the state of Louisiana and Mississippi received equal allocations from the federal government to assist with repairing damages to post-secondary institutions. This imbalance in the distribution of federal funds to higher education institutions in Mississippi and Louisiana did not consider the amount of damages incurred or the number of institutions in the state that were impacted in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (Suitts 2007).

Although Congress may have thought equal treatment was the best approach without consideration of the damage suffered and costs to restore and recover for postsecondary educational entities in Louisiana versus Mississippi, others within and outside our borders realized the inequities in funding and initiated humanitarian endeavors to provide assistance. In 2007, the government allocated $120 million equally to postsecondary institutions in Louisiana and Mississippi but it was anticipated that a subsequent appropriation would increase the total to $135 million. Interestingly, international governments contributed $131 million to higher education in contrast to the projected federal allocation which would total $135 million. Perhaps, these global observers were aware either directly or informally of the inequitable distribution of funds and sought to provide assistance to higher education institutions in Louisiana. One of the larger gifts received from abroad was a total of $17.5 million for XULA by the Government of Qatar with $12.5 million allocated to expand the facilities for the College of Pharmacy and $5 million for scholarships for students at XULA who were victims of Katrina (Selingo and Mangan 2006). The foreign aid that was distributed to higher education institutions struggling with the cost of repairs with a significantly decreased student population assisted in balancing out some of the inequities in funding for institutions that were impacted by Hurricane Katrina as the institutions fought insurance providers and waited for FEMA to reimburse them for repairs (Dervarics 2006). However, the international funds and federal government aid usually required institutions to detail projects on their applications for which the funds would be applied. It is possible that while the completion of paperwork to ensure the funds would be used appropriately could also have been a hindrance for financially-strapped institutions struggling with decreased staff and a plethora of issues that required immediate and continuous attention for the daily survival of the institutions.

Within the United States, former presidents George H. Bush and William Clinton joined forces to establish the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund to provide $30 million in financial resources across a variety of educational entities. While the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund allocated resources evenly, former Presidents Bush and Clinton also established the Wave of Hope Campaign in recognition of the severity of damages at HBCUs in comparison to the lack of sufficient funding to repair these damages (Mangan 2006). The HBCUs identified as being eligible for funds from the multimillion dollar Wave of Hope Campaign represented three states, Louisiana (Dillard, XULA, SUNO), Mississippi (Alcorn State University, Jackson State University and Tougaloo College) and Alabama (Bishop State Community College).

In addition to funds dispersed through the initiatives of the former Presidents and the federal government, several private foundations provided money to HBCUs. However, Xavier and Dillard were generally the beneficiaries of these philanthropic efforts while SUNO was rarely mentioned in any press releases as being a recipient of any major philanthropic gift. For example, the Bush Foundation in Minnesota distributed $2 million in unrestricted grants to both Dillard and XULA, the Mellon Foundation provided $800,000 and $1.2 million to Dillard and XULA, respectively and the Charles Steward Mott Foundation awarded $1.5 million each to XULA and Dillard to assist with reconstruction projects, scholarship and recovery.

Corporate entities were more equitable in their contributions as evidenced by Motorola providing $250,000 in funding through UNCF for the three HBCUs in New Orleans to rebuild their math, science and technology infrastructure (Roach 2006). Likewise, Coca-Cola donated $500,000 in grants to SUNO, XULA, Dillard and Grambling State University, located in northern Louisiana (“HBCU News: Gulf Coast” 2007). Interestingly, Brown University (whose president is an alumna of Dillard) through their hurricane fund provided $1.1 million in scholarship funds to Dillard, XULA and Tougaloo College (located outside Jackson, Mississippi) to assist in their efforts to influence displaced students to return to their respective campuses (“Brown offers $1.1 million” 2005).

It is unclear why the public institutions, UNO or SUNO, were rarely mentioned as recipients of humanitarian aid. With an endowment of $2 million, SUNO was the institution that needed the most assistance since their campus was totally destroyed and it was 2008 before they were able to occupy the upper floors in some of their buildings. As a relatively young institution with no residential students, the endowment of SUNO is eclipsed by private HBCUs that have been in existence for more than 100 years. For example, the endowment of XULA and Dillard was $55 million and $45 million, respectively. However, these endowments pale in comparison to the $300 million endowment of Loyola and $750 of Tulane (Hamilton 2006). Perhaps, the status of UNO and SUNO as public institutions conveyed the perception that the state or FEMA would provide the assistance they needed.

Another area that is not directly related to funding of higher education but deserves mention is the unbalanced coverage by the media of institutions in New Orleans. For example, a September 10, 2005 article in the New York Times did not mention any of the public or state-supported institutions, SUNO, UNO or Delgado, in their coverage of higher education in New Orleans (Dillon and Areson 2005). In later coverage focusing on black colleges after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the New York Times (Applebome 2005) failed to mention state-supported SUNO once in the feature while even Loyola and Tulane were briefly referenced in an article which focused on black colleges. The only publications that consistently included SUNO in their coverage were Diverse and Black Collegian. Likewise, UNO is rarely mentioned in articles on higher education institutions in New Orleans. Moreover, Delgado and OLHCC received even less coverage than UNO and SUNO in news articles. Readers of the New York Times would not have known that other educational institutions existed in New Orleans prior to or after the Hurricane.

Funding formula and disproportionate allocation

In December 2005, Congress appropriated $95 million (Public Law 109–148) each to Louisiana and Mississippi. The bill mandated that Mississippi could only use the aid for student financial assistance through specified Title IV student assistance programs. In Louisiana, it was stipulated that the $95 million be used for student financial assistance, faculty and staff salaries, equipment and instruments, or any other purpose authorized under the Higher Education Act of 1965. Thus, institutions could not use the funds for physical reconstruction per their recommendation to the U.S. Department of Education (Epstein 2006, Hamilton 2006). It should be noted that two organizations (NAFEO, National Association for Equal Opportunity, and UNCF, United Negro College Fund) representing the interests of public and private HBCUs advocated that funds for rebuilding be considered as well as grants that would not be disseminated through a third party, such as the Louisiana Board of Regents (Epstein 2006). However, the U.S. Department of Education chose to allow the Louisiana Board to influence the formula for allocation of the funds.

The final formula that the Louisiana Board of Regents recommended to the Department of Education considered revenue losses from tuition, financial aid budgets and enrollment. Details of the development of the funding formula distribution for higher education institutions in Louisiana were noticeably absent in an exhaustive search of various databases. In various media, there were references to two meetings the commissioner of higher education in Louisiana, E. Joseph Savoie, had with the presidents of the 11 institutions in the region who were impacted by Hurricane Katrina (Epstein 2006). Savoie further noted that “he relied heavily on their suggestions”. However, in an April 2007 letter to the Department of Education in response to audit findings, Savoie wrote that the final funding allocation plan was developed with “input from various postsecondary schools to the Louisiana Joint Legislative Committee on the budget”. The reference to various postsecondary schools indicates that not all institutions may have been included in the meetings; furthermore, it is not indicated in meeting documents whether the commissioner met with college presidents individually or as a group. It is unclear whether all of the HBCUs were represented in the dialogue or if only one institution was consulted as representative of the others. In the same article, Epstein referred to dialogue with Yvette Jones, senior vice president for external affairs at Tulane, relative to the consideration of physical damages being considered in the formula but she spoke of the difficulty of getting accurate information since two institutions had not started rebuilding yet. Epstein quoted Jones that “it was better to use numbers that were documented from past years”. The historical numbers used in the formula provided an advantage for the institutions that benefitted most from the funding formula. In general, HBCUs nationally have smaller enrollments and charge less tuition than predominantly white institutions so they remain affordable for African Americans (Harper 2007). Thus, with pre-Katrina enrollments ranging from 2,100 to 4,100 for HBCUs in New Orleans and with lower tuition than other private institutions in the area, it was evident that the HBCUs from the outset were at a disadvantage in the final funding formula.

The federal allocations to Dillard ($5,300,221), SUNO ($5,643,584) and Xavier ($6,868,290) under the Louisiana board formula totaled $17,812,095 or 21.6% of the $95 million (President's Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities 2007). In comparison Tulane, UNO, and Delgado accounted for a total of 55.4% of the funds allocated (Selingo and Mangan 2006). The restriction that the funds not be used for reconstruction costs left little possibility for the development of a formula that would correlate with the capital losses of the institutions.

Perhaps, a comment by Cynthia A. Littlefield, director of federal relations at the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, provides insight on the development of the final formula of the funds distributed by the federal government. Littlefield stated, “Maybe none of us are ecstatic about how the allocations have gone, but the department has gone out of its way to be as fair as it could—though it would be naïve to suggest that there weren't political considerations” (regarding the senators requesting funding), she explained. “It stands to reason that larger institutions have large needs.” (Powers 2007). Another example of an institution using their influence to ensure they were not disadvantaged in the formula was a remark by a spokesman at Tulane, Mike Strecker, that Tulane “hasn't paid attention to and is not concerning itself with funding comparisons among Gulf Coast institutions” (Powers 2007).

Conclusion

The funding formula that ignored the physical damages to campuses resulted in smaller, affordable institutions being disadvantaged when the federal funds were distributed. Regardless of how the funding formula was derived, it was the federal government that failed all post-secondary institutions in Louisiana with the decision to allocate equal funding to institutions in the state of Mississippi even though there was significantly less catastrophic damage and fewer post-secondary institutions impacted. Moreover, just as the federal government excluded capital losses so too did the final funding formula. The inequity of the funding allocation at the federal level coupled with the exclusion of capital losses negatively impacted Louisiana institutions, particularly HBCUs. However, financial resources accepted from international governments and philanthropic organizations provided relief to enhance academic programs and reconstruct buildings destroyed by the levee breaches in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005. The inequitable distribution of federal funds was not ignored by corporate and philanthropic organizations that provided vital financial support to facilitate the recovery of HBCUs similar to what these organizations have done since their establishment.