Chairs, professorships help create economic ties
11/09/04

A major purpose of the Louisiana Board of Regents’ Endowed Chairs for Eminent Scholars and Endowed Professorships programs is to create stronger economic development ties between the private sector and higher education. To create endowed chairs and professorships, colleges and universities must raise 60 percent of the cost from private sources. Including the matching funds from the state, professorships are endowed at $100,000, super professorships at $200,000 and chairs at $1 million. There are also $2 million super chairs.

Each year, Louisiana Commissioner of Higher Education E. Joseph Savoie and members of the Board of Regents tour the state presenting the Regents’ matching-fund checks to public and private colleges and universities for endowed chairs and professorships.

“Visiting the campuses for those presentations provides the Regents and Louisiana’s postsecondary education community in general an opportunity both to recognize our generous donors and to spotlight the enormous success of the Endowed Chairs and Professorships Program,” Savoie said. “The Louisiana Education Quality Support Fund (LEQSF) and the generosity of the many private citizens and corporations in this state who understand the importance of investing in Louisiana’s colleges and universities are two very significant reasons why Louisiana higher education is moving in the right direction.”

Since 1986, the Board of Regents has awarded some $181 million in matching grants through the program, creating 230 endowed chairs, including 18 $2 million super chairs, and 1,367 endowed professorships. When matched with private contributions, the value of those chairs and professorships is almost $385 million.

Funding for the Louisiana Education Quality Trust Fund (LEQTF), from which the Board of Regents draws the match for chairs and professorships, is generated through a permanent trust fund approved by voters in a 1986 constitutional amendment. The trust fund was established with about $540 million received from settlement of disputed oil and gas revenues generated in the so-called 8(g) stipulation of the Federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. A quarter of the interest earned from investment of 8(g) oil and gas revenues will continue to be returned to the trust fund until it reaches a cap of $2 billion. By 2004, the trust fund had risen to about $953 million. Each year, the Legislature appropriates half of the interest earnings to the Board of Regents, the policy-making and coordinating agency for all public higher education in Louisiana, and the other half to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education for grades K-12.

“The LEQSF makes it much easier for Louisiana’s colleges and universities to attract new scholars and researchers,” Savoie said. “The fund also goes a long way toward stemming the much-publicized ‘brain drain’ by providing the means for our institutions to retain eminent faculty members who themselves attract high-quality graduate students.”

Additionally, the program helps create stronger economic development ties between the private sector and higher education. To create endowed chairs for eminent scholars and endowed professorships, colleges and universities must raise 60 percent of the cost from private sources. For example, to create an endowed chair for an eminent scholar, a college or university first must raise at least $600,000 from private contributions, which then makes them eligible to receive the Regents’ $400,000 match. The total value of the endowed chair is $1 million. Similar provisions apply to $2 million chairs. In the endowed professorship program, $60,000 must come from private sources to qualify for the Regents’ $40,000 match. Super professorships are endowed with $120,000 in locally generated funds and $80,000 in matching funds from the Regents.