Funds for highway improvements have increased significantly. Louisiana's postsecondary education system has also been dramatically reorganized, with legislation giving the Board of Regents clear policy-making authority over the funding formula, capital outlay requests, and academic programs. The passage of a constitutional amendment creating the Louisiana Community and Technical College System gives Louisiana an effective organization to meet the demands of business and industry for well-trained workers and to ensure broad student access to associate degree and certificate programs. Faculty salaries were brought to the Southern average in 1996, and those increases have been annualized into university budgets. Louisiana was recently recognized by the Chronicle of Higher Education as having moved from 46th to 4th in the nation in terms of the rate of increased funding for higher education during Governor Foster's first two years in office.
Education is a primary ingredient in the wealth of nations.
Our first goal calls for Louisiana to become a Learning Enterprise , an entity which values knowledge and treats the pursuit and utilization of that knowledge as its most important business. In a Learning Enterprise , every Louisiana business, institution, and citizen will have a job to do. For some the job will be learning to read, or learning to operate a particular piece of equipment, or learning a new set of job skills. For a small manufacturing business it may be modernization or learning how to organize a manufacturing network to compete more effectively and improve profitability. For a governmental agency it may be applying the lessons of private sector quality programs to the delivery of services in the public sector.