It's time to rethink the plan to consolidate some of the colleges in our region. That's the message from local demographer Elliot Stonecipher. He says we can no longer afford all of the colleges we fund across the northwestern part of the state.

We don't have a growing population. We don't have college-age kids we can't have the great operation that is BPCC and have LSUS and have Southern. We can't have them 70 miles from Tech and 70 miles from Northwestern. We better all get our heads together and decide how are we going to consolidate most of this.

Stonecipher is calling on the leaders of all of the area colleges to look for solutions that save money and make sense for taxpayers and students.

LSUS has about 4,428 students

Southern University Shreveport 2,834 students

BPCC has 7,077 students

Northwestern 9,447

Louisiana Tech 12,414 students

Grambling has 4,994 students

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