While Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposal for the 2016 executive budget includes cuts to higher education, university officials said private institutions like Loyola won’t be impacted as much as public colleges and universities.

The $24.6 billion budget, which is predicted to be finalized in June, includes budget cuts but no increase in taxes. Higher education’s funding will be decreased by $141.3 million.

Jan Moller, director of the Louisiana Budget Project, said that these cuts to education are the budget’s biggest disadvantage.

“While we are unsure how the change will fully play out, it is certain that students will be paying more and getting less,” Moller said. “This goes for classes and majors that will be pulled from schools because of these cuts.”

Tommy Screen, director of government relations at Loyola, said that the budget impacts public institutions more than the university.

“As far as the numbers that you’re hearing, as far as the cuts to higher education and the $1.6 billion shortfall, it really only impacts the public institutions,” Screen said. “It indirectly impacts us here at Loyola.”

Moller said that while cutting higher education’s budget is not the best, the governor saw it as a way to balance Louisiana’s budget.

“It’s been a rough year, and in an effort to recover, the governor is refusing to raise taxes and instead is cutting critical services such as healthcare and the higher education decrease,” Moller said.

Despite these cuts, the proposed budget states funding for the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students, TOPS, will be increased. According to the proposal, funding for the program over the last seven years has increased and will continue to do so with this proposed budget.

The budget proposal states that funding will be prioritized even more, with a 13.7 percent increase from $250 million to over $284 million.

Sidney Holmes contributed to this report.