Before Gov. Matt Bevin unveiled his proposed budget this week, higher education officials hoped for some restoration of state funds that were cut in previous years.
Those hopes were dashed when Bevin announced plans to include public colleges and universities in cuts to in part help shore up $30 billion in shortfalls in Kentucky’s public pension plans.
“I’m hugely disappointed,” said Barbara Burch, faculty regent on Western Kentucky University’s Board of Regents. Those cuts will likely be felt across the university, she said.
Sue Patrick, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, also expressed disappointment. “Our goal is to minimize the impact to students and their families and to preserve quality academic programming and services,” she said.
Phil Neal, president of Southcentral Kentucky Community and Technical College, described the proposed cuts as “puzzling.”
“It is puzzling that at a time when workforce development is one the Governor’s top priorities that there are proposed cuts to the very engine fueling workforce development,” he said in an email message.
He wasn’t sure how the changes could affect SKYCTC.
“Only the KCTCS Board of Regents has the authority to increase tuition, and I cannot speak to any future decisions they might make,” Neal said. “We are facing an immediate 4.5 (percent) cut to this year’s operating budget that ends June 30. For SKYCTC, that cut is more than a quarter of a million dollars and for the entire Kentucky Community and Technical College System it totals more than $8.5 million.”
Kentucky colleges and public universities have endured up to $173.5 million in state funding cuts since 2008, The Associated Press reported. Those cuts will continue if Bevin’s budget makes it through the state House and Senate.
WKU President Gary Ransdell discussed how the university would be impacted in an email to faculty and staff Wednesday.
WKU would lose $3.3 million in the current fiscal year, and a 9 percent cut in state funds beginning July 1 over the biennium would equate to another $6.7 million, the email said.
Ransdell also discussed Bevin’s plan to tie funding to performance on outcomes. That would mean encouraging universities to align their goals with workforce and economic needs, Ransdell said.
Ransdell wrote that effective July 1, 2017, “one third of the base state appropriation for universities would be captured to establish an outcomes-based funding pool that would essentially redistribute funds based on achievement of performance indicators.”
“He (Bevin) proposes to devote 2/3 of the total base funding for higher education to performance funding in FY 2019 and 100% in FY 2020,” Ransdell wrote in the email.
“Essentially this means that universities would have to earn our state appropriation based on a set of outcomes that have yet to be determined but that would likely be aligned with recruitment, retention and graduation of students, with emphasis on career fields that meet pressing workforce demands,” Ransdell wrote.
At the same time Bevin’s budget proposed the cuts to higher education, it also addressed equity funding in future years for WKU and Northern Kentucky University.
“Addressing this equity issue is a critical priority for WKU and will help level the playing field for our students who are paying a disproportionate share of their education in comparison to students at other Kentucky universities,” Ransdell said. “The Governor’s budget would add $2.6 Million in FY 2017 and another $2.6 Million in FY 2018 to our state appropriation. ...
“There are many details of this plan that are yet to be understood, and with regard to performance funding, those details have yet to be defined,” he said. “So we are a long way from fully knowing how WKU will be impacted by these proposals. I am confident, however, that WKU will fare well in any measure that is outcome or performance based.”
Ransdell said he can’t “even begin to describe how we would address the proposed reductions.”
Ransdell emphasized that this is just a first step in the budget process.
“Our Public Affairs team and I will be diligently communicating with legislative leadership, Governor Bevin and his staff to improve our position in the state budget,” he said.
Bob Skipper, director of media relations at WKU, said Ransdell declined to comment beyond the email.
When it comes to how the cuts could impact WKU, Burch said it was too soon to tell.
Ways for dealing with the cuts could run the gamut, she said, such as possibly delaying faculty salary increases. “There’s probably gonna be some pain felt in every part of the campus,” she said.
Jay Todd Richey, student regent and president of WKU’s Student Government Association, described the budget cuts facing WKU as “going to be brutal.”
“I am very fearful that these cuts will result in a tuition increase,” Richey said in a text message.
Richey also responded to Bevin’s comments about outcome funding rewarding the workforce’s demands for engineers over “French literature majors.”
“I will add that there is a place in Kentucky, the U.S. and around the world for both engineers and French literature majors … ,” he said. “So I disagree with the Governor that college is exclusively for workforce development.”
— Follow education and general assignment reporter Aaron Mudd on Twitter at twitter.com/aaron_mudd bgdn or visit bgdailynews.com.
