by William Trombley
Frankfort, Kentucky
These have been the days
of wine and roses,” said James
Votruba, president of Northern
Kentucky University, referring to the last
five years, when the state’s public colleges
and universities have received strong support
from the governor and the legislature.
“There was plenty of money and we were
encouraged to do new things—what more
could a university president want?”Votruba
asked.
Democratic Governor Paul Patton
came into office in 1995 declaring that
reform in postsecondary education would
be his “number one priority,” and he has
kept that promise.
More than $600 million in new money
has been poured into public colleges and
universities—an increase of more than 40
percent since Patton arrived. Enrollments
have surged, especially in the two-year
community and technical colleges. The
percentage of high school graduates who
go on to some kind of postsecondary
education is increasing,
and the dropout rate is falling.
The state’s staggeringly high
adult illiteracy rate—about 40
percent—has begun to decline.
A new, stronger Council on
Postsecondary Education has
begun to impose system-wide
policies on what has been a
series of campus fiefdoms,
sometimes feuding with each other.
Tuition rates are rising six to seven percent
a year, but Kentucky’s public institutions
remain among the nation’s most
affordable.
Enrollment in adult education classes
increased by 12,000, or 23 percent, last
year, and 5,500 students are enrolled in a
new Kentucky Virtual University, taking
classes mostly online.
External research funding has increased
from $120 million to $170 million in the last
three years.
But all of these gains are threatened by
a slumping state economy, which has left a
$533 million hole in Kentucky’s $7 billion
operating budget for the current year, and
is expected to reduce state expenditures
for the next two years as well.
Governor Patton has struggled to make
up the deficit without cutting education
spending. As late as last October 26, he
announced a two percent reduction for all
state agencies except education, stating,
“For too long we have under-invested in
education.” However, by the middle of December
the revenue gap had grown to such
proportions that Patton had to slice higher
education by two percent as well.
The governor also froze all state construction
spending, including $270 million
for higher education.
Although the two percent cut in higher
education spending is much smaller than
in many other states, it distresses Patton,
who believes Kentucky’s colleges and
universities are the keys to economic
growth. “We’ve made a commitment
to move forward in education and we’ve
got to keep it,” the governor said in an
interview. “Kentucky’s economic future
depends on it.”
Most campus administrators believe
they can cope with a two percent cut without
sacrificing the momentum of reform.
“I think we can do it without losing the
academic gains we’ve made,” said John
Shumaker, president of the University of
Louisville, one of the state’s two research
institutions. “The reality is we have to be
responsible citizens of the commonwealth.
The governor has helped us through thick
and thin—now it’s time for us to help him.”
Said Gordon Davies, president of the
Council on Postsecondary Education,
“these are good presidents, and a good
president can find two percent in his budget.
If he can’t, then he shouldn’t be president.”
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Budget Director Jim Ramsey is trying to maintain a high level of higher education
spending while dealing with a $533 million deficit. |
Lee Todd, the new president of the University
of Kentucky, said he will make up
the two percent (which amounts to about
$6 million) with money he had hoped to
put aside to increase lagging faculty and
staff salaries and medical benefits.
Western Kentucky University will use
extra tuition revenue generated by increased
enrollment to plug the two percent
hole, although President Gary Ransdell
warned that a cut of more than two
percent “would cause us some serious
problems.”
As the economic skies began to darken
last spring, Mike McCall, president of the
28-campus Kentucky Community and
Technical College System, asked each
campus president to put aside four percent
of the operating budget, to compensate for
expected reductions.
But many believe this year’s budget
cuts, plus those to come, are bound to slow
the pace of change. “The will is there and
the intent is there but are the resources
there?” asked historian George Herring,
an authority on the Vietnam War who has
taught at the University of Kentucky for
32 years.
Another question is whether legislators
will accept Patton’s spending plan or
will want to make deeper cuts in higher
education.
“I think there is a climate of support for
higher education, a common understanding
that this is the key to Kentucky’s future,”
said Crit Luallen, secretary to the
cabinet and a principal Patton adviser.
“The political challenge will be when
advocates (for mental health, Medicaid
and other state services that have been
reduced) begin to testify, and members see
how these cuts will affect their districts—
will they still favor spending on higher
education?”
So far, there has been bipartisan legislative
support for the reforms. But that
could be changing. “I sense, for the first
time, that a lot of the support is more rhetorical
than real,” University of Louisville
President Shumaker said.
“Part of the legislature still hasn’t
bought into it,” said attorney Norma
Adams, vice chair of the Council on Postsecondary
Education. “I wish we had another
few years to see if most legislators
could be brought along.”
Entering the last two years of his
second term, the governor is more vulnerable
politically.The two-year budget he
presented to the General
Assembly in late January is
his last, and legislators will be
freer to attack it without fear
of retaliation.
Complicating Patton’s
task is an ugly fight over
redistricting between leaders
of the House of Representatives,
where Democrats
hold almost two-thirds of the
seats, and the state Senate,
controlled by Republicans
by a narrow 20-18 margin.
“It’s gotten pretty uncivil.
They won’t even sit down
and talk to each other,” said
Council member Steve
Barger, secretary-treasurer
of the state carpenters’
union. “That’s going to have
an impact on everything that
happens this legislative
session.”
Even the best known of
Kentucky’s reforms—the
“Bucks for Brains” incentive fund, which is
intended to lift the University of Kentucky
into the top 20 among the nation’s research
universities and to transform the
University of Louisville into a “premier,
nationally recognized metropolitan
research university”—could be in trouble.
In the last four years, the state has provided
$230 million for “Bucks for Brains”
(formally titled the Research Challenge
Trust Fund), money that has been matched
by the state’s two research institutions.This
has enabled Louisville and the University
of Kentucky to attract some top researchers,
especially in engineering, medicine
and science. The number of endowed
chairs has increased from 48 to 134 at the
two universities, endowed professorships
from 58 to 203, and money for scholarships
and graduate fellowships has increased
substantially.
“Bucks for Brains” faculty members
have brought $46 million in new research
funding to the University of Kentucky in
the last two years, according to President
Lee Todd.
At the University of Louisville, externally
funded research reached $40 million
last year and the goal for the year 2010 is
$200 million. “But this is just the beginning,”
President Shumaker said.“We were
so far behind that we’ve got to maintain
this level of investment for another 15
years to make a real difference.”
“Bucks for Brains” also included $20
million to improve quality at the state’s six
regional universities—Eastern Kentucky,
Kentucky State, Morehead State, Murray
State, Northern Kentucky and Western
Kentucky—but some officials at the regional
schools grumble that too much of
the new money is going to “UK” and to
Louisville.
Others have made good use of the extra
money. For example,Western Kentucky
University had no endowed professorships
four years ago but now has 18. Northern
Kentucky has added 55 full-time faculty
members. “The bottom line is that, due to
the reforms, we’re a substantially different
institution than we were four years ago,”
said Northern Kentucky University President James Votruba.
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| Kentucky Governor Paul Patton has made higher
education his “number one priority” since taking office in 1995 but now faces severe budget challenges. |
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Governor Patton had planned to spend
another $120 million on “Bucks for
Brains” next year but the tight budget has
made that impossible. Now he hopes to
persuade the General Assembly to
approve bonds to finance the program but
some legislators are balking.
“There’s some folks who don’t think
postsecondary education is the place to
spend the bucks,” Steve Barger said. The
budget crisis “gives them more of a chance
to be heard.”
In addition to “Bucks for Brains,” other
incentive funds are intended to increase
enrollment, retain already-enrolled
students, improve campus technology
capabilities and provide workforce
training, among other goals.All of these are
managed by the Council on Postsecondary
Education, whose president, Gordon
Davies, considers them crucial to the
success of the reform efforts.
“The special funds provide money
on the margin for change,” Davies has said.
“They give us (the council) some
leverage.”
So far, the results have been generally
good.
Undergraduate enrollment at public
institutions has risen by more than 19,000
in the last four years. Most of the increase
has been in the newly formed Kentucky
Community and Technical College System
(KCTCS). The 1997 legislation implementing
the postsecondary reforms called for
an enrollment increase of 80,000 by the
year 2020, and that goal now appears to be
attainable.
The retention rate (the percentage
of first-time freshmen who remain for a
second year) has improved on some
campuses (the University of Kentucky,
Kentucky State and Western Kentucky),
has fallen at Morehead State, and has
remained about the same at Eastern Kentucky,
Murray State, Northern Kentucky
and the University of Louisville.
The Governor’s budget preserves $22
million in a special fund intended to increase
enrollment and improve retention
rates. “We didn’t want to lose momentum
in those areas,” a Patton aide said.
Ninety-seven percent of Kentucky high
school graduates now take the ACT (either
the ACT or the SAT is required for
admission to the state’s public universities)
but their scores are below the national
average. Kentucky also ranks below the
national average in numbers of students
who take Advanced Placement courses in
high school and in the percentage of students
who pass such courses.
This is because “we don’t have enough
teachers who are qualified to teach AP
classes,” said Sue Hodges Moore, executive
vice president of the Council on
Postsecondary Education.“That has been a
real barrier.”
Stimulated by the “Bucks for Brains”
money, The University of Louisville’s endowment
has grown from $183 million to
$503 million in recent years, the University
of Kentucky’s from $300 million to $430
million. This has made it possible for the
two universities to attract several highly
regarded researchers and scholars.
Oncologist Donald Miller, director of
the Brown Cancer Center at the University
of Louisville, has brought 24 new
faculty members and $9.5 million in
research funding to Louisville since coming
from the University of Alabama,
Birmingham, in 1999.
Other outstanding faculty members
Louisville has hired with “Bucks for
Brains” money include Scott Whittemore,
a spinal cord injury researcher; early
childhood education expert Victoria
Molfese; and urban affairs specialist Steven
Bourassa.
Two years ago, Greg Gerhardt, an anatomy
and neurobiology professor whose
specialties include Parkinson’s Disease, left
the University of Colorado for the University
of Kentucky, bringing along his
research group, $4 million in federal
funding and a private company that
manufactures and distributes technologies
developed in Gerhardt’s lab.
As at Louisville, many of UK’s “Bucks
for Brains” hires have been in engineering,
medicine and the sciences but this year the
university lured historian Ronald Formisano
from the University of Florida with
the offer of an endowed chair.
At the same time, average faculty salaries
and benefits for both universities—
Kentucky and Louisville—are well below
the competition, and some excellent professors
are said to be leaving the state.
“That is a big issue that we have to
address,” said Dean Howard Gotch
of UK’s College of Arts and Sciences.
“Attracting good people is one thing but
retaining them is another.”
The pace of reform picked up at the
University of Kentucky when President
Charles K.Wethington, who was opposed
to most of the changes, was replaced seven
months ago by Lee Todd, who holds a
Ph.D. in electrical engineering from MIT,
and once taught at UK, but has spent most
of his career in the business world.
Todd was senior vice president of Lotus
Development before taking the University
of Kentucky job, and is an enthusiastic
believer in utilizing Kentucky’s higher
education resources to build a “new
economy,” one built on knowledge and an
educated citizenry, to replace the old,
fading sources of revenue such as tobacco,
coal mining and horse racing.
Todd also jettisoned the slogan
“America’s Next Great University,” which
the university had been using in recent
years but which was offensive to many UK
alumni.
Perhaps the most pleasant surprise has
been the almost-instant success of the
Kentucky Community and Technical
College System (KCTCS), which came
into being only five years ago after a fierce
battle between Governor Patton and the
University of Kentucky.
Prior to 1997, the state’s 14 community
colleges were part of the university, while a
state agency administered the 15 technical
schools. Former UK President Wethington
liked that arrangement because control of
the community colleges extended the
university’s political clout throughout the
state.
But Patton and his education advisers
thought the arrangement limited the
potential of the two-year schools, and
diverted attention from UK’s research
mission. They proposed combining the
community colleges and the technical
schools into a single system.
The battle was fought in the legislature,
with heavy lobbying by both sides. Some
observers believe that if Patton had lost
this argument, he might have lost the entire
reform package. But he did not lose, and
today 28 of the state’s 29 two-year schools
are merged into KCTCS. Only Lexington
Community College remains part of the
University of Kentucky.
“The last vestiges of bitterness (over the
governance change) have disappeared and
KCTCS is booming,” said Walter Baker, a
former state senator who is now a member
of the Council on Postsecondary Education.
The 28 schools and colleges have been
reorganized into 16 districts and “we’re
beginning to see some economies of scale,”
said system President Mike McCall. Several
new degree programs have been started
and there is greater cooperation between
the technical schools and the community
colleges, he said.
Although enrollment has jumped
almost 39 percent since 1997, McCall has
launched an advertising campaign to sell
Kentuckians on the value of higher education
in general and the two-year schools in
particular.
“There is a systemic problem in this
state,” he said.“We’ve got to get the word
down to the family level that education has
value.”
To implement the reforms, the 1997
legislation created the Kentucky Council
on Postsecondary Education and gave the
council powers that its predecessor agency
lacked. The council’s Board of Trustees
then selected Gordon Davies to run the
agency. Davies, who was director of the
Virginia State Council of Higher Education
for 20 years, is one of the nation’s
most respected figures in the tricky business
of higher education coordination.
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Crit Luallen, secretary to the cabinet and a principal adviser to Governor Patton,
believes there is a climate of support for higher education. |
“There were some tensions at first,”
Walter Baker observed, as Davies and the
council began to impose some system-wide
restraints on a group of campus presidents
who were accustomed to considerable
autonomy. “But now I think things have
smoothed out.”
Davies has tried to keep the council and
his 75-member staff focused on an “action
agenda” that asks five questions:
• Are more Kentuckians ready for
postsecondary education?
• Are more students enrolling?
• Are more students advancing through
the system?
• Are we preparing Kentuckians for life
and work?
• Are Kentucky’s communities and
economy benefiting?
Although Davies thinks the answer to
all of these questions is yes, or at least a
qualified yes, he believes there is much
work still to be done: The adult illiteracy
rate is still far too high; not enough high
school students prepare for, and enter,
college; of those who do enroll, too many
drop out; of those who graduate from a
two- or four-year campus, too many leave
the state; not enough students are
transferring from two-year to four-year
campuses.
But he is pleased about “the sense of
empowerment that I believe people in
higher education now have about what we
can do for the state of Kentucky.”
There is some criticism of Davies and
the Council on Postsecondary Education
for making too many rules and interfering
too much in local campus affairs.
“Gordon has done a good job of defining
the indicators of reform success and
challenging the universities to meet
agreed-upon goals and tying them to the
budget,” said Robert Kustra, who was
president of Eastern Kentucky University
from 1998 to 2000. “But the other side of
the coin is that there is far too much micromanagement
and regulation. The council
should be enablers, not restrictors.”
But Governor Patton and his top aides
think Davies and the postsecondary council
have done a fine job.
“We’re very pleased with the Council,”
cabinet secretary Crit Luallen said.“We’ve
made progress on every one of our key
issues…There have been some bumps in
the road—this is a tremendous change
we’re making here—but Gordon and the
Council have done a great job of keeping
things on track.”
Some observers who think Kentucky’s
higher education reforms will survive small
budget cuts, even if they continue for two
or three years, are less sure the changes will
outlast the governorship of Paul Patton,
who leaves office in December 2003. And
they wonder about the effect of the
departure of Gordon Davies, who is
expected to leave when Patton does, if
not before.
Some changes seem irreversible. It is
unlikely that the community and technical
colleges ever will be returned to the
University of Kentucky. And the grand
plan to use higher education to create a
21st century, information- and knowledgebased
economy is almost certain to survive
in some form.
“We have tried to get higher education
to a point where the reforms will sustain
themselves,” said Jim Ramsey, the state’s
budget director. “I hope we’ve been
successful.”
David Karem, the Democratic minority
leader in the state senate, believes they
have succeeded. “There will always be
bickering among the campuses and there
will always be fighting over how strong the
(postsecondary) council should be,”Karem
said, “but basic changes in what’s been
done? No, I don’t think so.”
University of Louisville President John
Shumaker is less certain.
“That’s a serious question,” he said.
“We’ve made a great start but we can’t
stop now—we’re still too far behind” most
other states. “I’m afraid I see some danger
of plateauing.”
