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Performance-Based Funding for Ky Universities, Colleges Moving Ahead

Eku.edu

Proposed legislation that would institute performance-based funding for public universities and community colleges is now on its way to the floor of the Kentucky House not without an unsuccessful effort Tuesday to make changes in the budget committee.

The much-discussed funding change would measure the progress of schools in areas such as graduation rates, numbers of degrees and credit hours earned, and operational support.  Advocates like Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education President Bob King said a phase-in period is part of the model.

 “Over the first three years of the operation of the model very little money would move from campus to campus because of the stop loss provisions,” he said.

 

Western Kentucky University President Gary Ransdell was asked if schools might weaken their academic standards to see growth in measured areas like graduation or credit hours earned. He said he didn’t see that happening.

 

 “I can assure you that because of our faculty and because of the accreditation process, there will be no slippage in the rigor and what our students are required to learn in order to persist and graduate,” he said.

 

Efforts to change the bill in committee failed.  Morehead State University President Wayne Andrews worries equilibrium funding won’t fully address economic declines in his school’s service area

 

Amendments offered by House Minority Floor Leader Rocky Adkins failed to win committee support.  He said the changes would have helped a school like Morehead deal with economic challenges in its service area.  Adkins also said five of the seven university presidents who signed onto the funding agreement will not be at those schools when it is reviewed in three years. ?

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