Lexington, KY - While our legislature ponders further assault to the funding stream of our state's postsecondary system, House Bill 260 presents an initial public offering of sorts. It proposes to add one more state university to the mix by converting the University of Pikeville from private to public. The University of Pikeville's president, former Governor Paul Patton, believes that if the institution could compete on price with Kentucky's public institutions, many more students from eastern Kentucky would complete four-year degrees. He's making a bid to take this private institution public.
Patton cites statistics in support of his proposal.
"In this 12-county area of eastern Kentucky Ö major coal-producing areas Ö in 2010, 17 percent of the students enrolled in a state university. In the rest of the state, 49 percent of the students enrolled in a state university," he said.
Morehead State University and Eastern Kentucky University, although mandated to serve the coal counties, aren't located in the region.
Three community colleges are located in the region, enrolling 64 percent of its college students; the four private colleges in the region enroll another 18.8 percent. These figures do not mirror Kentucky college enrollments statewide; the proportion attending community colleges is much higher in coal country, and the proportion attending private four-year colleges as opposed to public is also higher. Patton feels these figures show that students of the region are underserved by public universities. At the same time, statistics show that a higher proportion of students from the proposed service region start college than in the state generally.
Economic impact
Perhaps what we really need to understand is how to retain those students through degree completion, and how to make the proposed University of Pikeville service area attractive to college graduates. Of those enrolled in college from the region, 36.4 percent received bachelor's degrees in six years, versus 44 percent statewide.
According to Patton, many got their degrees in Richmond, Lexington or Morehead and then remained in one of those cities, rather than returning to their hometowns.
"A complicating factor Ö they left the region and deprived us of the kind of talent that it takes to grow the economy," he said.
Patton acknowledged that this is a guess, and that data tracking whether University of Pikeville's graduates remain in the region is not available.
HB 260 proposes using coal severance funds for the estimated $13 million annually that University of Pikeville would need to level the tuition playing field. Yet some county judge-executives in the proposed service area have expressed concern about reallocating severance funds in this way, as other pressing projects would be delayed or eliminated. And at least one state university president believes that additional costs would surface.
If HB 260's intent is that the University of Pikeville stand on equal footing with other state-sponsored universities, Pikeville would also require funding allocations for capital projects such as a new student center and renovations to existing buildings, bringing staff and faculty salaries to market level, adding employees to the state retirement system, and providing extension programs throughout the region. Morehead State University President Wayne Andrews estimates that this may actually be a $200 million to $250 million proposition over 10 years.
"In this fiscal environment Ö
can we afford to take a shrinking pie from supporting eight institutions to nine?" Andrews asked.
On the positive side, Andrews said, the proposal is an "attempt to deliver more higher education to a rural part of the state Ö in an underserved, historically less-educated part of the state." At the same time, he said, "We continue to be at an incredibly difficult period in higher education with respect to overall funding."
Further cuts to Kentucky's higher education budget threaten to undercut recent gains and will certainly lead to more tuition increases at public institutions. If you're not paying tuition, why should you care? Look locally: UK alone has lost tens of millions in state funding since the 2007-2008 school year and stands to lose another $19 million or so over the next two years, an amount equal to its annual budget for libraries.
Challenge to Morehead
Morehead has lost $5.3 million in general fund appropriations from 2007 to the present, yet operating costs on the campus have not diminished and rising fixed costs add significantly to financial challenges.
This biennium's proposed budget would cut deeper. Andrews, articulating the reality that he manages on campus, said, "We're in incredibly challenging fiscal times in Kentucky. To think about adding another state-supported university at a time when the budget can't support the eight existing universities doesn't make a whole lot of sense."
Morehead stands to lose students as well as funds if Pikeville comes into the state university system. In fall of 2011, 1,900 students, about 975 of whom are undergraduates, enrolled at MSU from the University of Pikeville's proposed service region. Eight counties identified for possible reallocation contain half of the population that exists in MSU's eastern Kentucky service region.
Higher ed reforms working
President Andrews feels that since implementation of Kentucky's higher education reforms in 1997, "from an access point of view, the system is working and it's working very well."
The community college system as we now know it was established, as were regional postsecondary education centers, and four-year colleges developed collaborations with community colleges for a distance-learning system.
The number of high school graduates in Kentucky has increased, as has the number of students going on to college out of high school; the number of students graduating from college has also increased.
Better preparation and access still needed
Robert King, president of the Council on Postsecondary Education, sees both progress and room for improvement.
"The real challenge that we have, and this is true across the state, is that we need to better prepare our students in K-12 so that they have the confidence that they can attend and be successful in college," he said. "(And) not only have the confidence, but the skills to attend and be successful in college."
HB 260 includes a provision for focusing on college awareness, college preparation and college attendance. CPE already manages a federally funded program called GEAR-UP, which is utilized in several selected counties around the state, including counties in the University of Pikeville's proposed service area. Last year, Morehead served more than 7,000 students through GEAR-UP.
In addition to traditional-age students, a sizable proportion of working age adults in Kentucky who may have started college without ever finishing are now midlife or midcareer. Many have discovered a need for additional education. King confirms that trying to meet the needs of those people, who are typically working, married with children, or both, must be an important focus for Kentucky. HB 260 includes a provision for extension programs in each county to serve this population, although, according to King, a number of proposals apart from HB 260 are already in the works to meet the needs of more and more people.
Further, Big Sandy Community College is in Prestonsburg, and Morehead has a postsecondary education center there, offering programs and courses in partnership with Big Sandy. Two other community colleges serve students in eastern Kentucky as well, providing students with cost-effective and geographically convenient starting points for their four-year education. If students transfer to Morehead later, they can pay tuition at the community college rate under MSU's transfer scholarship program.
Consultant engaged
To provide context for the legislature's consideration of HB 260, Governor Beshear has commissioned the National Center for Higher Education Management to conduct a study intended to: document the extent of postsecondary educational need in the University of Pikeville's proposed service area; determine the capability of the University of Pikeville to meet that need; identify what it would take to assure that if Pikeville were to be made a public university, it would be successful; assess the impact of all this on other postsecondary institutions, particularly public institutions; and suggest alternative approaches that might address the need as effectively, or possibly more cost-effectively, than what's proposed.
The study, due in March, should result in a cost/benefit analysis for citizens and taxpayers. The Council on Postsecondary Education will be called upon to do an evaluative assessment of the consultant's report and make recommendations to the governor.
According to King, funding is a source of concern to the presidents of the public universities.
"The only other obvious source (aside from the coal severance fund)Ö is the state's general fund," King said.
King presented a graph to the legislature showing "how the funding has fared in the face of the fact that we have significantly increased enrollment, and that's a number that gets lost in the wash." Per-student funding has decreased more dramatically than overall funding reductions might suggest.
Can this IPO fly?
If this were a public offering in the private sector, would investors buy?
"From a public policy standpoint, every academic program that U of Pikeville offers is a duplication of what Morehead offers, with two exceptions: the osteopathic medical school and the undergraduate program in religion," said President Andrews. "This raises public policy questions, and it raises practical questions."
There would be duplication of effort, in the face of a shrinking pie for funding.
"Give us some of this $13 million we're talking about, and restore some of our funding that's been cut, and I can assure you that we'll be strengthening our offerings," he said.
Jane S. Shropshire guides students and families through the college search process and is Business Lexington's Higher Ed Matters columnist. Contact her at Jshrop@att.net.