When Gov. Steve Beshear reduced the budgets of state agencies by $78 million earlier this month to address the state's financial shortfall, roughly half of those cuts were aimed at the state's funding for post secondary education.†
The disproportionate share taken from higher education, which comprises 11 percent of the state's budget, gave pause to many of Kentucky's education leaders, especially when followed shortly afterward by a request from the governor to prepare for a possible worst case scenario of up to an additional 12 percent cut over the next two years.
"We must have been perceived to be pretty easy pickings," said Wayne Andrews, president of Morehead University. "I'm hoping that doesn't represent the view of higher education in the commonwealth, because if it does, it's very short sighted.
Like the state's other publicly funded colleges and universities