You Can't Cut Your Way to Quality

This morning the Courier-Journal takes a look down the fiscal road and correctly points out the obvious truth. Some may not want to hear it - but it's no less true.

A budget that is inadequate PREVENTS our schools from reaching their mandated goals and in the process forces decisions that would never be made otherwise.

Under an inadequate budget QUALITY is forced to compete with AFFORDABILITY.

No lift in ongoing cuts

The 3 percent cut in state funding that Kentucky's public colleges and universities are being forced to absorb is a serious setback, especially for a system that has been charged with ambitious goals like "doubling the numbers" of graduates and competing among the nation's top research institutions.

However, the real problem lies ahead. The fiscal situation looks dark between now and the mid-summer end of the fiscal year, but the prospects for relief in the next two years seem dim, too. It's difficult to see any light at the end of that tunnel.

Ongoing analysis of state government's budget situation by Gov. Steve Beshear and his top advisers, as well as discussions with bond experts in New York, suggests the bottom line may be even worse than the "dire" situation to which Mr. Beshear already has alluded.

It's not surprising he wants immediate cuts, and the campuses will manage them, but what happens after that? If the reduced operating budgets for this fiscal year become the starting point for figuring the system's next biennial budget, that would be a crippling blow. It's difficult to see how the various institutions make any progress toward their assigned goals in such a situation.

Using the 3 percent reduction as a floor for calculating the future would be like grabbing a rocket that's just been fired and holding it there, wasting all the thrust.

The easiest temporary solution on the public campuses is a hiring freeze, as long as exceptions can be made for especially critical positions and for something like a signature "Bucks for Brains" hire. Personnel cuts drop money to the bottom line quickly and reliably. But looking into the next two years, analysts don't see state revenue recovering, what with the impact of rising oil prices and the unfolding subprime mortgage debacle.

The predicament on the campuses is exceedingly frustrating. For example, if the 3 percent cut carries over into the next biennium's budgeting, it would amount to telling the University of Kentucky, "You know that $20 million we gave you to fund your Top 20 Plan? We're taking half of that back." This at a time when UK has been earning national buzz for its effort to move into the ranks of the nation's top public research universities -- at a time when it has been making signature hires, based on a conviction among high-profile new faculty that the state is serious about developing a competitive higher education system.

Some things on UK's potential to-do list, if worst comes to worst, include capping admissions and eliminating new student financial aid programs (very bad ideas, running directly counter to the goal of graduating more degree-holders), decreasing investment in the commercialization of knowledge and economic development (an equally bad idea, given the overarching goal of improving Kentucky's per capita income), reducing faculty and staff compensation (so much for morale and commitment to quality) and raising tuition even beyond the Top 20 Plan's requirements (the worst possible idea, given the hits students already have taken at what is suppose to be a public university).

Gov. Beshear can't cut his way out of this state fiscal crisis. Without new revenue, he can only manage mediocrity. And that's no way to build a legacy of progress.