C-J says Beshear Should Ignore Layzell, Seize Opportunity

This from the Courier-Journal:

Two opinions

Tom Layzell is a gentleman. He's an experienced educator, and easy to like.

However, a quiet and deferential tenure as head of the Council on Postsecondary Education gives him no standing to lecture Gov. Steve Beshear on what to do about a CPE that is (and was, under Mr. Layzell's amiable and well-mannered guidance) embarrassingly ineffective.

Mr. Layzell's letter to the Governor, warning that any conflict with the CPE could set back higher education in Kentucky, is best simply ignored. On the other hand, yesterday's opinion from Atty. Gen. Jack Conway, explaining that CPE acted improperly in naming Brad Cowgill to Mr. Layzell's old post, should be seized as an opportunity.

The council as it now exists is an embarrassment. It is neither a useful advocate for the campuses that make up the state system nor an effective coordinator of those institutions.

What's needed are a council and a CPE president who are willing "to speak truth to power," and to do that even when there is professional risk. To point out that a strong higher education system is expensive -- very expensive -- and will only become more so. To insist that financing it will take sacrifice and pain from all Kentuckians. To affirm that what we really need is a massive, tectonic shift in hundreds of millions of dollars worth of student aid, toward students who need it most, and that well-to-do Kentucky families should be willing (gladly, gratefully, because they are able) to pay full freight at the university of their choice, because it is still a bargain.

To declare universities accountable, but demand something better than pennies–on-the-dollar public support. To point out that, although tuition rates are increasing too fast, the council recommended a 7 percent increase in 2008-2009, not the 6 percent cut the institutions now face. To make clear that these campuses have nowhere else to go for cuts in operating money. To emphasize that KCTCS serves many of our fellow citizens who most need financial help, that its tuition probably shouldn't increase at all, that Kentucky taxpayers should be willing to invest whatever is needed to offset budget cuts and hold the system's tuition steady.

Does the current council speak like that -- boldly, and with authority? Absolutely not. It was more or less silent, when it mattered, on such controversial issues as domestic partner benefits and guns in cars, and on any number of other concerns of importance to students and universities.

The lesson in the tenure of the first CPE president, Gordon Davies, is this: One can't want the job and the paycheck so badly that he mutters discretely, or maneuvers politely, when it's time be bold.