Academic gains, high college costs

This from H-L:

We hate to think that Kentucky will lose some of the hard-won gains reported in the Gates Foundation's biennial Report Card on Higher Education.

A state that once competed for the bottom on most education measures is now graduating its young people from high school and sending them on to college at about the national average.

Kentucky policy-makers who launched the education reforms of the 1990s — and the taxpayers, parents and students who paid for them — should be proud to see Kentucky ranked alongside Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois instead of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Arkansas. Kentucky's been on the right track. Sadly, though, the state probably has already lost ground. And it's going to get worse.

College enrollments, which had been flattening, dipped on some campuses this fall and in the Kentucky Community and Technical College System.

The sour economy has left the state almost a half-billion dollars short of what's needed for education and other state services. School districts are bracing for layoffs, bigger classes and cuts in programs. KCTCS is considering abolishing tenure for new faculty hires, a move that would save money but make it much harder to compete for teachers. And colleges and universities will have little choice but to seek tuition increases to make up for cuts in state support...