Per-student funding in Kentucky is falling behind other states per a
recent report, and the news has the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy
worried about the future for economic growth.
Jason Bailey, director of KCEP, said the report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has some troubling indicators.
“We could drive the gap between those who are better off in Kentucky
and those that aren’t even wider,” Bailey said. “It’s not what
education should be doing. Education should be creating an opportunity
for everyone.
“We’re getting away from publicly funded higher education and we’re becoming more like private universities.”
According to the report, Kentucky is one of three states cutting
higher education over the last two years, and the state also has the
highest funding cut per student in the nation.
With a 3.9 percent increase in tuition in 2015, Kentucky joins five states for the highest increase in costs since last year.
Bailey, who runs the progressive think tank, said the funding woes are part of a long-term trend in the state.
“If you look back from 1998 tuition has tripled in Kentucky,” Bailey said.
With little left to cut in the state budget, Bailey said the state needs to look to the revenue side to find resources.
Bailey was one member of the nearly two-dozen Kentuckians on former
Lt. Gov. Jerry Abramson’s blue ribbon tax reform commission, and he said
the state should go return to the topic as a possible funding solution.
“We have a structural problem with our tax system in Kentucky where
revenues don’t keep up with growth in the economy, and that creates a
growing gap between the resources we have to pay for things like
education and the resources we need to even sustain what we already
have,” he said. “We have to look at our revenue stream.”
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