Leaders at the University of Kansas, Kansas State University and Wichita State University are warning that the cuts, along with what legislators called a “salary cap,” will damage everything from farming programs to the ability to educate doctors to the ability to help Wichita’s aerospace industries create new jobs. The dean who runs K-State’s Research and Extension Service even wrote last month that the cuts would damage the state’s 4-H programs.
And the big plot twist in this narrative of dispute is that some of strongest criticism of the cuts is coming from some of the state’s better-known conservative budget hawks.
Legislators such as Ray Merrick, the Republican speaker of the House, and Marc Rhoades, chairman of the House’s appropriations committee, have said in written public statements that legislators were merely trying to hold universities more accountable when they approved budget cuts.
They chided universities for tuition increases like the 8 percent increase requested by WSU earlier this month. The Board of Regents will vote on that request, and tuition increase requests from all the other Regents universities, this week.
Merrick and Rhoades, in a statement last month, wrote that “ever increasing tuition rates … put a burden on middle class families, even when state funding has remained constant over the last 12 years. The average tuition rate at the six major state universities went up from $1,243 in 2000 to $3,195 in 2012, an increase of 157 percent over 12 years. During the same time period, the U.S. inflation rate rose about 33 percent.
“Historically, Kansas families have borne the brunt of university budgets that continue to increase every year through both higher tuition rates and state taxes,” Merrick wrote. “The House budget plan found savings across all areas of state government, including the Regents, that will ensure our ability to keep the tax burden on Kansas families low.”
Brownback let stand cuts in higher-education spending in signing the state budget, even though he’d opposed any reduction in state funding and went on a statewide tour in April and May to build opposition to the idea. In a message to legislators, he called on them to work with the state Board of Regents to “craft a shared vision for higher education,” according to the Associated Press.
Susan Wagle of Wichita, the Kansas Senate president, warned that the cuts are “devastating” to some of the state’s finest educational institutions, including WSU. She said it will harm the state’s ability to create jobs if the cuts aren’t restored.
Wagle voted for the budget package that included the cuts. But she said last week that the Senate only agreed to the budget bill as a last resort, when it became apparent that the House was unwilling or unable to pass a budget without a salary cap.
Fred Logan, a Brownback appointee to the Kansas Board of Regents, said last week that the salary cap – on top of the budget cuts – is “one of the worst public policy moves I have seen in recent years.” He called the cap “a nightmare,” “horrible public policy,” and said it will do “irrational harm.”
New limitations on salaries in the state university system were portrayed as a salary cap in debate in the state Legislature. But because of the way the law is written, the cap actually represents a substantial cut in funding for salaries at the universities.
Unlike most agencies, state funding for the universities’ salaries comes through a block grant to the Board of Regents. It is that grant that was reduced, leaving less money to pay employees.
Although there is an amount designated for salaries in the funding they receive from the state, universities do have the flexibility to shift money from other budget lines to employee pay.
This year, budget negotiators in the Legislature, seeking to cut state funding for universities, took money from those universities that overspent or underspent their salary budget line.
Universities that have shifted funds to pay their employees more than the state budgeted for personnel saw their salary funding cut by the amount of the additional employee pay.
Universities that spent less state money than they were budgeted for salaries, generally due to open positions, in most cases had their salary line reduced to what they actually spent.Read the full story at www.ecived.com/en!
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