As we embark upon a new year, there is much to celebrate at Northern Kentucky University.
Our School of the Arts is serving students and the community in new and innovative ways by bringing our theatre, dance, music, and visual arts programs together under one roof for the first time.
Our newly-renovated Campus Recreation Center, funded by and for students, provides state-of-the-art facilities and services to our campus community and our friends. More students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members are now using the center than ever before.
Our Division I athletics programs are on the rise in the Horizon League, and we are bringing a new level of competition to fans across the campus and the community.
And our new Health Innovation Center, set to open in 2018, will revolutionize how healthcare professionals are trained to treat their patients and serve their communities. The center will enhance how we prevent diseases and addiction, through unique collaborations with St. Elizabeth Healthcare and other community partners.
We are thankful for the support our community has shown and the investments our state has made in our University.
But there is one way in which we continue to fall short compared with our peers across Kentucky: per-student funding.
NKU receives just 26 percent of its funding from the state – the smallest percentage of any of Kentucky’s comprehensive universities. That means our students and their families pay more of their higher education costs out of pocket than their peers across the state.
Over the past decade, we have invested in the programs and degrees that employers in our region and our state tell us they want: technology, informatics, computer science, STEM, and, soon, health innovation.
And we have demonstrated results: from 1999 to 2014, we increased the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded by 84 percent – a rate of growth unmatched by any other public university in Kentucky. Just last May, we awarded the largest number of degrees and credentials in our University’s history.
Our University has demonstrated that we are committed to enhancing the economic and civic vitality of our community and our Commonwealth.
Now, we need Frankfort to demonstrate that it is committed to our students.
NKU students, faculty, and staff deserve that investment. So does our community.
The Council on Postsecondary Education agrees: it has concluded that NKU deserves at least $10.7 million more in annual state support.
Students and taxpayers across the state also deserve a comprehensive, rational funding model that ties state dollars to specific outcomes such as degrees conferred, credit hours earned, and graduates in high-demand fields.
The Commonwealth spends nearly $1 billion each year to fund postsecondary education, but there is no formula that guides how those tax dollars are allocated to the various institutions.
NKU enrolled more than 2,800 new undergraduate students last fall – but if we decided not to admit any new students next year, we would still receive the exact same amount of state funding.
That is not a rational funding model.
Our Commonwealth deserves a system that brings accountability to universities and rewards those institutions able to meet the needs of their students as well as the workforce needs of our region and our state.
And in an era of scarce resources, implementing an outcomes-based funding model just makes good fiscal sense. We also know that such a model can work, given the success our neighbors in Ohio and many other states have seen.
Since I arrived at NKU in 2012, I have been advocating for these changes, and I will continue to do so each day.
In the coming months, I believe that we have a window of opportunity to move forward from Kentucky’s antiquated funding approach and implement a new model: one that rewards performance, not politics.
Our students demand it, and Kentucky taxpayers deserve it.
Mr. Mearns,
The state of Kentucky does not owe NKU anything—at least as it is currently being managed by you and your corrupt administration. You have soiled the reputation of what was once an outstanding university—a place that was well-led by James Votruba, and known for its up close and personal education, excellent teaching, and community engagement. What’s NKU known for now? Sadly, now it’s known for scandals, cover-ups, high-paid administrators, hiding important information from staff, faculty, and students, and overpriced Athletic teams. Those great programs that you mention here are all being sapped by incompetent Deans and a Provost who only seeks to gather her next big paycheck and take shopping trips to exotic locations such as Vietnam, Turkey, and Sri Lanka. The Provost, a supposed actress with an MFA (you hired an actress as your Provost? Seriously?) is widely known to boast publically about being the fifth highest paid woman in the area. All of this at the expense of the State of Kentucky! Your administration is a failure and it is causing staff, faculty, and students to run from NKU. It is no wonder your recruitment, retention, and graduation numbers are down. You have a great deal to repair on your campus before any discerning elected official would consider changing the funding model to support NKU.