Kentucky’s Council on Postsecondary Education is already tailoring its next state budget request to include performance funding for state universities.
The General Assembly did not include the CPE’s request for performance funding in its two-year spending plan that awaits the governor’s signature. CPE President Bob King says the performance funding request was among several suggestions to bring more money to the state’s universities.
“One of those purposes was to create a pot of money that would be distributed to the campuses tied to the proportion of degrees that they produced,” he said. “And there was a premium for students who earned degrees in the STEM field—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—or in health fields because we know that our workforce needs people with those skills quite substantially.”
King says in addition to going over this legislative session’s budget to determine the tuition cap for state universities, the CPE is working on its funding request for the next session.
“We actually are beginning some fairly intensive discussions…to talk about building a more comprehensive model for distributing state funds, and a portion of that model would be tied to campus performance,” he said. “Whether the elements of performance would be limited to degrees produced or might include some other features will be the subject of the discussions that we have.”
The pending budget cuts state universities one-point-five percent but includes some construction projects and half of the state-mandated pension increase.
