Murray State University President-elect Bob Davies says he wants to push the university to compete for funds and look for new revenue sources as it faces budget cuts from the state.
The state legislature passed a budget that cuts operational funding 1.5 percent and requires universities to pay half of a state-mandated pension increase.
Davies said one way to deal with the cuts is to increase MSU’s revenue, specifically by recruiting more students.
“One of the things we need to do is very much what I call ‘own our backyard,’ and so looking at how we get more and more students from our service region coming to Murray State will be very, very important," Davies said.
He added that public universities are facing cuts across the nation, and his previous institution, Eastern Oregon University, faced steeper ones than Murray State faces. Davies said a university must look to where it wants to be in 5 or 10 years when handling a decreased budget.
The president-elect also said Murray State needs to prepare for incoming changes to remain a competitive state university.
“Here in Kentucky we’ve had a base funding approach," Davies said. "We’re going to be moving toward performance funding. And so how do we position ourselves to meet those performance targets to not only secure the funding that we have but to increase it? And that’s about competition.”
Davies suggests fine-tuning existing programs to bring more students to Murray State is one way the university can remain competitive
