Last week’s fireworks between Gov. Andy Beshear and the University of Kentucky have been entertaining, to say the least. The furor has something for everyone: the state’s enormous UK Law alumni groups who are torn about whether a federal judge should become the dean, sports boosters angry about Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart’s golden parachute (and the basketball team’s recent less than stellar season), and anyone else who’s disgruntled about an ongoing reorganization that undercuts faculty and staff, while keeping highly-paid administrators firmly in charge.
The saga has been interesting — and busy — for me as a former higher education reporter because it unfolded in my first week on the job as editor of the Kentucky Lantern. Beshear’s flag-waving — ably covered by Lantern reporter McKenna Horsley — reminded this, um, aged observer that there’s nothing unusual about a governor locking horns with a flagship university; in fact, it happens all the time.
Remember way back in the 1990s when University of Kentucky President Charles Wethington rallied the UK faithful against Gov. Paul Patton’s plan to take the community college system away from UK to create the Kentucky Community and Technical College System?
Patton won that battle. He lost the larger war over his 1997 Higher Education Reform Act, which aimed to make UK and the University of Louisville the centers of research and graduate learning, while leaving the bulk of undergraduate learning to the regional universities. Every university has multiple graduate programs, while UK and UofL vacuum up much of the undergraduate population. Just this year, Murray State University broke ground on a new vet school, while Eastern Kentucky University received funding for a school of osteopathic medicine.
But when it comes to political fights, nearly every state can tell the same story. (It’s really only recently that universities started tussling with the president of the United States.)
Beshear won part of his fight on Thursday when Barnhart stepped away from his golden parachute; we’ll see what happens next with the law school dean.
Higher education’s long journey
This higher ed saga really started when states legislatures like Kentucky’s started the long, slow divestment from public universities. At UK, for example, state funding, excluding construction, makes up just 4% of the budget compared to double-digit support just 20 years ago.
That meant more and more of the costs had to be shouldered by students through tuition and fees. At the same time, the Kentucky General Assembly wanted universities to be run more like businesses. Sadly, the lessons learned by universities were to create dense, top-heavy bureaucracies with highly-paid administrators. Places like UK have taken corporatization even further, by creating LLCs for certain services, and undermining shared governance by dissolving the University Senate. UK is now a very large, very complicated business, and that’s before we even discuss the athletics side of things.
To the extent that we understand the trends of higher education and their crucial role in educating our young people, it is thanks to journalism. There are fewer ink-stained wretches these days, but they are still informing us, holding the powers that be accountable, and creating that first draft of history. I’ve been so impressed by the small but mighty organization the Lantern’s founding editor, Jamie Lucke, has created in the past three and half years. McKenna Horsley, Sarah Ladd, and Liam Niemeyer are curious, indefatigable, and diligent in bringing you the news of our state. (Their job just got harder this week, thanks to the Kentucky Supreme Court, which further weakened our open records law.)
As Jamie heads off to a well-deserved retirement, I hope you’ll join me on this journey by subscribing, donating to and reading the FREE news produced by the Kentucky Lantern, as part of the national States Newsroom, which has news outlets or partners in every state in the country and Washington, D.C. We will be doing all we can to document the news of our state government and the ways it affects our lives. If you have any ideas, questions, or comments, please reach out to me at [email protected]. I’m excited for this adventure to get underway.
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Written by Linda Blackford. Cross-posted from the Kentucky Lantern.
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