Bevin's College Budget: Racism, Equity, and Other Questions

After hearing various university presidents utter dire warnings about the effects of Governor Bevin’s college budget, we decided to do some digging ourselves. We wondered about the KSU cuts, and if this historically black college was targeted. We wondered about the UK cuts, and how bad they really were. And we wondered if the numbers would tell us anything, or provide any answers.

Having dug into the numbers, we’ve got two questions.

Is Governor Bevin’s higher education budget racist?
Is Governor Bevin’s higher education budget equitable?

We’ll tackle the first question in this article, and the second question in a future article. Let’s get started.

The Raw Numbers

Here is a table taken straight from the Governor’s budget document. With all the big numbers, it’s not very helpful or clear. I’m including it so that if you want, you can work with the raw numbers just as we did.

	Current Revised	Requested	Requested	Budgeted	Budgeted
	FY 2016	FY 2017	FY 2018	FY 2017	FY 2018
Eastern Kentucky University	363,671,300	376,404,100	386,276,400	367,433,800	353,842,500
Kentucky State University	62,236,100	66,880,100	67,680,100	58,541,000	52,441,100
Morehead State University	255,530,200	267,835,800	276,515,100	262,243,400	256,097,700
Murray State University	189,284,900	198,450,700	205,824,500	192,149,600	182,991,400
Northern Kentucky University	236,415,800	250,235,900	261,177,900	243,768,600	234,350,800
University of Kentucky	3,355,808,700	3,673,155,300	4,010,850,900	3,629,806,400	3,864,587,500
University of Louisville	1,221,311,500	1,263,023,000	1,301,441,600	1,241,451,000	1,228,670,200
Western Kentucky University	393,205,800	408,119,900	419,674,800	398,290,600	382,390,000
Kentucky Community and Technical College System	879,557,000	927,190,500	967,375,900	898,556,100	869,654,500

Here’s a much more helpful table, using percentages. It shows the difference in Governor Bevin’s proposed budget for 2017 and 2018 from both the current level of spending, and the requested levels of spending. In other words, it compares what the Governor budgeted both to the current budget, and to the budgets the schools requested.

For example, the Gov’s budget as proposed actually gives EKU a slight increase from their current budget in 2017, and a 2.7% decrease from their current budget in 2018. As far as what EKU actually requested for those two years, the Governor’s budget cuts their requests by 2.38% and 8.4%, respectively. So, EKU gets a slight bump in budget in 2017, but then a cut below current levels in 2018. And, if EKU’s requests reflected higher enrollment, their budget-per-student will be worse than these numbers.

	FY 2017 Diff Current	FY 2018 Diff Current	FY 2017 Diff Requested	FY 2018 Diff Requested
Eastern Kentucky University	1.03%	-2.70%	-2.38%	-8.40%
Kentucky State University	-5.94%	-15.74%	-12.47%	-22.52%
Morehead State University	2.63%	0.22%	-2.09%	-7.38%
Murray State University	1.51%	-3.32%	-3.18%	-11.09%
Northern Kentucky University	3.11%	-0.87%	-2.58%	-10.27%
University of Kentucky	8.16%	15.16%	-1.18%	-3.65%
University of Louisville	1.65%	0.60%	-1.71%	-5.59%
Western Kentucky University	1.29%	-2.75%	-2.41%	-8.88%
Kentucky Community and Technical College System	2.16%	-1.13%	-3.09%	-10.10%

Kentucky State University

So, right off the bat, you see that Kentucky State is getting clobbered. They are the only university to get an actual CUT in the 2017 budget from their CURRENT amount, not their requested, and they get cut even further in 2018 from their CURRENT funding levels, much less their requested amounts. So, the obvious question: Is the Bevin higher ed budget racist, in either intent or in effect?

Well, it certainly LOOKS that way. But let’s put one more table on the table, as it were.

	2013 Enrollment	2016 Budget Per Student	2017 Req Per Student	2018 Req Per Student	2017 Budget Per Student	2018 Budget Per Student
Eastern Kentucky University	16,111	22,573	23,363	23,976	22,806	21,963
Kentucky State University	2,533	24,570	26,404	26,719	23,111	20,703
Morehead State University	11,358	22,498	23,581	24,345	23,089	22,548
Murray State University	10,943	17,297	18,135	18,809	17,559	16,722
Northern Kentucky University	15,283	15,469	16,373	17,089	15,950	15,334
University of Kentucky	29,385	114,201	125,001	136,493	123,526	131,516
University of Louisville	22,529	54,211	56,062	57,767	55,105	54,537
Western Kentucky University	20,456	19,222	19,951	20,516	19,471	18,693
Kentucky Community and Technical College System	92,365	9,523	10,038	10,473	9,728	9,415

This table takes the lump state appropriation and divides it by the number of students enrolled, using the latest data I could find. I know that this is a somewhat simplistic approach, but perhaps it can show us something. (Throw out, for the moment, the UK and UofL numbers, because they are obviously meaningless in this context. I would like to understand their overall budgets better, but for now we will move on.)

So, you can see that on a raw per-student basis, KSU is spending more than any of the other state schools outside the UK/UofL numbers. Their 2017 and 2018 requests took that even further, while what the Governor’s budget actually allocates in 2017 moves them back into rough alignment with the others. So, Governor, if you want to use this argument as to why your cuts of KSU aren’t racist in effect, then you can probably make that case.

But, Governor, can you then explain the 2018 number? Why, if you’ve tried to move KSU’s per-student number to roughly equal with the others, do you then cut it another $3,000 per student? Can you explain why you have cut KSU’s overall budget by over 15% from 2016 to 2018? I really don’t want to believe that your goal is to cripple this school, or close it completely – but that is going to be the effect.

The point of this part of the analysis is clear:

Governor, you need to explain what you are trying to do to KSU.