By RONNIE ELLIS, CNHI News Service
FRANKFORT, Ky. — Several hundred college students gathered in the state capitol Wednesday to protest cuts to higher education in Gov. Steve Beshear’s austere state budget. Nearly every one of them saw the problem differently from Beshear.
Stevie Meeks, a 19-year-old sophomore at Eastern Kentucky from Grayson, Ky., is angry Beshear’s budget cuts out KEES scholarship money, money she and other students feel they earned by “working hard for all those As in high school and you’ll get your KEES money.” Now, she said, that’s being taken away and she doesn’t think that’s fair.
Meeks works 48 hours a week in the Independent Opportunities program which provides residential support for mentally handicapped individuals. She gets some financial help through a Pell Grant and she gets help from her parents, one of whom is ill with cancer.
If Beshear’s budget cuts are approved by lawmakers, Meeks said, her tuition may go up by as much as 20 percent, adding nearly a $1,000 a year to her annual tuition costs.
“There’s not a whole lot I can do but take out a student loan,” Meeks said.
She was one of about 60 students from EKU who gathered in the rotunda, many shouting “We are worth it,” and “I am the future,” to hear Beshear respond to their concerns about the growing cost of higher education, costs Beshear said during the fall campaign were already too high.
Beshear told the throng of students they could agree on two things: “higher education has to be one of our highest priorities for the future of the commonwealth and this budget does not contain enough money for higher education.”
He reiterated his contention since taking office that he inherited a budget shortfall from his predecessor and the legislature to the tune of $600 million next year. He said the students in rallying and calling on legislators to do something about the rising costs of a college education “are doing what I want you to be doing and that’s advocating for higher education.”
But he also asked them to “step up and tell me and tell the legislature how to solve the problem.”
Then he said he has stepped up to propose a constitutional amendment to allow casino gambling and will devote a percentage of those revenues to higher education if the amendment succeeds.
Western Kentucky University President Dr. Gary Ransdell said Beshear clearly tied more funding for higher education to passage of the gambling amendment. But he and the other university presidents want specifics about how much of such revenues would be devoted to higher education and to what degree they might offset the proposed 12 percent cuts – about $191 million – in higher education funding.
His counterpart at Morehead State University, Dr. Wayne Andrews, said such cuts pose very serious consequences.
“We’d be looking at program elimination, tuition hikes, affecting people’s lives,” Andrews said. “More importantly than that is we will be stalling the important forward momentum that began in earnest when House Bill 1 was passed” – (in the higher education reform of 1997 that called for more college graduates and higher funding for the state’s postsecondary education institutions).
Kara Kennedy, 19, a sophomore at Western from Louisville, said she’s barely paying her bills now and is already in debt with student loans. She hopes to be the first in her family to receive a college degree, but if tuition goes up significantly, she said she’ll struggle to pay her costs next year.
“I’ve heard the state is out of a lot of money, but I don’t understand why they’re taking it from higher education,” Kennedy said. (Beshear’s budget calls for cuts in nearly every department and agency of state government.)
Kayla Watts, 20, of Covington, receives grants and has taken out student loans to pay for her studies at Morehead. The junior marketing major said she’ll somehow get back to campus next year, even if the costs go up, but she’ll probably have to take out another student loan, something she’s trying to avoid as she nears graduation.
And she’s tiring of the rhetoric of politicians who praise the benefit of higher education but don’t do anything to hold down its costs.
“If they’re going to keep on saying it, then they ought to show some action,” Watts said.
In addition to the rally, students tracked down their legislators, lobbying them to find money for higher education, to preserve the KEES funds and help hold down tuition costs.
Andie Moore, 18, an EKU freshman from Louisville, said Beshear and the legislature “are not supporting us. The word around here today is he’s frustrated we’re here.”
Moore tried to get the attention of Rep. Ron Crimm, R-Louisville, who represents her home district in Jefferson County, but “he just kept walking.”
Crimm later said he hadn’t heard Moore’s request, noting a hearing difficulty and a series of committee meetings that began at 7 a.m. Wednesday. But then he searched out Moore in the large crowd and listened to her concerns.
“Yes, he found us and he listened,” said Moore and her friend, Meeks from Grayson. “That made a difference to us. We appreciated that he did that.”
Andrews, the Morehead president, said such lobbying by students will help.
“The reality is when constituents come to visit, legislators listen,” Andrews said. “I have had a number of reports from our students that they visited their legislators. And I think it’s a very positive thing.”
