Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear’s budgetdoesn’t include any additional money for the state’s performance-based funding model for higher education.
The Council on Postsecondary Education says it needs more money in order to continue implementing the state’s performance-based funding model.
The performance-based funding model is designed to reward colleges and universities for increasing the number of degrees earned.
Bill Payne is the Vice President of Finance for the CPE, and supports the funding model. Still, he said schools haven’t seen the additional funding benefits from increasing graduation rates and degree attainment.
“In Kentucky, unfortunately, we’ve been in a decade of almost annual budget cuts, and so we’ve implemented that performance funding model during a period where there were no new resources to help implement it,” he said.
Payne said before the performance-based funding model there was no link between the amount of funding that a school received and the number of students enrolled, cost of programs, or student retention.
Beshear’s two-year budget isn’t final, and will likely go through many changes before it’s ultimately voted on by the state legislature.
