By Carrie Pond
Frankfort, KY – A Kentucky education official links the rolloff in new college enrollment to soaring tuition costs. At the first meeting of Governor Steve Beshear's Higher Education Work Group in Frankfort on Wednesday, interim President of the Council on Postsecondary Education, Richard Crofts, said costs have increased an average of 10 percent a year for the last decade. Crofts tells the Lexington Herald-Leader the total undergraduate enrollment in public colleges rose 20 percent from 2000 to 2003, but increased just 7 percent between 2004 and 2007. He says tuition has been going up four times faster than the average Kentucky family's income. Enrollment at schools in the Kentucky Community and Technical College System dropped this fall for the first time since its formation in 1998.