The Western Kentucky University Board of Regents has approved a $402 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
Fifty-one-percent of the budget is funded by student tuition and fees. The new spending plan includes a 4.5 percent tuition increase, and factors in a 4.5 percent reduction in state funding.
Student regent Jay Todd Richey cast the lone vote against the budget. In a prepared statement read before the vote, the Glasgow native said he couldn’t support certain parts of the plan, including a reduction in funding for the Track and Field program.
Speaking to reporters after the budget was passed 8-1, Rickey said many WKU students believe the burden of decreased state funding for higher education isn’t being shouldered evenly.
“There’s a clear perception that there’s nothing being done on the administrative level—the senior-level administrators and up—are not forfeiting anything to share the burden with students, faculty, and staff,” Richey said.
President Gary Ransdell has said WKU administrators have salaries that are lower than their counterparts at benchmark universities.
Ransdell said years of state funding cuts made an across the board reduction unrealistic this time around.
“We’ve had—in round numbers--$15 million in state budget cuts before this year, and another $15 million or more that we’ve redirected internally. A lot of that since 2008 has been in an across the board manner. So much so that we have some units that are critical to the functioning of the university that really have very little and, in some cases, no operating budget left. And so, when you start doing an across-the-board approach, then you’re eliminating key positions.”
State funding makes up only 16.5 percent of the new WKU budget.
