Role and authority of Board of Regents is changed

By Amy Geiszler-Jones

It will have the same name, the same number of members and still govern the six state universities, but the Board of Regents in Kansas will have a whole new set of responsibilities come July 1.

After years and years of various studies and proposed plans, the Legislature this session restructured the way higher education in Kansas is managed and financed. By reconfiguring the existing nine-member Board of Regents, the Legislature avoided making any statutory changes. The goals of the plan are to provide greater coordination among the 53 postsecondary institutions and increase program efficiency.

For WSU and the other regents institutions, it means opportunities to be rewarded with budget increases for meeting performance goals and an enhancement of faculty salaries until fiscal year 2004.

The new Board of Regents will be divided into three advisory commissions with three members each — one for the 19 community colleges and 11 vocational schools and technical colleges; one for the six state universities; and one for higher education coordination. The latter would coordinate all postsecondary education in Kansas including Washburn University, a municipal university in Topeka, and 17 private colleges.

While the board will supervise the community colleges and Washburn University, those entities would keep their own boards of trustees for the purpose of governance.

The larger Board of Regents will be the policy-making body. Among its duties will be developing an annual policy agenda for higher education, presenting a unified budget for higher education to the governor and Legislature every year, determining institutional roles and reviewing missions and goals; and approving programs, courses and their locations.

Money now associated with state aid programs for the entities previously supervised by the State Board of Education, along with eight full-time equivalent department of education employees and associated operating expenses, will be moved to the regents’ budget in fiscal year 2000. Funding for other parts of the new plan will be phased in from now until FY 2004, with the four-year total increase being $69.7 million.

Among the key elements of the plan are:

• Board make-up. The governor will appoint the new board members by July 1. After July 1, 2002, only one representative from any one postsecondary institution could serve on a commission. The legislation defines “representative” as someone with a certificate of completion, an associate’s degree or a bachelor’s degree from the institution.

• Funding based on performance would start in FY 2003. State universities and community colleges meeting performance goals set by the board will be eligible for performance grants of up to 2 percent of their previous year’s budget, starting in FY 2003. The performance funding for the technical colleges and vocational schools will be based on total funding for postsecondary state aid program.

In FY 2002, WSU and the other institutions will implement institutional improvement plans and show how they would measure their performance on each indicator. The institutional improvement plans would have to be revised every three years.

• County out-district tuition would be eliminated. Currently, when, for example, a Sedgwick County resident takes classes from a community college based in another county, Sedgwick County pays out-of-district fees to that college. Beginning in FY 2001, that out-district tuition would be phased out in even increments over a four-year period ending in FY 2004. State aid would replace the lost revenue and would be included in the operating grant for each community college.

• Community college state aid programs would be replaced with an operating grant. Community colleges also get state money for students. Beginning in FY 2001, community colleges would get operating grants based on the following formula: 50 percent of the state appropriation made for a full-time equivalent undergraduate at one of the regional state universities (Emporia, Fort Hays and Pittsburg) multiplied by the college’s FTE enrollment of the current or prior year, whichever is higher. The operating grants would increase by 5 percent each year until FY 2004, when the grants would equal 65 percent of what the state pays for a FTE undergraduate at a regional university. Washburn University would get the same operating grant.

• Regents faculty salaries would increase. Whatever the dollar amount of the increase community colleges would receive through the operating grants, minus the replacement of the out-district tuition, would go to the six regents institutions for faculty salary increases over and above normal operating budget increases. That enhancement would end in FY 2004.