Wednesday, November 10, 1999
NKU basks in funding news
State OKs boost amid big growth
BY ANDREA TORTORA
The Cincinnati Enquirer
HIGHLAND HEIGHTS — When ground is broken Thursday for the $38 million science center at Northern Kentucky University, the festivities will cap a week of positive news for the school.
• The Council on Postsecondary Education recommended a 10.5 percent funding increase for the university Monday, and Gov. Paul Patton announced his support for the measure in a letter to Northern Kentucky legislators.
• The council also voted to request a $10 million budget item for a Northern Kentucky community and technical college building, a project strongly supported by NKU.
The $38 million Natural Science Building, approved in 1998, is the most expensive allocation Kentucky has ever made for a single structure on a university campus.
“The science building will reflect not only the dreams we have for the campus today but the dreams the university's founders had,” NKU President James Votruba said. “The building represents academic achievement as well as access and opportunity for the residents of Northern Kentucky.”
NKU is increasingly getting noticed by legislators and Gov. Patton.
The 10.5 percent increase requested by the Council of Postsecondary Education is aimed at addressing the school's “underfunded” status.
Tuition and fees at NKU provide 55 percent of the college's operating funds. Those same sources constitute 35 percent of operating budgets at other state colleges.
If the request is included in the executive budget, it will go to the General Assembly in January.
Broad-based support for a community college is also heartening to university officials, who say such an endeavor would allow NKU to sharpen its focus on baccalaureate, master's and doctoral degrees.
Rep. Jon Draud, R-Crest view Hills, said the community college should not take precedence over increased basic funding. “We have to be careful that in the end, when all the negotiating goes on in Frank fort, that when people see the northern region getting money for a community college, they realize it's more important to up the basic funding for the school,” he said.
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