Brownback Cutting Kansas Higher Education $30 Million

Governor Sam Brownback is cutting Kansas spending to balance the budget and higher education will take $30 million in cuts next year. Those reductions will fall harder on the University of Kansas and Kansas State University. As KPR’s Stephen Koranda reports, a provision in the budget says the schools with the largest budgets will take deeper cuts.

Officials at KU and K-State wanted Governor Brownback to veto that requirement, saying it punishes the Kansas schools that attract research funding that grows their budgets. Shawn Sullivan, Brownback’s budget director, says the governor ultimately decided to let that provision stand.
 
“Based and on what was in the legislative budget and the difficulty in getting budgets passed and the belief that if that proviso would not have been in then the budget would not have passed,” says Sullivan.
 
Democratic Senator Laura Kelly says the governor talks a lot about job creation. But she says selling the Kansas Bioscience Authority and cutting universities doesn’t help.
 
“When you look at what he’s actually doing, he’s cutting, and in some ways destroying, the biggest economic engines that we have,” says Kelly.
 
KU spokesman Tim Caboni says it will take time to determine the impact of the cuts, but he says the effects “will be significant.”

Here's a full list of the cuts: