Members of the Kansas Board of Regents highlighted higher education’s connection to financial benefits for the state Monday.

The visit was part of the regents’ statewide tour to promote the value of higher education in the face of state support that continues to dwindle.

Gary Sherrer, regents vice chairman, presented his case to more than 20 members of the local business, city and state legislative communities.

“We’re all in this together,” he said.

He called for an ongoing dialogue between regents and the business community statewide.

But, more than just beginning a discussion, Sherrer called on the business community to make its voice heard — and to ask itself whether it was OK with cuts to an education system that was working for the economy of the state.

The questions from the audience came mostly from business leaders, and seemed mostly receptive to the presentation. Health care industry representatives foretold of a shortage of doctors in the coming years in addition to other presentations, and other business leaders asked more detailed questions about the state funding situation.

Sherrer praised efforts like Kansas University’s quest for National Cancer Institute designation and Kansas State University’s National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, both of which could have huge impacts on the Kansas economy, and wouldn’t be possible, he said, without higher education.

Sherrer pointed to a higher education program to mitigate a nursing shortage in Kansas that exceeded the Legislature’s goal of new nurses in the state by 75 percent. Now, the state doesn’t have the capacity to address the demand for new nurses, he said.

“When we put the resources in targeted efforts, the results are staggering,” Sherrer said. “Today, in multiple nursing schools across the state, we are telling people who have the ability, ‘No.'”

Sherrer and Reggie Robinson, regents CEO, said that the state is certainly going through an economic recession now, and that the higher education system is willing to do its part to shoulder some cuts. But they noted that the long-term picture, going back 20 years, has trended toward higher tuitions and lower state contributions.

They said they’re educating more students with fewer state dollars, watching total student enrollment grow by 13 percent since 1988 while state funding fell 20 percent.

Sherrer said the regents had to vote down a new program at Pittsburg State University in construction management because of lack of funding.

“You can’t be adding while we’re crushing other stuff,” he said, adding that he asked supporters of the program, “Where’s your voice? It can’t be for this new class. It has to be for the funding of this new class.”

At one point — in response to a question — Robinson said that one of the things he had hoped would come out of these meetings would be a formalized connection between the state and business leaders.

It could come in the form of some kind of advisory panel, the likes of which already exist in many of the institutions overseen by the regents.