A turf battle erupted Tuesday between Kansas University and Emporia State University over ESU’s proposal to start a program at Johnson County Community College to produce more teachers.

“This is Kansas University’s geographic service area,” said Barbara Romzek, KU’s interim vice provost of academic affairs.

The conflict came during a meeting of the Academic Affairs Committee of the Kansas Board of Regents.

The committee was asked to put Emporia State’s request on the regents’ agenda for consideration during its meeting later this month.

But because several questions came up during discussion, the committee decided to keep the issue off the agenda for at least a month to allow interested parties to get together and discuss the matter further.

One regent said the delay shouldn’t be seen as favoring KU. “The criticism of KU is they only teach what they want, when they want, where they want with no concern for the student,” said Regent Ed McKechnie.

But Romzek said concerns over Emporia State’s teachers program were because “there is an over-saturation of the market right now.”

Emporia State officials disagreed, saying they have done their research, been in talks with Johnson County Community College for a year and see a growing demand from students who want to enter their program.

The proposal would allow ESU to offer a bachelor of science in education with an elementary education major at JCCC. ESU would provide faculty on the campus of JCCC to complete the degree work. The program would be aimed at students in Johnson County who, because of finances, couldn’t move to Emporia and take their coursework there. ESU has a similar program at Kansas City Kansas Community College.