Regents ask for delay in performance-based funding

? Despite pressure from legislative leaders, the Kansas Board of Regents said Thursday it would not recommend a new funding mechanism next year that would tie higher education budgets to specific performance-based benchmarks.

Instead, the regents said they would recommend that the Legislature delay considering any kind of performance-based budgeting model until the state’s financial condition turns around and the model can be used as an incentive to qualify for additional funding, above and beyond what the universities receive in their base budgets.

Regent Fred Logan, of Leawood, said he did not want a performance-based budget model to be used as a tool for cutting existing budgets.

“I have become convinced in following the work of this group (that developed the proposal) that some new funding as an incentive is a critical component of doing this,” Logan said. “And so I would like a statement in there that if there is not going to be any new funding that the study of the proposal be deferred for a year.”

Regents Chairman Kenny Wilk noted that the board already uses a type of performance-based budgeting that is based on agreements between the board and each of its member institutions. Each year in April, he said, the board determines whether an institution has met its goal and whether it qualifies for 100 percent of its funding allotment for the following year.

But some lawmakers think the Legislature should have more of a direct hand in setting those goals and deciding exactly how to tie funding to the performance benchmarks.

At the regents’ annual retreat in August, several lawmakers urged the board to develop a performance-based budgeting plan that could be considered by the 2015 Legislature.

Among the lawmakers at that meeting was Sen. Tom Arpke, R-Salina, who said in a separate interview after the regents meeting that lawmakers are likely to discuss the idea in the coming session anyway.

“I’m certainly willing to look at anything they’ve got to offer that would help us incent universities to up their four-year graduation rate,” Arpke said. “Right now, that stands at around 31 percent. If we can get up into the 50-60 percent range graduating in four years instead of six years, that helps with the cost of student loans. We should be there already. It’s something we’ve let slip over the years.”

Regents spokeswoman Breeze Richardson said that in 2013 the four-year graduation rate in Kansas was actually just 26 percent, while the six-year rate was 56 percent.

But she said those figures don’t reflect the number of students who start college at one institution and finish somewhere else. Regardless of how long it takes a student to finish, she said, those students are counted as not having graduated in four years at the institution where they started.

She also said the high cost of college tuition prevents many students from graduating in four years because they can only afford to go part-time and have to work while they’re in school.

“College today is very different than it was in the 1960s,” Richardson said.

A task force appointed to come up with a proposal offered its plan to the regents Thursday. It calls for setting specific goals for each university and offering incentive-based payments based on things like the number of certificates and degrees awarded and the number of students who complete mathematics and language arts gateway courses during their freshman year.

It would also provide additional funding within each benchmark for students who come from traditionally underserved populations.