Editor’s Note: Views from Kansas is a regular feature that highlights editorials and other viewpoints from across the state.

Kansas State University is making reasonably intelligent moves to try to attract more students.

It’s far past time for the state of Kansas step up to help.

The state Board of Regents, which governs higher education in Kansas, approved a plan to trim tuition costs for high-achieving students from certain states that K-State wants to target. K-State is offering a price break to try to haul in more students from Arkansas, California, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas. (The price break is already in place for students from some other Midwestern states, including Nebraska.)

That makes good sense. Enrollment at K-State has dropped alarmingly in recent years. As any business might do, K-State is cutting the price to try to sell more widgets.

There are other things that the university can do, and we’re confident that the leaders on campus will figure that out. That’s just the sort of place it is.

The real problem is that the financial support from the state government has dwindled. There’s basically been no increase in 10 years. Expenses, of course, continue to rise, so the university is forced to rely on donations and tuition to continue to do its job. Well, raising tuition appears to be hitting its limits — as we just said, K-State had to institute a price cut to try to attract more out-of-state students.

Certainly the KSU Foundation will continue to reel in more donations, and that will help.

We’re also aware that the state government’s budget itself is under plenty of pressure. There are many needs. We’re not naive.

But the thing is that support for higher education is actually in the state’s best interest. It is what drives a state forward — the vast majority of the jobs and businesses of the 21st century require college degrees. Just think about Manhattan, for instance: The biggest economic development project in many generations here is NBAF, which will require a lot of extremely highly trained people. And were it not for the presence — and excellence — of Kansas State University, that project would have gone somewhere else, probably Texas.

To put it in simple terms, it’s seed corn. You need to plant it to be able to harvest anything later. If you feed it to the cattle instead, you’re going to have a lean winter.

So, sure. Offer a sale on tuition. Keep working on the marketing pitch. Keep improving the product. That’s what K-State has done for many years, and will continue to do.

But let’s get some help.

— Originally published in The Manhattan Mercury