To the editor:

With respect to your recent article on the Emporia State “experiment,” I feel that it is important to point out the magnitude and significance of the special appropriations that ESU has received from the Kansas Legislature. These appropriations were given directly to ESU and are on top of the funds that come through the Board of Regents. For brevity I will focus on the $10.6 million 2023 special appropriation of which $9 million was for the “ESU model.” This works out to about $1975 per student. The funds for the “ESU model” were simply a subsidy, a use of taxpayers’ money to rescue the failing ESU experiment. This use of state funds is particularly worrisome because state support of higher education in Kansas has dropped steadily, inflation adjusted, for many years. The other universities in the state have suffered while ESU has been given special treatment.

What did Kansas get from subsidizing ESU? The enrollment when Mr. Hush took office in 2021 was 5,615 (ESU figures) and in 2025 it is 4,820 (a 14% decrease and remember that in 2021 enrollment was depressed because of COVID-19). Has the “experiment” improved the academic reputation of ESU? Certainly not. On the positive side, the state subsidies have enabled ESU to avoid tuition increases (which probably accounts for a slight increase in enrollment this year), but wouldn’t it be better for the Legislature to increase funding to all the regents’ institutions rather than using state funds to rescue a failing, ideologically motivated, experiment?

Berl Oakley,

Lawrence