For the state universities of Kansas, another economic domino was knocked over this week. The Kansas Board of Regents, responding to a $61 million shortfall in state revenues, asked the schools to cut their spending by 2 percent this year and 5 percent next year.
The universities are not a special target for budget cuts. All state agencies are under orders to make similar cuts this year. Even the Legislature is reducing its operating expenses.
The cuts come at a particularly bad time. The universities have been trying to budget for the increase in energy costs and rising costs generally. Possibly this year, and certainly next year, the reductions are sure to mean cuts in student services and a slowdown in hiring.
The new reductions come just six years after budget cuts that were ordered as the economy faltered after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. For the universities, as for the rest of the nation, this decade is becoming a time of one step forward, one step back.
ESU President Michael Lane and his people will have some tough choices to make in the next year, but Emporia State University — and the other universities in the state — will survive.
But the challenge for the schools will be to go beyond mere survival and to continue to evolve to meet the changing needs of the state and the nation.
Because no matter the realities of the state budget, Kansas needs its universities to do their job — more today than in the past, and even more in the future.