Kentucky’s Governor Has Raised Hackles Across Higher Ed. What’s His Plan?

Higher education wasn’t a key theme in the 2015 Kentucky gubernatorial election. But Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican, has turned it into a contentious topic since he won that race.

In the last year Governor Bevin has tried to change how the state appropriates money to public colleges, make midyear cuts to higher education, and overhaul the governance structure at the University of Louisville. In each case he has been unsuccessful, but the battles have left many in the state wondering: What, if anything, is guiding the governor’s handling of higher ed?

The Kentucky governor is one in a long list of state leaders who in recent years have tried to reshape higher education by challenging the conventions of academic governance, pressing for greater accountability and efficiency, and emphasizing the need for more career and technical training over the liberal arts.

Mr. Bevin, however, has gone a step further than his peers in other states: He sought to make changes largely without the cooperation of the state legislature or even the governing boards of the universities. In the case of the University of Louisville, the governor attempted to take control of the institution’s leadership by issuing an executive order that dismantled the existing board and negotiated the resignation of the university’s president, James R. Ramsey.

The action dismissing the board has been overturned by a county circuit-court judge. But the university’s regional accreditor has also warned that the governor’s involvement may have violated the accreditation standard prohibiting political interference. The governor’s communications staff did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Bevin’s actions are consistent with his background as a business leader who can more directly determine the direction of his company, not a politician who has to build consensus, says D. Stephen Voss, an associate professor of political science at the University of Kentucky. “Usually governors are dependent on a whole lot of people over whom they don’t have any leverage,” he said.

State Rep. Cluster Howard, a Democrat and a member of the legislature’s Joint Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, said the governor’s unilateral actions do not reflect a cohesive vision for higher education. What’s more, Mr. Howard said, they could be damaging the reputation of the state’s public colleges.

“It looks like it’s kind of a shotgun approach and not one that seems to be of any consistency,” he said.

‘Playing Rough’

Mr. Bevin comes by his outsider status naturally — unlike most of the nation’s governors, he had not previously held elected office — and he has made it a hallmark of his relatively brief political career.

He was born in Colorado and grew up in New Hampshire. In 1989 Mr. Bevin earned a bachelor’s degree in East Asian studies from Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Va., then joined the U.S. Army. He served on active duty until 1993.

Mr. Bevin then worked as a financial consultant for several years, moving to Louisville in 1999. He later started his own company, managing retirement funds for both nonprofit and for-profit companies.

In 2014, with no political experience but backed by Tea Party groups, he challenged Mitch McConnell, majority leader of the U.S. Senate, in the Republican primary. Although he lost that election, he gained statewide name recognition. In the 2015 gubernatorial primary he narrowly defeated three well-established Republican politicians, beating his closest challenger by fewer than 100 votes.

Mr. Bevin was no more conservative than his primary opponents, Mr. Voss said, but he was popular with voters because of his lack of experience in government and his promise to shake up the status quo. In the general election, Mr. Bevin easily defeated another well-known politician, Jack Conway, a Democrat, who was then the state attorney general.

In office, said Mr. Voss, the governor has used his outsider status to his advantage in dealing with the legislature. In March Mr. Bevin released a Facebook video from the empty floor of the state House of Representatives. The governor lampooned the chamber for not being at work at 11 a.m. on a Monday with fewer than 20 days left on the legislative calendar.

What the governor didn’t reveal was that the House never met before 4 p.m. on Mondays so that lawmakers from faraway districts had time to commute to Frankfort after the weekend. He also didn’t mention that the Republican-controlled state Senate was not in session.

“He didn’t mind bruising egos and playing rough with his elbows,” said Mr. Voss.

Governor Bevin has not been entirely partisan or conservative, Mr. Voss explained. One of his main goals in making cuts to the state budget is to shore up the pensions of state employees, including public-school teachers. “To me, what stands out is that he seems to be going for a good-government mantle,” Mr. Voss said.

Going It Alone

Cleaning up broken government appears to be one reason the governor has taken on the University of Louisville’s Board of Trustees. In issuing his executive orders to dismiss the existing board, Mr. Bevin said the trustees’ disputes over the university president had made the board “operationally dysfunctional.” The board’s defenders argue that the governor was making a political move to appoint a board more agreeable to his partisan agenda.

On higher-education policy, the governor also proposed that the state change how it appropriates money to public colleges by giving more money to science and technology programs than to fields like “French literature.” He also ordered the public colleges to slash 4.5 percent from their current-year budgets.

But in state government, going it alone only gets you so far. The legislature balked at changing the appropriation process. The state Supreme Court struck down Mr. Bevin’s midyear cuts. And a judge ruled that the governor had overstepped his authority in dismissing the University of Louisville’s board. That judge let stand, for now, the former president’s resignation, which was negotiated by the governor and accepted by the interim board that was briefly in place as a result of Governor Bevin’s executive orders.

Because higher education receives money from the state, it will always be intertwined with state politics in complex ways, said Thomas L. Harnisch, director of state relations and policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

But the structures in place to prevent completely dismissing a board are meant to limit the role of partisanship and ideology in university oversight, he said.

Arranging for the president’s resignation “sets a dangerous precedent,” Mr. Harnisch said. “The hiring and firing of the president is the board’s responsibility.”

And by striking at the university’s governance, Governor Bevin went even further than other state leaders who have tried to make major changes in higher education, Mr. Harnisch said. Take, for example, Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial efforts to cut the University of Wisconsin system loose from much state regulation in exchange for deep budget cuts.

“You can agree or disagree with respect to other governors’ policies or board appointments, but those decisions are within the bounds of their authority,” Mr. Harnisch said. Governor Bevin’s actions “seem to be a classic example of an executive exceeding his authority,” he said.

Mr. Howard, the Democratic state representative, said that the governor and Republicans in the legislature are not “against education” but that their views are similar. “All this talk about promoting work-ready, technical education as opposed to traditional, liberal arts.”

But that goal doesn’t square with the governor’s budget cuts to higher education, Representative Howard said, because science and technology courses are generally more expensive to teach.

Instead of the governor making changes on his own, Mr. Howard said, both parties in the General Assembly need to work together with the students in mind during the coming legislative session. The Chronicle contacted several Republican state legislators to discuss Governor Bevin’s strategy, but none responded.

“Our state motto is, United we stand, divided we fall,” said Representative Howard. “We need to be united.”

Eric Kelderman writes about money and accountability in higher education, including such areas as state policy, accreditation, and legal affairs. You can find him on Twitter @etkeld, or email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com.