Published: April 30, 2008 04:56 pm      

Cowgill quits — 05/01/08

Governor gets national search he wants for next president

The power struggle between Gov. Steve Beshear and the Council on Postsecondary Education has ended just the way the governor hoped it would: With the council contracting with an outside firm to conduct a nationwide search for new president — a search that does not include Cowgill, a council’s first choice to be its new president, as a candidate for the state’s top official in higher education.

The power struggle came to a sudden end Tuesday when Cowgill, who served as budget director for former Gov. Ernie Fletcher, announced his resignation just two days before he was to become the permanent successor to former CPE President Tom Layzell, who retired. Cowgill, an attorney and registered Democrat who was once employed by the same law firm as the governor, had been interim president since September, but when the council in early April voted to remove “interim” from Cowgill’s title, the governor loudly protested.

Attorney General Jack Conway added to fuel to the fires of controversy by authoring a nonbinding opinion that the CPE may have violated state law by not conducting a nationwide search for its new president.

In announcing his resignation, Cowgill said it would have required “excessive time and effort” to defend his appointment and may have also led to a legal showdown with the governor.

“I have no desire to wage a battle with the governor over this matter,” Cowgill said in a statement. “It would unduly harm Kentucky’s postsecondary education reform efforts and the positive momentum that has been achieved to this point.”

He’s right. Cowgill’s appointment was threatening to distract from the far more important challenges facing higher education in Kentucky, with the primary one being doubling the number of college graduates in the state by 2020. That’s one of the goals of the Higher Education Reform Act of 1997 — one that the state is falling far short of achieving. The state’s postsecondary schools also are faced with the challenge of meeting their goals with less money from the state.

Part of the controversy surrounding Cowgill’s appointment was pure politics. The governor who denied Fletcher a second term as governor obviously did not like one of the key aides of his predecessor serving as the state’s top administrator in higher education. The fact that a majority of the members of the Council on Postsecondary Education are Fletcher appointees only added to suspicions that Cowgill’s appointment has as much to do with politics as his abilities.

However, putting politics aside, Cowgill was taking on a position that outranks the presidents of all the state universities without having any experience in higher education beyond formerly serving on the advisory board of a community college. Beshear said he wanted the next CPE president to have a national reputation in higher education, and Cowgill certainly didn’t have that.

“I appreciate Mr. Cowgill’s decision, which puts an end to a very difficult situation for everyone,” Beshear said in a statement. “I trust that the council will now move forward with a nationwide search for a permanent president.”

That’s what the governor has wanted from the start. Beshear won this battle.