Published: March 27, 2009 06:36 am      

College still affordable in Ky., CPE chief says

ASHLAND — Doomsday talk about skyrocketing tuition is overblown and college remains affordable for most Kentuckians, the new president of the state Council on Postsecondary Education said Thursday.

Most students can get financial aid and those at lower income levels can get enough to finance their entire college bill, said Robert L. King, whose term officially begins Wednesday as the head of the body that oversees state-supported universities and community and technical colleges.

King talked about college costs during a wide-ranging discussion with the editorial board of The Independent. He traveled to Ashland with Morehead State University President Wayne Andrews on a get-acquainted tour of the region.

Grants and scholarships can cover the full cost of tuition, fees and books for most full-time, in-state students in the lower income categories, King said. That is true of both traditional students who are dependent on their parents and for adult students, he said.

Even students whose families are in upper income brackets can get significant aid, he said.

“The perception is that everybody pays the sticker price. In reality, only about 15 percent pay full price,” King said.

Gaps still remain, and Kentucky needs to look for ways to fill them, especially for lower-income students, he said, and one of the state’s ultimate higher education goals should be to guarantee higher education to any Kentuckian motivated enough to go to college.

The higher education system is grappling with more students who take more than the traditional four years to graduate, King said, in part because of the push to get more people into college. Most careers now require post-secondary education, and that means the pool of students now includes more who need remedial courses to do college-level work.

Part of the remedy will lie in improving primary and secondary education and implementing international standards for primary and secondary schools, he said.

King said his job is to provide a unified voice for the state’s public higher education system, specifically when it comes to lobbying state legislators.

He praised Kentucky’s representatives and senators and their commitment to education: “The legislators know their stuff and care about this business.”

King is the third president of the CPE. He was formerly chancellor of the State University of New York and president of the Arizona Community Foundation, a charitable foundation focusing on education, economic development and scientific research.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.