Sunday, April 27, 2008

H-L: Higher-ed needs national search

This from the Herald-Leader:
Panel should seek new leader while Cowgill studies rising tuition

When it costs more to go to community college in Kentucky than in the rest of the country, someone needs to ask questions.

Brad Cowgill is right to shine a bright light on proposed tuition increases. But Cowgill can't be an effective advocate for affordable higher education, or anything else, under the current circumstances...

...Beshear is demanding a national search and correctly says that for the search to be fair, Cowgill cannot be a candidate.

Without the uncertainty of a governor's race looming, the CPE should be able to attract a stronger pool of candidates than last year when it called of the search.

And now that Beshear has drawn a line in the sand, the council, still made up mostly of Fletcher appointees, and its chairman, John Turner, cannot produce a graceful resolution without opening a new search.

Sure, they could duke it out in the courts and media. But to what end? An expensive, protracted fight and ugly rift between the president and the governor he's supposed to advise, with the council's staff and work frozen in the crossfire...

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