Tuesday, October 6, 1998
The University Daily Kansan
Section A·Page 3
Plans offered to improve Kansas education
By Jason Pearco
Kansan staff writer
Chancellor Robert Hemenway believes that better coordination and cooperation between public universities, community colleges and vocational-technical schools is needed if Kansas wants to continue its excellence in higher education.
To reach this end, Hemenway and 25 other chancellors and presidents of public universities and community colleges in Kansas recently presented their blueprint for enhancing higher education to the Task Force on Higher Education Structure for Excellence. It includes the need for a new coordinating body to focus on issues that the Kansas Board of Regents cannot govern.
"The coordinating body could help to determine state education needs that are currently going unchanged." Hemenway said.
The blueprint asks the task force, which Gov. Bill Graves began earlier this year, to consider issues including: deciding disputes between different institutions, ensuring that courses transfer ade-
quately and appropriately between institutions, approving and reviewing academic programs, administering state financial assistance, and facilitating mergers between certain community colleges.
Hemenway
Hemenway; Gives ideas to enhance higher education.
said the coordinating body would work best if it reported directly to the governor — a separate entity from the Board of Regents.
"We have to start out with an understanding that Kansas has a good system of higher education,"
Hemenway said. "The real question is how do we make it better overall without diminishing the quality of any entity."
The blueprint echoed his views by stating that Kansas ranks seven among all states in the proportion of high school graduates engaged in post-secondary education (75.8 percent), and 32 in cost per student.
But this possible reform is not the first of its kind. Since the implementation of the Regents, state authorities have completed more than 20 studies of higher education governance that changed little in the system.
And earlier this year, a bill died in the Legislature that would have created a Council on Higher Education to replace the Regents. The council would have overseen the six public universities, 19 community colleges, seven vocationaltechnical schools and four technical colleges.
But Graves and other lawmakers
cited problems with financing the $140 million endeavor.
Graves then formed the task force in July and requested that it make recommendations on how to improve higher-education governance. The recommendations, which are expected in mid-January, will serve as a starting point for the Legislature to make changes.
Bill Docking, Regents chairman,
told the task force that while the Kansas higher education system offered much to be proud of, no one should be satisfied with the status quo.
"The needs of the state are evolving at an ever-increasing rate," he said. "In response, we must continually assess our ability to serve the state, and we must be ready to make the changes necessary to maintain our leadership role in higher education."
The task force will consider the blueprint when it meets during the first week in November.
Free bus rides end, passes or money needed
No one waits to get on two buses on Jayhawk Boulevard. Bus lines may become shorter this week because, beginning yesterday, students were required to have a bus pass rather than their KUIDs to ride the buses, ending the free rides many students have been enjoying the past few weeks. Photo by Matt J. Daugherty/KANSAN
By Seth Jones
The free ride has ended.
Friday was the last day students could board the bus by showing their KUIDs. Beginning yesterday, students must have the new bus pass to ride.
Nicole Skalla, transportation coordinator,
said bus passes were available at the banking window on the fourth floor of the Kansas Union. Semester passes cost $60, annuals cost $110.
Last week, KU on Wheels distributed the new bus passes at various locations around campus. Skalla said about 95 percent of the new passes had been distributed.
Skalla said to get one of the new passes was no trouble.
"It takes about two minutes to get a new pass." Skalla said
"Go to the banking window," she said. "After you buy the pass, the banking window sends you across the hall to the card center with a note. They'll give you a bus pass. Then you go back over to the banking window, and they'll put a sticker on it."
Dave Eden, second-year bus driver, said bus attendance had dropped off yesterday.
Kansan staff writer
"Usually there are 400-plus riders at this time, but today we only have 360," he said. "And with this rainy weather, you'd figure more people would be riding today."
Eden also said more students were paying the
dollar fee to ride the bus.
"I've seen quite a few more dollar bills today then I was seeing last week," he said.
students who have a bus pass but still have not picked up the pass also can get the pass at the
Avraham Mor, Wilmette, Ill., freshman,
obtained his bus pass yesterday.
"I didn't know when we were supposed to get them," he said, "It's no big deal; it just a pain."
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