During this session, the Kentucky General Assembly passed some bills related to higher education but didn't pass others.

Yesterday, Renee Shaw sat down with Dr. Aaron Thompson, president of the Kentucky Council on Post-Secondary Education.

GRAY What legislators on what they did for higher ed.

How do you rate the session for higher education?

What did you get that you asked for and what maybe did you combat that was defeated?

Well, I mean, we were asking for a while.

Obviously, we wanted to see some money going in to what we're doing with building our P 20 network because we have 47.8% of the students graduating from high school going to college.

We were able to get some money through the last hour provides through Kentucky Department of Education and build out these bridge programing to help those students that are academically, socially, emotionally and culturally not prepared for college to be prepared.

It's working.

Our hope is to get money.

But they didn't open the budget up for that.

We're hoping that comes next year.

You know, we did get eight three 200, which was a health care piece, CPE, working with employers to build out what was going on.

No money tied to it, but good legislation.

You know, the guns on campus bill was killed.

That was just a bad bill.

I mean, to have guns on campus isn't a great thing.

Our problem is.

Here and no university president supported that.

And we heard testimony from one of the police chiefs and western, the chief there who said none of the university police chiefs supported that.

So.

Right.

And that's not I mean, the bill is dead for this session, but it could be revived next year.

It could be.

I hope not.

I really do.

I think that.

Yeah, no chief of police, by the way.

No police.

I mean, you may find that there police person somewhere, but none of the presidents at our community colleges or our four year institutions, nor in me who's been in Harry Evans.

What about even your student body presidents or groups like.

They were against it, too, so they just didn't.

It doesn't make sense.

This is a situation whereby you're I mean, it's not a Second Amendment issue.

I mean, I'm from the hills of Kentucky.

You know, it's not about that at all, but it is about creating, you know, issues of mental and behavioral health are increasing ever more in Kentucky as a whole.

But surely on our campuses, you know, and if I look at the Suicide Rate Death Foundation, this came out with new stuff today.

I mean, look at the rise of mill.

I mean, diagnosed mental health needs that are getting, if not treated or those that are undiagnosed.

This is not a good thing to do.

So there are many things that didn't happen.

I think higher Ed came out and fared well.

You know, there's some things that we do need to bring.

Next year we're going to see a performance funding relook.

I mean, we've got to help our institutions that are smaller, truly to get dollars to be able to serve the populations that are in most need, that are in need.

I won't say they are most need, but all of our institutions, we are a solution.

And, you know, and not the problem.

So I hope we are we've kept tuition down.

We're going to continue to do our best to keep it down.

With inflation rates up as high as 9%, and we're still going to keep it down way below that.

So all the things that I hope we're able to do and, you know, have worked well with the General Assembly and they work well with me, with the governor's office, with higher ed.

And I hope we continue to do that, to work together, look for solutions, not to spend our time combating things that are harmful, but to do things together and that are good for our here in Kentucky.

During that conversation, Dr. Thompson also discussed a just completed audit of Kentucky State University's finances from 2018 to 2021.

That audit found questionable spending, poor record keeping and poor communications.

Dr. Thompson says he was not surprised by those findings.