Yesterday, I sat down with former Governor Paul Patton and asked him to reflect on his time in Frankfurt.

One of his major accomplishments was reforming the state's higher education system that included severing the community and technical colleges from the University of Kentucky.

Given focus to the state, to regional universities, and creating the Council on Postsecondary Education to oversee the higher ed system.

And part two of our interview, he talks about all of that and gives his opinion about the state of higher ed in Kentucky today.

I do want to talk to you about how you and your administration helped transform the higher education or postsecondary education landscape in Kentucky.

Talk to us about that legacy.

Well, of course, you know, in 1990, Kentucky made the most dramatic change in commitment to elementary and secondary education with the Kentucky Education Reform Act.

And it was revolutionary, and it has changed that element of education in Kentucky.

But, you know, in today's world, that's just the foundation.

You can't live in the Sound Nation.

You have to build the house.

And that's some kind of more career oriented education after high school.

And we didn't want some of that school to have to be two year.

Some of it would be one year.

And we wanted we didn't want to tell kids to you're about to go to college.

But when you graduate, we say you ever ought to go to college, but you ought to go to vocational school.

Well, medical schools, vocational school and lawyers at business.

And so all education practically today is vocational education or career orientation.

So we wanted we wanted, David, post-secondary education.

And I think that was the correct change.

And so few things worked out as well as you expect.

But our our Higher Education Reform Act, particularly involving the community colleges, has turned out better than we expected.

And that's very pleasing.

To so many of our viewers, perhaps, who have been around and watched Katie for a long time.

Will remember when you were on Kentucky tonight with then University of Kentucky president Charles Worthington, a pretty good exchange of ideas.

I'll put it that way.

Back then.

We cannot have an effective and efficient, community based, regionally oriented workforce development institution unless both of are under the same authority.

That's my bottom line.

And we certainly don't have that.

But if you touch your bottom line, Governor, then why don't you move the technical schools under the University of Kentucky Community College System?

How do you think Dr. Worthington perceives post-secondary education reform now?

Well, I can't speak for him, but I understood his position.

He had a background in the community colleges, but they had grown up u k ed had done a great job of raising the child.

But it was time to move out of the house.

And of course, that was a difficult thing for him.

But it's worked.

And then I don't know of hardly anybody that doesn't recognize it was the right thing to do.

You know, we we found three studies that said it was time for the community colleges to become independent because they need to respond to the needs of the business community and their community.

And the needed action or difference in their needs in Bowling Green.

So we need to be nimble.

A university, by its nature, is slow to change, cautious.

So it was time for us to move on to a higher level.

And I think we've done that.

I think we've got a good education system in Kentucky today.

Now we're underfunding it.

It's going backwards.

The time by the time I left, all of us, I believe our elementary and secondary education program was ranked about 30 or 32 in the nation, getting closer to the average.

The middle, which was about all we could aspire to.

Now we're falling back strictly because of a decline in funding and then higher education and elementary secondary levels.

What would you say to policymakers, lawmakers in Frankfort, as they approach a budget session in 2024 about the investment that should be made in postsecondary education in Kentucky?

Well, you know, I would say you've got to look at where we need to be competitive in the United States economy.

And I'm we're not there.

We're going backwards.

As you know, there has been lots of conversation about should there be a public four year institution in eastern Kentucky.

Your thoughts on that?

Well, I was for that when when the University of and Bible College was in such bad shape.

We offered it to Governor Carroll for free and he's laughed at us.

That's not going to happen.

Well, I was early in my presidency here.

There was a movement for us to try to become a state university college.

But now with this new leadership and there are professional schools, we couldn't have had a medical school or a College of optometry if we'd been in the state system.

And we're now starting a dental school.

So we're going to be a university provider even for central Appalachian over to West Virginia and western Virginia.

This this part of the United States fell behind because we didn't have the early appreciation for the need for education.

Now, we were populated by 33 waves of labor that didn't need much education.

The first was agriculture.

Subsistence farming.

And then after the civil War, it was timber harvesting.

And then beginning about 1900, it was coal mining.

All of those professions, at least back then, did not require a lot of education.

Coal mining does now, but it's much different than it was.

And so their result is we've got a good education system.

The Bible High School and the other high schools and Ford County Central School, Great Facility.

School of Innovation.

Dedicated, dedicated staff and faculty.

But the society still does not really understand the need for education as much as other places.

And so it's more difficult to get our students focused on education because bluntly, too many of their parents don't have it and don't understand the need for the today's world.

That's my evaluation, and that's where I think the University of Wyoming has a great few share in contributing to the appreciation of education in Appalachia.