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As many as 6,000 fewer students may find themselves without access to the Kentucky Community and Technical College System, President Michael McCall said. Reductions in state funding, and a smaller than requested tuition hike are to blame, McCall said.
"It's counterintuitive," McCall said of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education's decision. "What they have chosen to do today is affordability in the name of accessibility. They have sacrificed accessibility for affordability."
Kentucky's public universities have been grappling with increasing costs and decreasing state funds. The state is facing a $900 million revenue shortfall over the next two fiscal years beginning July 1.
State lawmakers last month approved a two-year $19 billion state spending plan that included an overall 3 percent cut in state funding to Kentucky's public universities. The schools responded with proposed tuition hikes ranging from about 6 percent to about 13 percent.
The higher education council on Friday approved tuition increases ranging from about 6 percent to nearly 10 percent.
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Hillary Rodham Clinton, pressing on with her presidential campaign, said Friday that Kentucky "will play a major role" in choosing the Democratic nominee.
Clinton was the headliner Friday evening for a Kentucky Democratic Party fundraiser that was expected to raise at least $100,000 - perhaps substantially more - to bolster the campaigns of state-level candidates for seats in Frankfort and Washington. It was Clinton's third visit to Kentucky this year.
"The last time I was here, I got a Louisville Slugger, and I want you to know it was an appropriate gift because I will always go to bat for you," she told more than 1,000 Kentucky Democrats gathered inside the International Convention Center in Louisville.
Clinton touched on a number of familiar campaign themes in Louisville, ranging from health care for the uninsured to the war in Iraq. She called for abandoning a Bush administration education initiative known as "No Child Left Behind" and promoted coal as an alternative energy source in a state that has a bountiful supply of the black mineral.
"I will declare our energy independence and along the way we can create at least 5 million new jobs," she said. "And clean coal needs to be a part of that energy future. We're sitting on a huge natural resource right here in our country."
Besides raising money for Kentucky candidates, the appearance allowed Clinton to make another appeal to Kentucky voters before the May 20 Democratic presidential primary and gave her face time with uncommitted Democratic superdelegates, elected officials and party activists who could play a major role in selecting the Democratic nominee because they can back any candidate they wish.
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FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) - Two Fort Campbell soldiers killed by a roadside bomb were the first from the 101st Airborne Division to die in Afghanistan.
The Department of Defense said in a statement Thursday that Spc. Jeremy R. Gullett, 22, of Greenup, Ky., and Staff Sgt. Kevin C. Roberts, 25, of Farmington, N.M., were killed May 7 in Afghanistan's Sabari District.
Both were assigned to the 101st Airborne Division's Fourth Brigade Combat Team at Fort Campbell, a sprawling Army post on the Kentucky-Tennessee line.
Fifteen other soldiers assigned to tenant units at the post have died in Afghanistan, according to The Associated Press casualty database. They were mostly members of the 5th Special Forces Group or the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, known as the "Night Stalkers."
Gullett's mother, Cheryl Gullet, told The (Ashland) Independent that her son joined the Army in 2003 when he graduated from Greenup County High School.
"He always dreamed he'd go into the service, ever since he was 6 years old," Cheryl Gullett said.
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Without court intervention, coal operator Massey Energy Co. will get what it wanted by illegally refusing to rehire union workers at a West Virginia coal mine, a National Labor Relations Board lawyer argued Friday.
The NLRB wants a federal injunction requiring Massey to rehire 85 United Mine Workers members and recognize and negotiate with the union at an eastern Kanawha County mine operated by subsidiary Spartan Mining.
An administrative law judge concluded last November that Massey violated federal labor law by refusing to offer the miners new jobs after buying the mine in 2004. The NLRB is trying to get the administrative law judge's ruling enforced until the labor board addresses his decision.
The 85 miners are getting older, leaving the area for jobs and may be unable to return to work when the labor board reaches a final decision in the case, NLRB lawyer Jonathan Duffey said during closing arguments at a hearing on the injunction request Charleston federal court.
If they're not around, the order requiring Massey to recognize the union will be nullified because the bargaining unit will be made up of people who've never been UMW members, Duffey told U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin.
"The union would have no power when it does return," he said. Massey will achieve its illegal aims "through the passage of time."
