KY lawmakers just decided higher education’s future. Now the public must respond | Opinion

It has already happened.

Kentucky lawmakers have passed a two-year budget that cuts funding to public universities by 7%. State investment in higher education will be down more than 40% compared to 2008 when adjusted for inflation. Financial aid falls short of demand, meaning fewer students will get help, or they will get less.

The decision is made.

Because this is not just a budget cut. It is a redefinition of what higher education is allowed to be, carried out through disinvestment in generations of Kentucky students and the futures they are working to build.

In a March 26, 2026 Senate Education Committee hearing, lawmakers made their position clear: universities should be run “like a business.” That ideology is now operational, pushing universities to behave like revenue — generating enterprises rather than public goods — distorting their mission and eroding their autonomy. The legislation would permit terminations for low enrollment or what it calls a “misalignment of revenue and costs.”

Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, argued that institutions must be run “as a business.” Sen. Gex Williams, R-Verona, claimed universities are “pricing themselves out of the market.” He says, “If higher education is not a business, faculty should consider pay cuts or volunteering.”

If we value only work that turns a profit, we are not only redefining universities but also redefining public service itself.

When lawmakers say universities should be run “like a business,” it sounds reasonable until you follow the logic. If higher education is treated purely as a business, then programs that do not generate revenue become expendable, regardless of their value to society.

But public universities were never designed to maximize profit. They were designed to expand opportunity.

Public universities are nonprofit institutions. They already develop and manage budgets under the direction of their governing boards, with an obligation to remain financially sustainable.

And no successful business cuts investment in its own workforce pipeline and expects to grow.

Yes, students enter a world of business. But they also enter a world that requires critical thinking, ethical judgment, civic responsibility, and the ability to understand people different from themselves — diversity, equity, and inclusion that were restricted in higher education last session.

A system designed only for profit cannot prepare them for that.

If higher education is a business, then it is one in which the public invests, and the returns are not profit but an educated workforce, a functioning democracy, and a stronger society.

And right now, Kentucky is cutting its own investment.

Programs that don’t make money become expendable.

And here is the most important part:

The system doesn’t need to be told what to cut. The pressure does the work.

This is how a state takeover unfolds, not always through direct bans, but through conditions that force institutions to narrow themselves. Financial constraint becomes a governing tool, with funding used as leverage to shape what institutions can sustain. Risk becomes something to be avoided. Silence becomes a survival strategy.

This is not reform. It is control — narrowing what higher education can teach, study, and sustain.

And while it may look like a “culture war,” that label minimizes what is happening — a deliberate shift in who controls higher education and what it is allowed to be.

This is about power — who holds it, and who loses it.

Because higher education is not just about degrees. It is about opportunity.

It is about whether a first-generation student can afford to enroll. Whether a program that reflects a community’s history is allowed to exist. Whether research can challenge power without consequence.

So no, this is not the moment to call legislators. That moment has passed.

This is the moment to pay attention — to document what happens next, organize across campuses and communities, and hold institutions and policymakers accountable for the consequences of these decisions.

And when that happens, no one should be able to say they didn’t see it coming.

Kentucky has made its decision.

Now the question is whether the public will accept it or respond to it.

Higher education was never meant to belong to the legislature. It belongs to the people because that is what a democracy requires.

And whether it remains that way will depend on what the public does next.

James Orlick is a higher education leader with more than 18 years of experience in innovation strategy and institutional change. He is a Ph.D. student in Educational Leadership and Organizational Development at the University of Louisville. The views expressed are his own.