Ahead of the official start of the 2026 legislative session, the Kansas House Higher Education Budget Committee has already gotten to work reviewing numbers and data from several of the state’s higher learning institutions.
This past week, committee members met with representatives of several Kansas universities, including Emporia State, represented by interim President Dr. Taylor Kriley, to hear testimony as to the successes and needs for each institution in the coming year. Kriley says her testimony focused on owning their areas of improvement and providing full transparency.
This included noting that the university had not utilized the entirety of the dollars allocated from the state for its Cyber Security, Smart21 and Future Teachers programs, with $1.7 million being returned to the state as a result. Kriley stressed this was not a cut or reduction to those respective programs; it was simply dollars that had not been spent and therefore would not roll over to the following year.
Kriley says the return of these funds has served as a motivation for the university’s leadership team to ensure they are maximizing all dollars invested by the legislature in years to come.
As KVOE News reported previously, the majority of lawmakers are set to enter the session and state budget discussions with a reductive mindset as they look to significantly cut state spending, possibly by as much as $200 million, based on comments from local lawmakers. Kriley says this fact makes the testimony provided by state universities even more important than before.
The legislative session begins Monday.
