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TEA approves FY26 Excel and CTE fees after extensive discussion of reporting variability
Summary
Authority members approved the academic year 2026 Excel/CTE fee schedules but members and staff agreed to pursue data clean‑up, standard definitions and follow‑up analysis to reduce year‑to‑year reporting noise.
The Kansas Postsecondary Technical Education Authority voted to approve the Excel and CTE fee schedules for academic year 2026 at its Jan. 30 meeting, after a lengthy staff presentation and member discussion emphasizing the need to clean up reporting inconsistencies.
KBOR staff member Sharman presented multi‑year fee rollups and program‑level spreadsheets for each institution and noted the collections date back to AY2023 when the agency moved to the KEDS data system. She said colleges were given an opportunity to review and revise entries and the agency re‑pulled reports after institutions confirmed their AY2026 entries.
Members said the aggregated “Christmas‑tree” charts produced by staff highlighted noisy year‑to‑year movement that may reflect reporting differences rather than genuine fee changes. Member comments used Highland and Allen as examples: “[T]hey never changed their fees. So he's reporting and I assume he's doing it accurately, but maybe… they didn't teach any course in that SIP code, so it was reported as 0,” a member said, illustrating that course offerings and coding differences can drive apparent fee volatility.
Committee member Mike moved to approve the consent agenda earlier in the meeting; the TEA later voted to approve the FY26 Excel/CTE fees after staff assured members the schedules are needed for upcoming summer and fall enrollments. Members asked staff to work with technical and community colleges and with the agency’s data research and planning team to add comparative columns (year‑over‑year plus/minus), to conduct deviation analysis for outliers, and to convene a small working group to discuss best practices and reporting definitions.
Ending: Staff said they will return with proposals for clearer reporting fields, a year‑over‑year change column, and a potential committee review process to flag anomalous fee changes for follow up before future approvals.
