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Kansas community colleges press lawmakers to fully fund Excel/CTE, highlight wait lists and employer partnerships
Summary
Kansas community college leaders told the House Higher Education Budget Committee that enrollment has stabilized, noncredit workforce training is growing and Excel/CTE reimbursement shortfalls have created wait lists; they asked for a ~$1.01M supplemental to fully fund FY26 Excel/CTE and outlined FY27 adjustments to sustain programs while lowering general-fund need.
Heather Morgan, executive director of the Kansas Association of Community Colleges, told the House Higher Education Budget Committee that community colleges across Kansas have seen modest enrollment gains while continuing to expand employer-led, noncredit workforce training.
Morgan said the two-year sector educates many older, working students — “our average age of students is 24” — and that colleges serve about 35,000 noncredit learners who are not counted in Board of Regents headcount or FTE calculations. She highlighted program wait lists statewide — “over 1,000 students waiting to get into some of our technical programs” — and credited business-and-industry funds with helping reduce those lists by supporting employer-requested training.
“For every $1 invested in Kansas Community Colleges, [we are] generating $2.20 in economic return,” Morgan said in her presentation, citing an economic-impact study prepared by the association.
Garden City Community College President Ryan Ruda described a targeted partnership with Empirical Foods, a $350 million beef-processing facility, that paired half-day classroom instruction with paid on-site training. “This is workforce development working exactly as it’s intended,” Ruda said, arguing that such partnerships let employers hire locally and reduce turnover while giving Kansans family-supporting wages.
Marilyn Douglas, a Garden City trustee and officer with the Kansas Association of Community Colleges, told lawmakers trustees use program reviews, enrollment trends and workforce outcomes to make decisions about program continuance and local stewardship.
On funding, Morgan said Excel and CTE programs operate on a reimbursement model that has grown quickly since 2016. To address a current-year shortfall, she asked the committee to move roughly $1,013,000 in unspent business-and-industry/student-success funds to fully fund Excel/CTE in the current year. She also outlined a FY2027 package that would maintain business-and-industry funding at roughly $14.3 million, student success at about $10.5 million and capital outlay near $12.4 million while proposing targeted fences to slow unsustainable growth in reimbursable enrollments.
Committee members pressed presenters on program closures, credit transfer and online enrollments. Morgan said Garden City’s recent theater program closure preserved options for affected students through scholarships and nontraditional course offerings; committee members noted Pratt’s online programs can skew out-of-state counts. Morgan acknowledged growth pressures and offered to supply additional, college-level tuition and local-mill-levy data on request.
The community-college presenters asked legislators to prioritize funding that supports high-wage, high-demand programs and early-intervention student-success tools that research shows increase completion.
