Today's remarks by business and education leaders in Wichita

WICHITA -- State business leaders joined current and former Kansas Board of Regents members and higher education leaders today at Exploration Place in Wichita to call on the Legislature to hold higher education harmless and include revenue enhancements in the 2003 state budget. Here are the remarks by Frank Meyer, chairman of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Industry and chairman and CEO, Custom Metal Fabricators; and former Board of Regents member Jordan Haines.

Frank Meyer

My name is Frank Meyer. I'm from Herington, where I am chairman and CEO of Custom Metal Fabricators. It's also my privilege to serve as chairman of the board of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which, through the local chambers that belong to KCCI, represent some 36,000 businesses across Kansas.

My company sends 95 percent of its products outside Kansas, with equipment we have manufactured in 38 countries. We as a business in a small Kansas community are affected by events nationwide and around the world.

Whether we're talking about high-tech, international trade, or heavy-equipment manufacturing, an educated workforce is the key to success in Kansas.

I have seen great improvements in education. I attended a one-room school in Latimer, with four students in the whole school, before going on to Herington High School.

In contrast, my youngest son had the opportunity to spend his junior year at Oxford University in England. After a few weeks he was visiting with his professor about his background of coming from a small school system, about 500 students K-12, in a small town out in the middle of Kansas and how he had some concern about coming to one of the most respected universities in the world. His professor told him, "Phil, you came to me as well prepared as any student from anywhere in the world."

If you are a Kansas teacher I am here to tell you: You are as good as the best in the world.

Companies that operate in Kansas, including the members of the Kansas Chamber, appreciate what our state has to offer, in terms of skilled people, a university-based research infrastructure and a high quality of life.

But it's a fragile partnership, one that depends in large measure on the willingness of Kansans to make public higher education a higher priority for state funding.

I'm not speaking from Kansas nostalgia today but from the vantage point of a hard-nosed businessperson who employs highly skilled people.

Kansas cannot afford a second-rate public school system, one that does not prepare students for the interrelated, international, Internet-based challenges of the future.

It cannot afford to see its most gifted 18-year-olds migrate to other states, never to return. And we must have universities that are strong enough to attract bright and creative people from elsewhere, so that companies such as mine have a chance to hire them.

As a businessperson, I understand the importance of investment, even when the short-range outlook is clouded. There's always a risk involved, but the rewards can be enormous.

The investment the state of Kansas made in me, as a student in Latimer and Herington, has paid off in later years. I'm asking the state to think of the thousands of current and future students in our public universities as a similar investment. They may take time to "mature," but the payoff can be substantial.

The real beneficiary of their success is Kansas. An editorial in USA Today last Thursday said it all:

"States hurt themselves," it said, "by reducing their investment in higher education. According to Anthony Carnevale, vice president of the Educational Testing Service, states generally spend about $24,000 to put a student through a four-year public school. Yet the return to the state's economy is about $2 million during that student's working life, and the return to state treasuries is about $375,000 in tax revenues."

There's really not much risk in an investment that produces that kind of result. I call upon the Legislature and the governor to produce a budget proposal that preserves the state's best hope for a strong economic future: its public system of higher education.

The Kansas Chamber held a meeting in Emporia recently with representatives from the state's 17 largest chambers of commerce. The outcome of that meeting was a consensus statement about the final budget for Kansas, one that will "provide some additional revenues, protect some key areas of government operations, and allow business the opportunity to do what it does best ÿ put people to work."

Among the items that should be held harmless are K-12 and higher education, as well as research at the universities.

While we regard a number of tax items as being "off the table" for increases, we regard the following as potential revenue items:

Enactment of slots ($70 million to $200 million); increase in the state sales tax by up to .30 percent ($105 million); and doubling of the franchise fee ($18 million).

The quality of education in Kansas is a business issue. Healthy communities and workforce needs demand educational excellence at all levels. Mediocrity is not an option.

On behalf of the Kansas Chamber, I'm pleased to have this opportunity to speak up for our public system of higher education. We support holding education harmless in the state budget, and we would accept limited revenue enhancements as a way of making that happen.

Former Regent Jordan Haines

My name is Jordan Haines. I live in Wichita, and I was a member of the Board of Regents from 1977 to 1984.

The future of Kansas and the future of public higher education are one and the same. This is especially true where the economy of Kansas is concerned. The schools, colleges and universities cannot prosper unless the state prospers, but the reverse is also true.

The Board of Regents institutions are united and eager to serve the state and bolster its economy. The students they graduate, the outreach they provide, the research they conduct and the quality of life they support are as much a part of the strength of Kansas as its wheat fields, feedlots and factories.

But great universities are fragile. The kind of budget cuts being debated right now in Topeka should concern every Kansan, every businessperson, all prospective students and their parents.

The ability of our institutions to absorb such cuts -- and still bolster the state's economy -- is like draining a car's gas tank and then expecting to drive the Kansas Turnpike at 70 miles per hour. You can't do it indefinitely.

We are pleased by the support given by the Legislature for the bonding bill in support of research facilities at the three largest universities in Kansas, but that is only part of the challenge facing public higher education in this session.

What's needed is positive, bipartisan support for a budget that preserves the past investment this state has made in its system of public higher education, so that those institutions are kept strong enough to help pull Kansas out of its short-term economic difficulties.

Revenue enhancements should be considered as part of this budget because it will be impossible for Kansas to cut its way out of a $700 million deficit.

Strategic investment in our universities, community colleges, and technical colleges and schools is a long-term policy that promises long-term results.

We must not lose sight of the future as we grapple with the very real problems of the present.

Inside Exploration Place is a quotation by Henry Ward Beecher that we should all take to heart: "Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven." If we care about our kids, and if we want them to have any kind of future in the state we call home, then higher education must be protected in the budget, even at the cost of an increase in taxes."