A central pillar of being a public institution is meeting the simple expectation of letting stakeholders and taxpayers know their money is being spent judiciously.

WKU continues to show that it feels it is above meeting the level of transparency promised to campus over and over again. It has shown itself as lacking the basic decency to provide answers to simple questions posed by members of the WKU community, and it has shown to fundamentally not respect the students, faculty, staff, alumni and taxpayers who support it.

For over two months, the College Heights Herald sought answers to a simple question: where did WKU stand financially at the conclusion of the 2023-2024 academic year?

This is a legitimate question. Following the university’s $11 million overspend during the 2022-2023 academic year, it is only logical that the WKU community has questions concerning the university’s spending the following year. Students deserve to know how their tuition is being spent, faculty and staff deserve to know why their raises continue to be minimal while administrators receive large raises, and taxpayers deserve to know how their hard-earned dollars are being used at the institution.

The fact that WKU overspent its budget by nearly $4 million during fiscal year 2024 is unacceptable, but it is even more unacceptable that university executives made every effort to block the Herald from reporting on this information accurately.

It should be noted that, historically, WKU has struggled to manage its money. Eight years ago, WKU President Timothy Caboni inherited a financial mess. When he came into office, Caboni had to make tough but necessary decisions because of budget cuts made by the Kentucky General Assembly and because of poor financial decisions made by the previous administration.

Eight years in, the university faces financial challenges again. State funding has continued to lag and enrollment is roughly 20% lower than when Caboni took office, meaning that WKU is not bringing in tuition dollars like it historically has.

Despite this, there are some shining spots, like the recent increases in retention and graduation rates. And while enrollment is down, net tuition revenue has increased by $3.2 million, or 5.2%, from this point in the previous fiscal year, according to WKU University Spokesperson Jace Lux. These are notable positives that show encouraging signs of growth.

With the current financial struggles, however, Caboni and officials of his administration are only making an already difficult situation even harder because of their lack of transparency and their obvious non-commitment to it, despite throwing the word around in public comments to the Herald and to the wider university community.

As laid out elsewhere in this issue of the Herald, WKU administrative officials failed to provide the Herald with simple answers to legitimate questions about the 2023-2024 university budget, going so far as to tell the Herald that the university does not feel there is an “appetite” for further reporting on this issue because the university does not feel there would be any benefit to answering our questions.

It was only upon letting executives know a story would be written and published about the budget in this issue of the Herald that they finally responded with more specific answers to our questions.

We have asked questions since the beginning of September – for over two months – and have yet to be provided with full information and the opportunity to ask follow-up questions that provide an accurate telling of where the university ended up financially at the conclusion of the 2023-2024 academic year.

This is not the first time the Herald has been prevented from getting answers, nor do we expect it to be the last. As reported by the Herald in June, WKU budget executives hold a series of meetings with pairs of regents each year for regents to ask questions about the proposed budget in a closed setting before publicly voting on it.

When requesting the budgeted salary information for part-time employees in September, the Herald was told by Lindsey Carter, WKU assistant general counsel, that “the University does not budget for part-time faculty at the position level, so part-time employees are not included in the document you requested.” Upon further clarification by the Herald, Carter provided a document that detailed the budgeted part-time faculty and staff salaries.

While many other Kentucky public universities have released enrollment numbers for the current year, with many showing increases in first-year enrollment, WKU has refused to provide any information beyond Lux writing in an email that, “WKU anticipates continued headcount stability with less than 1% variance from last year.”

Not to be remiss, departments and offices that interact directly with students each day are on the verge of losing vital connections and a vast wealth of institutional knowledge that has helped countless Hilltoppers learn each and every day. As the university prepares to lose employees through the Voluntary Separation Incentive Program, the budget is – and should be – under more scrutiny.

The list goes on, pointing to a much larger issue – WKU administration is not afraid of withholding information from the WKU community because there is no entity holding it accountable.

There is one group of individuals who can hold the administration accountable and serve as an official check on the actions of the university: the WKU Board of Regents. As the governing body of WKU, the board’s role is to be responsible for the university’s policies, finances and direction.

And it is far past time for the board to serve as that check; it just needs to find the courage to do so.

As an independent, student-run news organization, the Herald strives to accurately reflect all corners and aspects of the university. This includes not just the student body, but the faculty and staff who work here, alumni who love this place as much as we do, and parents who send their children here for a quality education.

It is unfathomable why the university would work to prevent accurate reporting other than the simple fact that the administration is embarrassed about where the university ended fiscal year 2024.

Despite that embarrassment, every single member of the WKU community deserves to know how their tuition and taxpayer dollars are being spent, why they are unable to receive larger raises, why their children are unable to be provided certain services or amenities, or why the programs they loved during their time on the Hill have been sliced and diced by university administration.

Beyond money, though, every member of the WKU community is an equal stakeholder in the operations of the university. Each person deserves to know what the university is doing and, if it faces problems, how it plans to address them.

In the same way, the Herald, too, is beholden to the WKU community. It is the community that drives our sense of purpose and our desire to accurately report on the facts.

Given the university’s blatant efforts to prevent the Herald from reporting on certain issues, it is appalling that Caboni continues to promise “transparency” in the budgeting process. Because other news outlets rarely report on the minute details of public university operations, it falls to student newsrooms across Kentucky and the United States to serve as watchdogs.

In performing this service to the WKU community, we are doing something Caboni and his administration have thus far seemed either unwilling or incapable of doing: speaking as factually as we can about what happens at this university.

It is far past time for Caboni and the administration to stop offering empty platitudes and truly be transparent about the university’s operations. The WKU community deserves as much.

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