Raymond M. Burse, the retired General Electric Company executive who came out of retirement to help enrollment and financially troubled Kentucky State University get on a course toward recovery, announced his resignation Monday as president of the university effective Friday.
Burse’s departure came just months after the state’s new rookie governor, Matt Bevin, had rolled out significant proposed budget cuts for state agencies, including Kentucky State. It called for a 4.5 percent cut in state funding for the rest of the current fiscal year ending June 30, 2016, followed by a 9 percent cut in state funding over the next two years based on the 2016-18 biennial.
Burse had blasted the proposed cuts as a recipe for dooming the historically Black college in Frankfort, Kentucky. A Kentucky native and Centre College graduate who was a Rhodes Scholar before earning his law degree at Harvard University, Burse wrote KSU staff, alumni and supporters an open letter of concern about the implications of the governor’s plan.
“Kentucky State cannot withstand what is being proposed in the budget,” wrote Burse, who had previously served as KSU president from 1982-’89. “If the budget as proposed is enacted, our options would be to declare financial exigency and/or prepare a closure plan.”
Kentucky State was spared the draconian cuts proposed in January by Bevin. However, the governor nor the state Legislature took any decisive actions to help the institution roll out a long-term capital or budget plan that would help the university address a myriad other challenges, among them eliminating some $17 million in unpaid bills.
Burse, who garnered national attention in 2014 when he reduced his near $350,000 annual salary by 25 percent to boost the wages of the university’s lowest-paid employees, did not address the differences he had with the governor’s ideas.
“When I answered the call to serve as interim president two years ago, I did so with the understanding that my job was to put KSU of solid footing so that the school would not shutter,” Burse said in Monday’s resignation statement. “Under my leadership, KSU is back on the path to excellence.
