Gov. Ernie Fletcher and his Democratic opponent, Steve Beshear, responded to questions about rising

Gov. Ernie Fletcher and his Democratic opponent, Steve Beshear, responded to questions about rising tuition costs at Kentucky's public cruise ship employment agencies universities and colleges in response to a series of questions from voters. The questions were submitted by a group of registered Democrats and Republicans from communities served by CNHI owned newspapers and the candidates had not seen the questions cruise ship employment agencies before they sat down for separate interviews. Q: What role should government have in restraining rapidly rising college cruise ship employment agencies tuition rates and at what point are our universities "priced-out" for most people in order to become a research cruise ship employment agencies institution cruise ship employment agencies or sports power rather than engaging in great teaching and learning? BESHEAR: The cost on Kentucky families to send their children to Kentucky colleges and universities is getting out of control. The auditor recently released a report that indicated that college tuition rates over the past six or seven years at Kentucky schools has gone up about 83 percent. It is getting to where Kentucky kids can't afford to go to Kentucky schools. What has happened cruise ship employment agencies over the past few years is that state government has systematically pulled back its support of the college and university system. We have on the one hand asked our universities and our colleges to meet certain goals. At the same time, state government has continued to draw back the amount of money it provides for those schools to meet those goals. As a result, the schools cruise ship employment agencies have used the few means they have to raise money to meet those goals, and one of those is to raise tuition. The first thing I'm going to do is to adequately fund our colleges and universities so they won't have to look to tuition rate hikes to fund their efforts to reach goals. But secondly, tuition is already too high now. So I'm going to create what we call Kentucky First Scholarships which are grants cruise ship employment agencies in the form of forgivable loans. These are last dollar grants. In other words, once you add up all the money a student is getting from all other sources, scholarships and other sources, then whatever is remaining that the student needs for his or her tuition will be supplied by Kentucky First Scholarships. When that student graduates, for every year the student works in Kentucky, a year of that loan will be forgiven. So that if the student works in Kentucky for four years, his entire loan will have been forgiven. cruise ship employment agencies He will have received a good college education and just as important, he or she will have remained in Kentucky and hopefully we will be able to keep them in Kentucky. FLETCHER: Tuition increases are a concern of mine because cruise ship employment agencies they've increased substantially over the last decade. The General Assembly gave the power of controlling tuition rates to the Council on Postsecondary Education. When I came here that was not being exercised at all. So we've got to work with the president of the Council on Postsecondary Education to look at affordability studies and to review all the tuition increase requests from the universities. That's modified the increase to some extent already. I think the CPE is going to have to take a larger cruise ship employment agencies role in looking at affordability and at looking at efficiency at universities and making sure that there is the accountability as tuition is raised to make sure it remains affordable. Also we have a Kentucky Covenant Plan that I want to roll out with the universities that will guarantee that every student here in Kentucky can afford a college education.