Dive Brief:
- Campbellsville University is phasing out nearly $1 million in funding from the Kentucky Baptist Convention over four years so it can choose its own trustees and gain academic freedom.
- The Kentucky Baptist Convention’s president has expressed disappointment with the decision and denies that the convention exerts any control over the university, other than appointing trustees.
- Campbellsville announced in a written statement that it will continue to appoint only trustees who are Baptists.
Dive Insight:
According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, both the Baptist Convention’s president, Chip Hutcheson, and the university’s chairman of the board of trustees, Joseph Owens, say they have asked for dialog with the other side, which raises the question of whether a compromise solution is still possible. Owens told the newspaper that convention leadership has been trying to “exercise undue control and influence” over the school’s operations, while Hutcheson denied the charge and said he was “terribly saddened” by the decision.
The $977,000 per year in funding from the convention is already a decrease from $1.5 million a few years ago, with the 3,600-student university operating on a $57 million annual budget. Another school, Georgetown College, split from the Kentucky Baptist Convention in 2005 in an attempt to improve its fundraising.
