As the Kansas Legislature prepares to head in to the 2017 session public universities are trying to ensure that their needs are met.

At Kansas State University President Richard Myers said that the proposition being made to legislators is ‘What is the return on the investment that the state taxpayer might make.’

Myers stated, “There’s several ways to look at that. There’s economic impact and some are easier than others to get the data for them, but we’re working very hard. Tell people for every dollar you put in this is what the state reaps in benefits. That can be done in several ways, and I think the numbers will be really, really supportive of more dollars into higher education. It’s the life blood of prosperity in Kansas, and if we don’t do that then we’re not going to move forward.”

Myers said a tuition increase will be among some of the things asked of legislators.

“We’ve asked for some help with some projects here that have been funded in the past, that would hope to move forward as well, get them reinstated. At some point we’re going to have to raise the priority, and I don’t know exactly we’re going to do this, on how we recapitalize our College of Agriculture, their infrastructure.” Myers added that college produces the majority of research that is done at K-State, and some of their facilities are not very good. “If you want to do high class, really productive research you need good facilities.We’ll start to have those discussions. So those would be some of the priorities.”