Gov. Matt Bevin campaigned on the idea of spending cuts and small government, but now he’s proposing to extend the reach of government in higher education and the economy. Bevin’s recently released budget proposal cuts state appropriations for universities over the next two years.

For the 2018 fiscal year, one third of all state appropriations will be granted on “performance indicators” and “time-period goals.” By doing so, Kentucky is joining 26 other states with some performance-based funding at four-year institutions.

Bevin’s vision is that all state appropriations will be allocated upon outcome-based standards by 2020. Unfortunately, Bevin’s proposal will result in a set of incentives that will likely shun the liberal arts and humanities for STEM studies.

“I want funding that incentivizes outcomes that are specific to the things people want,” Bevin said during a media briefing. “All the people in the world who want to study French literature can do so, they’re just not going to be subsidized by taxpayers like engineers will be.”

By doing so, Bevin is getting his hands into what students study, and in turn, he is dictating our workforce’s skills and economy.

“The minute you start using specific indicators to figure out whether an education institution is being accountable, they can adjust to what they’ve just learned about your system,” political science professor Stephen Voss said. “So, even though … you’re only judging them, indirectly, you’re telling them what to do.”

For Bevin, the purpose of higher education is to prepare students for jobs that will help guide our state to be leaders in manufacturing, and assessment standards will likely try to capture this purpose.

“In any case I’ve ever heard of, education is a very complex process, and the set of accountability standards aren’t complex enough. And once institutions start chasing them, it just warps (education),” Voss said.

As the university molds to Bevin’s proposals, the quality of education that students receive will change. Elementary and high school students are often pushed through in order to fit certain outcome-based metrics, and this could be the case for higher education soon too.

“There’s never any explicit suggestion that we lower standards, just that we do a better job,” said mathematics professor James Brennan. “But the pressure is there, and I think it’s much worse for untenured faculty.”

With financial obligations, it is reasonable to predict that standards will be lowered, whether explicitly or implicitly, to keep these undesirable rates low.

In its core, outcome-based allocation is not terrible. Bevin’s proposal, though, has numerous potential problems to answer.

Patrick Brennan is the assistant opinions editor of the Kentucky Kernel.

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