Nevada Governor Wants More Flexibility for Public Colleges

Gov. Jim Gibbons of Nevada, a Republican, has unveiled a set of measures meant to give public higher education more control over its finances and to operate more efficiently, reports the Las Vegas Sun. The public colleges would get more flexibility to set and spend fees and nonresident tuition, and the measures would exempt campus capital projects from some state oversight and allow institutions to keep up to a quarter of their unspent general funds each year, the newspaper reports. Ultimately, the plans are meant to make the institutions less reliant on state appropriations — the state’s Legislature recently cut higher-education money by 6.9 percent.