Kentucky Education

Kentucky maintains eight public four-year colleges and universities. The two major research institutions are the University of Kentucky, which is the flagship and land grant of the system, and the University of Louisville. Both combine for over 99% of endowment in the system and rank first or second in academic rankings and average ACT scores in the state system. The other six colleges in the state system are regional universities.

The state's sixteen public two-year colleges have been governed by the Kentucky Community and Technical College System since the passage of the Postsecondary Education Improvement Act of 1997, commonly referred to as House Bill 1.[88] Prior to the passage of House Bill 1, most of these colleges were under the control of the University of Kentucky.

Berea College, located at the extreme southern edge of the Bluegrass below the Cumberland Plateau, was the first coeducational college in the South to admit both black and white students, doing so from its very establishment in 1855.[89] This policy was successfully challenged in the United State Supreme Court in the case of Berea College v. Kentucky in 1908.[90] This decision effectively segregated Berea until the landmark Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

Kentucky has been the site of much educational reform over the past two decades. In 1989, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that the state's education system was unconstitutional.[91] The response of the General Assembly was passage of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) the following year. Years later, Kentucky has shown progress, but most agree that further reform is needed.[92]

The University of Louisville is one of Kentucky's premier universities.