By ROGER ALFORD Associated Press FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP)
A private Appalachian university’s proposal to use coal tax money to give more mountain kids an opportunity to attend college would be only the latest of several initiatives to build “intellectual capital” in the impoverished region where residents often are stereotyped as uneducated and unsophisticated.
University of Pikeville President Paul Patton, a former Kentucky governor, caused eyebrows to arch in higher education circles with a proposal to turn his school into a public university funded with revenue from a tax on coal mined in Appalachia.
“To grow the economy, we have to have physical capital in terms of utilities and business parks and things of that nature, but we also are going to have to have intellectual capital,” Patton said. “We don’t yet have the intellectual capital to grow the economy, because we don’t have a public four-year university.”
A review by The Associated Press found that Patton’s proposal to earmark revenue from the so-called “coal severance tax” to education projects isn’t out of the norm, even though the money had tradition
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