From Kentucky Public Radio's Tony McVeighThe panel searching for a new president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education continues to make good progress.Applications are still being taken, but the cutoff date for preferential consideration has come and gone. Presidential search committee chair John Hall tells Kentucky Public Radio, 44 candidates from Kentucky and across the nation met the deadline."We’re pleased with the number of candidates that we have and believe we’ve had a good response to our request for people to reply," says Hall.In coming weeks, the search committee will begin paring down the list of applicants, and then set up interviews with those left standing. The full board hopes to hire a new CPE president by the end of the year and Hall says, at this point, the search remains on schedule.