LITTLE ROCK — Protesting, 2 balk at sports-fee report
EL DORADO - Two Higher Education Coordinating Board members refused to approve a routine report on athletic expenditures Friday, citing concerns about the reliance on student athletic fees to fund university sports programs.
“It’s just awful that we are, on the backs of students, funding programs that aren’t necessary to the life of the university. Period,” board member Kaneaster Hodges said at a meeting at South Arkansas Community College.
Nine of the state’s universities plan to subsidize between 19 percent and 78.7 percent of their athletics budgets with fees collected from students in the 2012-13 academic year, according to a new report from the Arkansas Department of Higher Education.
Those budgets require students to pay athletic fees ranging from $13 to $17 per credit hour, whether they ever attend a game.
The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville has the only athletic program in the state that does not rely on student fees to supplement its budget.
The board has no authority to change how the universities structure their athletics budgets. Rather, it reviews the report annually.
Hodges votes down the report every year so he “can sleep at night,” he said. Board member Horace Hardwick also voted against approving the report.
Report: State holds
52% of graduates
EL DORADO - Nearly 52 percent of students who graduated from Arkansas public schools in the 2010-11 school year went on to attend an instate college or university the next school year, according to a report by the Arkansas Department of Higher Education.
The remaining students either did not immediately go to a college or university or chose to attend out of state.
Arkansas public universities attracted the most students from the class of 2011 at 32 percent. In-state two-year colleges enrolled 16.5 percent of those students, and private Arkansas institutions enrolled 3.2 percent, according to the report.
Bond issues OK’d
for two schools
EL DORADO - The Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board approved bond plans Friday for the University of Central Arkansas and North Arkansas College.
UCA plans to issue $12.5 million in bonds to purchase the Bear Village apartment complex.
The 600-bed apartment complex is owned by the UCA Foundation and leased by UCA, according to the bond proposal.
North Arkansas College will use proceeds from $3.5 million in bonds to construct, equip and furnish a science building, according to its proposal.
Arkansas, Pages 18 on 07/28/2012