LITTLE ROCK — Members of the University of Arkansas board of trustees expressed concern Friday about one university’s plan to offer a four-year degree at a location about 30 minutes from its campus, labeling it “campus creep.”
The University of Arkansas at Little Rock will offer a bachelor’s degree in e-commerce at its Benton site in the fall 2012 semester, Chancellor Joel Anderson told board members.
The idea did not sit well with trustee John Tyson of Springdale, who said it could strain limited funds if UALR and other UA institutions continue to develop such programs.
“I think we need to acknowledge this is a crack in the dam toward a four-year college in another town,” Tyson said. “Let’s call it what it is.”
Anderson said the interdisciplinary degree will not create any new expense for UALR because it was created by combining and reconfiguring programs, and it will be taught entirely by existing faculty.
The new e-commerce degree will combine business, information-technology and liberal-arts classes to create a program to train students in multiple aspects of online commerce.
“It is certainly not our intention to start another four year campus there,” he said. “It has got to support itself.”
UALR has offered classes in Benton since 1975, when it offered night courses. But this will be the first full degree to be offered at the site and the first offered by a four-year university at a center that is not a full satellite campus.
The Benton center now offers only core classes for a general associate degree.
Benton Mayor David Mattingly said the e-commerce degree was the result of encouragement from local leaders, who saw the program as a catalyst for growth in the area.
“Our community is committed to economic development, and we are committed to UALR,” he said.
Mattingly told board members of a single mother in Benton who didn’t want to pay hundreds of dollars for gas and child care to pursue a degree in Little Rock.
Benton city leaders intend to raise private funds to finance construction of a UALR satellite building for the program and other classes offered in the Saline County town, he said.
“Do you really need another campus that close?” Carl Johnson, a trustee from Little Rock, asked.
Anderson said UALR has about 600 students at the Benton site, a renovated middle school, which it will outgrow in three years if enrollment trends continue.
UALR surveyed nearby colleges and universities about its plans to offer the degree and none objected, he said.
Lawmakers have long been concerned about “mission creep,” when a university offers degrees outside of its original mission and “campus creep,” when it expands to off campus sites.
The Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board has a ban on the creation of new colleges or the conversion of existing satellite campuses into independent institutions, fearing such growth would add to administrative costs and rob institutions of economies of scale that can be realized by teaching students in one location.
Trustee David Pryor of Little Rock said the new degree could be a valuable addition to UALR, helping nontraditional students to get degrees and work in a growing field.
“Maybe we should ask ourselves how much it would cost us if we didn’t do this,” he said.
But Tyson remained hesitant, saying the Benton site could eventually add four-year degrees in other areas, such as English.
“It’s not that we don’t want to support our kids,” he said. “But the system only has so much money.”
The coordinating board will next review the proposal.
Front Section, Pages 8 on 03/31/2012