Tuition, fee increases at UA campuses get 1st approval; vote by full board set today

David Pryor, a member of the University of Arkansas board of trustees, listens to a report on tuition and fees during a meeting on the University of Arkansas at Little Rock campus on Wednesday. Pryor is a member of the board’s Academic and Student Affairs Committee.
David Pryor, a member of the University of Arkansas board of trustees, listens to a report on tuition and fees during a meeting on the University of Arkansas at Little Rock campus on Wednesday. Pryor is a member of the board’s Academic and Student Affairs Committee.

A committee of the University of Arkansas board of trustees gave the initial green light Wednesday for tuition and fee increases — ranging from the lowest of 2.24 percent for the University of Arkansas Community College at Hope to the highest of 8.02 percent at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff — for the 2017-18 school year.

The rates will get a second vote by the full board today.

Of the four-year campuses, three — Fayetteville, Fort Smith and Pine Bluff — asked for tuition and fee increases, while the Little Rock and Monticello campuses asked for increases in fees alone.

Of the community colleges, three campuses — Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas, the University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton and the University of Arkansas Community College at Rich Mountain — asked for tuition and fee increases. Two — Hope and the University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville — asked to raise tuition alone. Two others — Phillips Community College of the University of Arkansas and the University of Arkansas Pulaski Technical College — asked for fee increases.

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UA System President Donald Bobbitt said the campus chancellors started discussions about the rates in January, when Bobbitt asked them to prioritize their most pressing needs.

“I would say the chancellors as a group cited two things as being absolutely pressing needs, that is the need to compensate faculty and staff competitively so we don’t lose talent to other institutions outside of the system or outside of the state,” he said.

“And the second thing is in anticipation of the way that higher education will be funded in the state of Arkansas, each of our campuses really had to make a sustained and considerable effort to help our students succeed — not that we haven’t in the past, but we’ve really had to double down on those efforts. What was absolutely a moral imperative in the past has become both a moral and economic imperative as we move forward.”

All campuses also are required to put one-half percent of any tuition and fee increase into a systemwide software project that will house all student-services information, financial data and human-resource matters in one place. Also, because of a new law that switched all classified employees at colleges and universities from under an arm of the state Department of Finance and Administration to the state Department of Higher Education, institutions will now be able to give raises to those employees. Eight campuses have planned raises.

Other Arkansas public universities have raised tuition and fee rates, from 1.83 percent at Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia to 3.65 percent at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. Arkansas State University trustees are to meet in June.

Wednesday’s requests come as higher-education leaders across the nation are focusing on access, success and affordability for their students. In Arkansas, the three areas are the focus of a new state funding method for public colleges and universities that is set to start July 1, 2018. State funding for higher education institutions has otherwise remained the same for the past decade, while the costs of operating a school have increased by 16 percent, Bobbitt said.

Nationwide — and in Arkansas — colleges and universities have become more dependent on tuition and fee revenue as state appropriations have dropped or stagnated through the years. Higher-education institutions also get income from private donations.

Trustee Cliff Gibson of Monticello said he had a “personal concern” about students who are taking out loans to pay their way through higher education.

“Maybe nobody believes in investing in our kids anymore with our tax dollars, but I think it’s time we need to start thinking about it,” Gibson said. “Everyone on this board, our parents and our folks and our state government made it possible for us to go to college, and when we got out, we’d buy houses. We were doing things.

“These kids can’t do it. I don’t mean for this to turn into a sermon, but … I think us, collectively as a people, have got to start thinking about if we want to have public institutions, we’re going to have to pay some taxes and we’re going to have to give it to higher education. We’ve got to quit being stingy with it, and invest in our young people.”

Many of the questions Wednesday revolved around UAPB’s increase, which includes a $10-per-credit-hour increase — backed by students — to the facilities fee for a new student union.

Gibson asked why the university needed to raise tuition and fee rates when the university has reserves, which he thought were about $40 million.

The university has drawn down its education and general revenue reserves to about $14 million now as it has worked on projects throughout the campus, said Carla Martin, UAPB vice chancellor for finance and administration. And even some of that is earmarked for other projects, she said. The campus has used its reserves to fund a new strategic plan and campus master plan, Martin said.

UAPB also is building an $11 million dormitory that will be ready for the fall semester, university Chancellor Laurence Alexander said. On top of that, it is renovating another dormitory as a part of a $19 million energy project that, in total, will deliver savings to the university, he said.

Because the student union is considered an “auxiliary enterprise,” Alexander said education and general revenue reserves cannot be used for the project. The university will start getting together bids for architects to do preliminary work before determining how much the union will cost, Alexander said, giving a rough estimate of $35 million. He anticipates using a federal loan or a bond issue to pay for it.

Trustees John Goodson of Texarkana and Stephen Broughton of Pine Bluff asked UAPB administrators about getting a new track facility, something that Goodson said has been on the table for the past two or three years.

UAPB has estimated a track and field facility would cost $7 million to $8 million and has earmarked some auxiliary reserves — those sit at $2 million to $3 million — for the project, Martin said. The university also will be able to use some education and general revenue funds, as the building will be used for physical education as well, she said.

The university would have to raise the rest, Alexander said.

“We have made some asks,” he said, “but we have not had many takers.”

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Information about proposed UA System tuition and fees. *Correction: UA-Fayetteville's increase is 2.75 percent

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