Students who earn an associate degree at one of the University of Arkansas System's seven community colleges will soon be able to transfer to the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville and pay much less in tuition than they would have previously.
They'll be able to attend UA while paying the same amount of tuition per credit hour that they paid at their community college under the school's new Arkansas Transfer Achievement Scholarship.
Students must be accepted into the university under regulation admissions standards and meet certain requirements. They must be an Arkansas resident, have a cumulative 2.0 grade-point average, have earned an associate degree by December 2018 or later and attend the university on campus, either as a full-time or part-time degree-seeking student.
The change should benefit more than just the university in Fayetteville, said Stephen Cole, chancellor of Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas.
More people will see more value in enrolling in community colleges, including people who may not have attended college at any level, Cole said. A lower-cost bachelor's degree has that power, he said.
"It's a game-changer," he said. "It's a life-changer."
Tuition and fees, for those who complete their bachelor's degree at UA, will amount to a discount of thousands of dollars, as much as $6,000 in a single year for a student who earned an associate degree at Phillips Community College of the University of Arkansas, according to tuition and fee tables analyzed by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. That's if the student takes 30 credits hours over the fall and spring semesters.
University officials could not confirm this week how many transfer students the school receives who have associate degrees from UA System community colleges. The system office did not have the data, and the Department of Higher Education could not pull data by the end of the workday Friday.
UA enrolled 1,412 undergraduate transfer students -- 5.8% of its 24,344 undergraduates -- in fall 2017, the latest year for which National Center for Education Statistics data are available. The data set does not distinguish how many of those transfer students had earned associate degrees -- or where -- prior to enrolling.
That's a higher percentage than three of the other UA four-year schools -- Fort Smith, Monticello and Pine Bluff -- but much lower than the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, which focuses much of its enrollment efforts on transfer students, particularly from community colleges. At UALR, which is trying to turn around a yearslong enrollment decline, 9% of its undergraduates were transfer students in fall 2017.
Federal College Scorecard data on percentages of students who transfer to four-year schools were not available for Arkansas community colleges.
Public community colleges in Arkansas awarded 9,039 associate degrees during the 2018 academic year, according to the Arkansas Department of Higher Education's latest credentials reports. Only seven of the state's 22 public community colleges are in the University of Arkansas System.
All community colleges awarded 15,320 total credentials, which is not broken down by associate degree or certificate. UA System community colleges awarded 4,812 of those.
Cole said he did not have access to the his college's data on associate graduate transfers to UA but said he believed the college tracked that information.
Whatever the number is, he said, it's likely to go up.
UA-Fayetteville Chancellor Joe Steinmetz announced the transfer scholarship May 9 during his commencement speech at the University of Arkansas Community College at Rich Mountain.
"For many students, particularly ones starting out at two-year institutions, financial need is one of the bigger obstacles to attaining a bachelor's degree," Steinmetz said, according to a university news release. "It is our responsibility as the state's flagship and land-grant university to reduce obstacles Arkansans face to earning a degree and improving the pathways to get there."
At the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees meeting this week, chairman John Goodson, who attended the graduation, thanked Steinmetz for starting the scholarship.
Goodson said he believed the announcement was well-received by what he perceived to be looks of excitement on the graduates' faces in Mena.
For many students struggling financially or who feel bound to their current location, Cole said, lower bachelor's degree tuition may make them feel less defeated by the idea of going to college or to UA.
"Sometimes a university or college that is three or four hours away, it might as well be on the other side of the earth," he said. "Something like this may serve as a spark."
Tuition and fees at UA are normally $9,384.90 for students taking 30 credit hours over the fall and spring semesters and enrolled in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, which has the lowest technology fee among the colleges.
Other majors, such as business and architecture, pay higher tuition, and students in other UA colleges pay higher technology fees, as much as $35.87 per credit hour for engineering students.
Depending on the student's major, UA can be the most expensive of Arkansas' public universities for tuition and fees.
Arkansas Transfer Achievement Scholarship students will have to pay the difference in tuition for those majors with higher tuition costs, and they will have to pay all mandatory UA fees and those that apply to their major.
Tuition is far lower at community colleges than it is at UA. Tuition is $252.28 per credit hour at UA and anywhere from $68 per credit hour to $134 per credit hour for in-district students at the system's community colleges.
Using their tuition and UA's fees, a student who is enrolled in the College of Arts and Sciences would pay anywhere from $3,856.50 per year to $5,836.50 per year while taking 30 credit hours over the fall and spring semesters.
Metro on 05/28/2019