Enrollment down this spring at UA
FAYETTEVILLE -- Fewer undergraduates enrolled at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville this spring than in recent years, with the 21,334 total the lowest for a spring semester since 2017, according to preliminary data from UA.
The number of undergraduates declined by 2.17% compared with the spring of 2019, when 21,808 undergraduates enrolled.
Undergraduate and total student enrollment declined at UA for the first time in more than 15 years last fall. The fall 2019 undergraduate enrollment fell to 23,025 students, a drop of 1.54% compared with the fall of 2018.
Suzanne McCray, UA's vice provost for enrollment and dean of admissions, said in an email that the spring declines were expected.
"Spring is not a growth time generally, and we were down approximately 400 new freshmen in the fall of last year, so we knew we would be down that number this spring," McCray said.
She called the dip "relatively minor" considering the rapid growth experienced by UA over the past several years. The university saw total enrollment increase from under 20,000 in the fall of 2009 to more than 27,000 students last fall.
Spring total enrollment at UA also decreased, falling to 25,711 students from 26,062 students in the spring of 2019, a decline of about 1.35%, according to preliminary data.
Letter delves into funds lost to fraud
FAYETTEVILLE -- A financial loss of $118,971 incurred by UA-Fayetteville when vendor payments were routed in 2018 "to an apparent fraudulent recipient" was highlighted in a Jan. 29 letter from the chief audit executive for the University of Arkansas System.
The letter from Laura Cheak, addressed to the UA board of trustees, summarized Arkansas Legislative Audit comments regarding the previous fiscal year. The letter and the Arkansas Legislative Audit comments were presented during a Jan. 29-30 board meeting.
An internal audit by the UA System "found that one vendor's banking information was altered through a domain not belonging to the vendor, resulting in 15 unauthorized" payments, the letter stated. The payments totaled $132,079 but a bank recovered $13,108, the letter states.
The audit took place after UA alerted auditors of the suspected payment fraud.
A University of Arkansas police department report released to the Democrat-Gazette states that UA employees told investigators about an email received in September 2018 telling them that the vendor's account had been closed, leading to payments being sent to a new account.
As part of an investigation, UA's chief information security officer at the time, Alan Greenberg, reviewed the email, the police report states. Greenberg told a police investigator that the email came from a computer server in the Netherlands and was of Russian origin, with no way to gather evidence leading to a suspect, the report states. The police investigation was placed on inactive status in January 2019.
UA spokesman Mark Rushing said no employee lost their job or was suspended. Rushing said in an email that in addition to "extensive" employee training, "the University has taken multiple steps to prevent such an occurrence from happening in the future but it would be counter to their purpose to describe these means of preventing access to the University's computers, networks, and data."
SundayMonday on 02/09/2020