The Higher Education Coordinating Board on Friday extended a moratorium on new college campuses for 10 years, citing concerns that state appropriations don’t adequately cover the needs of existing institutions.
Board members also suggested asking state lawmakers to revise the formula used to divide funds among the campuses after learning about persistent inequities among institutions, particularly with two-year colleges.
While the board annually approves and recommends appropriation requests to the governor, those requests are created through a formula approved by the state Legislature that provides little flexibility in how public money is directed.
“Maybe it needs to be changed for more equity,” said board member Bob Crafton of Rogers.
The highest-funded twoyear college is set to receive $5,201 more per full-time equivalent student than the lowest-funded college under formula-driven funding recommendations for the 2011-12 academic year, also approved by the board Friday.
Under the plan, Phillips Community College of theUniversity of Arkansas is set to receive $7,497 per full-time equivalent student, or 100 percent of its need. Bentonvillebased Northwest Arkansas Community College is set to receive $2,296 per full-time equivalent student, or 59.3 percent of its need, calculated through the formula.
A school’s full-time equivalent enrollment is calculated by dividing the total number of credit hours taught in a semester by 15, the course load of the average full-time student.
The funding gap among public four-year universities is smaller. Under the proposal, lowest-funded University of Arkansas at Fort Smith would receive $4,070 per fulltime equivalent student, or 80.8 percent of its calculated need. Highest-funded University of Arkansas at Fayetteville would receive $6,992 per fulltime equivalent student.
Banning the creation of new colleges or the conversion of existing satellite campuses into independent institutions will prevent further dilution of state funding that already fails to cover needs, deputy director Stanley Williams told board members, who unanimously approved the moratorium.
“The same conditions exist that the board was concerned about when they [first] approved this,” he said.
The ban fixes the state’s public higher education institutions at 11 four-year universities and 22 two-year colleges. It prevents satellite units, which are off-campus sites housed under the administration of existing schools, from seeking independent status and separate appropriations under the funding formula.
The board wavered on retaining two exemptions from the original ban, which would allow Phillips Community College and the Heber Springs campus of Arkansas State University-Beebe to seek independent status if they could meet board requirements for funding and enrollment.
B oard members f irst unanimously approved a motion by Vice Chairman David Leech of Stuttgart to approve the measure with no exemptions.
After some members seemed confused on what they had approved, Leech created a new motion, retaining the exemption for the Heber Springs campus, which was unanimously approved.
Interim ASU System President Robert Potts and several ASU administrators said the Heber Springs campus had passed a local sales tax, but enrollment fell short of the500 full-time equivalent student minimum required to be independent.
“We don’t think it will happen in the next 10 years,” said Eugene McKay, chancellor of ASU-Beebe. “But having the possibility out there helps us create a lot of good will in the community.”
The higher-education funding formula, part of the Arkansas Code, uses factors including enrollment levels, facilities and special services needs to calculate recommended appropriations for the state’s public institutions. The Legislature then funds a percentage of the recommendation based on expected revenue for the next fiscal year.
Conservative funding requests for 2011 and 2012 academic years will likely not be fulfilled by struggling state revenue, Williams said.
“We haven’t been able to keep up with inflation and enrollment since the mid-’90s,” he said.
State law requires colleges to be funded at a minimum of the previous year’s levels, so colleges with stagnant or dwindling enrollment have seen an increase in per-student funding, while higherenrollment schools struggled to balance their budgets as funding failed to grow along with that enrollment.
Board members did not offer suggestions for how theformula should be revised, saying only that it might be appropriate to ask the Legislature to change it.
A January board agenda item that proposed revising the two-year formula was removed before the meeting with little explanation. The proposed revision called for a $3,000 per full-time equivalent student minimum and for new funding to first go to schools that hadn’t reached the threshold.
Ed Coulter, chancellor of ASU-Mountain Home, said most of the state’s two-year college presidents supported giving priority for new public funds to schools funded below 75 percent of their calculated need.
University of Arkansas at Little Rock Chancellor Joel Anderson urged board members to be careful with revisions.
He said the funding formula, while imperfect, has protected public colleges and universities from the “jungle situation” of warring political interests that have created inequities in the past.
UALR, which used to face funding shortfalls, has caught up to other schools over time, Anderson said.
“Over time, the institutions that are growing tend to catch up,” he said. “Of course, that happens more in good times than in bad.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 07/31/2010