THE “advancement” division of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville would seem to have been the source of just about everything except that university’s advancement.

Embarrassment, certainly.

Cumulative deficits and debt, oh, yes. And how. In the millions.

Backbiting and blame-shifting among its top officials, you bet. Complete with angry emails, defensive responses, and undignified scenes in public and private.

Contentious legislative hearings at which key witnesses attack each other’s veracity and integrity? That, too. Maybe with more to come.

Incompetence and arrogance? No shortage of those qualities, plus the usual, early reticence about a breaking scandal.

And along the way an extensive, just concluded investigation-by the local prosecutor’s office-of conflicting testimony about the university’s troubles from various high muckety-mucks. An investigation that, happily, found no basis for criminal charges.

No news is very good news in this case, and the various prosecutors and investigators are to be thanked for doing what appears to be a thorough and scarcely easy job. Peering through this thicket of numbers and associated bureaucratic minutiae can’t have been a simple task. It just needed to be done.

Then there’s the money it cost to keep paying the division’s head back then (Brad Choate) his impressive salary even after this scandal broke, when he was told he’d remain its director mainly in name only for the duration of his stay on campus, now happily ended.

Yep, lots going on in and with this division, but not much advancement. Just regression. And confusion a-plenty.

The cost of it all is still being tallied and the books still being adjusted to keep this “advancement” division operating under new management.

In order to make up for the division’s overspending, funds have had to be shifted from other departments and out of savings into expenses. How much? Estimates of the total overspent vary. From $5.3 million to maybe $5.8 or $6.2 million, depending on whose latest, cumulative figures you use. But this much is clear: The burden of making it all up has fallen on the rest of the university, its faculty and students, and the state’s taxpayers in general.

For now some $2.2 million in additional funding has been appropriated to operate the division without an annual deficit. A spokesman for the university (Mark Rushing), says the extra money will probably come from tuition fees as well as state appropriations and other public funds.

According to the Advancement Division’s new director (Chris Wyrick) now that the old one (Brad Choate) has left, the next budget has been trimmed down considerably. How? The real savings, he explains, “came from guys like me who are making less than the people we replaced. I’m making $100,000 less than Brad did.” Oh, the self-sacrifice, the privation! He’s said to be paid only $299,000 a year. Just tears you up, doesn’t it?

Editorial, Pages 18 on 12/13/2013