I am thinking about a handshake as I look over the Arkansas acceptance form for the class of 2017 from the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine. My daughter received the letter on April 3, and signed it. It reads:
“I hereby accept the position offered in the Class of 2017 at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine. I understand that I have been selected as a contract student from Arkansas, and will be eligible for the Arkansas Higher Education Grant if I meet their residency criteria.”
In fact, 76 other Arkansas students received similar acceptance letters from various out-of-state professional schools of dentistry, optometry, podiatry, veterinary, chiropractic, and osteopathic medicine. It meant that these Arkansas students could attend these out-of-state schools with the same tuition rate as students who reside in those states. Like those other 76 families, we were thrilled. And we made plans for housing and moving, applied for student loans, looked over the new-student materials, and thought about how our child’s dreams were finally coming to pass.
One month later she received an email from LSU. This one took her breath away. It begins: “It is with deep regret …” and goes on to inform her that the Arkansas Higher Education Grant program has been cut, and that while the exact number of contract seats won’t be finalized until midsummer, it is very likely that some of the currently accepted students will not receive the grant.
Attached to this email is the letter signed by Shane Broadway, interim director of the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, “deeply regret[ting] that due to available funding, the state is unable to fund the full number of standard allocated contract slots in all of the [grant] programs.” The letter informs LSU that the exact number of allocations will be made after July 1.
Those two regrets represent over $110,000 worth of student loans and interest payments. Like playing the Arkansas lottery, we wondered, as did 76 other families, if we were one of the lucky and if this financial gamble would pay off in our favor. If it didn’t, we would have only one month before the school year began to deal with it.
Remember that handshake? The one that was made when my daughter decided on one vet school over another based on the grant program? The handshake that was made when she signed the acceptance form? It’s a handshake that goes back to February, when LSU, along with other professional schools, contacted the state about funding for 2013-2014 before they made the selection for the Arkansas slots.
Marci Manley of KARK-4 spoke with the associate dean of the LSU Veterinary School on May 15, who “told KARK he received a memo over the weekend [of May 11] outlining [that] not all those slots would be funded.” The dean noted: “We were very surprised. We had checked in with the [Arkansas] Department of Higher Education before making admission decisions in February, and they gave us no indication there would be a problem funding these slots. That’s why we went ahead and offered all nine students admission, without a caveat. We had no indication this would be a problem.”
I imagine that this surprise occurred in 25 other institutions when they received a similar memo and then had to decide what to do with 77 Arkansas students.
The Department of Higher Education explained that students were warned all along that this might happen. But no amount of “the disclaimer is on the site,” or “we have been warning the students that this might happen since 2007” is enough to push the blame on the student for taking the state at its word-its handshake. Even the professional schools weren’t prepared or warned.
This was a contract between the student and the state, and between the professional schools and the state. Breaking it is a breach of contract not only with 77 students, but also these schools.
My daughter can go anywhere she wants for her education and pay for it. If she decided to be a lawyer or a doctor, there are Arkansas schools offering those professional degrees. And if she were to go to these institutions, she is granted in-state tuition. But because there are no schools in Arkansas that offer the degrees she and other students sought, they had no choice but to go to out-of-state schools. The state understands this problem and created the Arkansas Health Education Grant Program in 1999 to remedy it by, according to the department, providing “assistance for Arkansas residents attending certain out-of-state accredited health and medical professional schools for graduate or professional programs that are unavailable in Arkansas.”
What this means is that those 77 students aren’t asking for special treatment above and beyond any other student enrolled in this state. As Arkansas residents they expect to be treated equally with other residents. If the state wants to build specialized in-state schools so that those 77 students can apply and receive in-state tuition, that’s great. But I imagine it’s cheaper just to honor the commitments the state has already made and honor their contracts with students and families before this school year begins in three months.
To urge Gov. Mike Beebe to do the right thing, sign the petition at petitions.moveon.org/sign/arkansas-honor-your-commitme.
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David Bailin of Little Rock is an artist, professor and parent.
Editorial, Pages 17 on 05/24/2013