Boards of trustees for the University of Arkansas System, the Arkansas State University System and Arkansas Tech University approved increases in tuition and fees Thursday, raising the cost of attendance for students at seven of the state’s public four-year universities, eight of its community colleges and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
Campus leaders said the increases are necessary as personnel and operating expenses have increased and as state appropriations have failed to keep pace with enrollment growth over the past decade. Institutions will commit the new funds to student-retention efforts, campus security and salary increases for faculties and staffs, leaders said.
In a rare move, UA trustees rejected the initial tuition proposals of four of that system’s universities, acting on the recommendation of the board’s Fiscal Affairs Committee to cap their student-cost increases at lower levels. While acknowledging the funding needs of the system’s institutions, board members who voted in favor of the measure said they wanted to limit cost increases in a time of growing student debt loads and relatively small increases in average household income.
“Somebody’s got to say something about the families, and somebody needs to say something about the students,” UA Trustee Ben Hyneman of Jonesboro said. “In a big organization, there are always ways to cut.”
After the boards’ actions Thursday, tuition and fees for an in-state, undergraduate student at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville will increase 3.5 percent in the 2013-14 academic year, from $7,554 to $7,818. That cost is for a student taking 30 credit hours over two semesters.
A similar student at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock will pay $7,601, a 3.5 percent increase from 2012-13 tuition and fees, which totalled $7,344.
Costs for all institutions may vary, depending on students’ total course load and field of study.
UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS
A divided UA board, meeting in Stuttgart, approved 5-4 the increases for the system’s five universities and five community colleges at the recommendation of the Fiscal Affairs Committee.
In an unprecedented move, that committee met with chancellors of all four year UA campuses who had requested tuition and fee increases in excess of 3.5 percent last week to discuss their expenses, cost-cutting measures and student demographics before acting upon the recommendations.
Committee members then recommended capping the proposed tuition and fee increases at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock at 3.5 percent.They recommended limiting the University of Arkansas at Monticello’s increase to 4.2 percent and capping cost growth at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff to 4.3 percent.
Chancellors on those campuses must now adjust their budgets to lower levels of anticipated tuition revenue.
UALR Chancellor Joel Anderson said he will likely have to cancel plans for faculty and staff raises after the board’s vote. UAPB interim Chancellor Calvin Johnson said that he may have to leave some faculty vacancies unfilled and that he “can’t rule out” some layoffs to balance the university’s budget.
UA Trustee Cliff Gibson of Monticello received a round of applause from chancellors and administrators Thursday, when he asked the board to reject the committee’s recommendation and to approve the initial cost-increase requests of chancellors, which were as high as 10 percent at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith. The UA-Fort Smith request would have put the tuition and fee cost for 30 credit hours over two semesters at $5,982.
Gibson read a note he said he’d received from an unnamed chancellor, who said he “never asks for anything without really needing it.”
“Unless there is convincing evidence that our chancellors are wrong, we need to back them up,” Gibson said.
But Fiscal Affairs Committee Chairman Jim von Gremp of Rogers said he was too concerned about the limited or flat increase in the state’s average family incomes to allow campuses to raise costs at the levels they’d requested.
Von Gremp said he appreciated Gibson’s thoughts about the need for more higher education funding, “But, quite frankly, I think they’re better suited for the Legislature than for the tuition process,” he said.
The five four-year universities in the UA System have seen total annual enrollment climb by more than 7,000 full-time-equivalent students from fiscal 2008 to today, the UA System said. Full-time-equivalent enrollment is calculated by dividing the total number of credit hours taught on campus in a semester by 15, the average full-time course load.
Meanwhile, state funding per full-time-equivalent student has not kept pace, falling by 17 percent from $7,210 to $5,994 during that time, according to data from the Arkansas Department of Higher Education.
The board also approved tuition and fee increases for the UA System’s five community colleges, which will see total costs for a typical student increase between 3.2 percent at the University of Arkansas Community College at Hope - from $2,346 to $2,421 - to 9.1 percent at Cossatot Community College at the University of Arkansas in De Queen - from $2,302 to $2,512.
All UA community colleges requested new or increased campus safety fees as part of a system wide effort, UA System spokesman Ben Beaumont said.
Trustees who voted in favor of the committee proposal were von Gremp, Hyneman, Mark Waldrip of Moro and David Pryor of Little Rock and John Goodson of Texarkana. Those who opposed were Gibson, Reynie Rutledge of Searcy, Stephen Broughton of Pine Bluff and Sam Hilburn of North Little Rock.
Trustee Jane Rogers of Little Rock was absent.
ARKANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY
Tuition and fees at Arkansas State University-Jonesboro will rise 4.6 percent, from $7,180 to $7,510.
ASU System President Charles L. Welch said the tuition and fee increases were necessary to fund 3 percent cost-of-living raises for faculty. He said the Jonesboro campus was funded well below state-recommended funding levels, prompting the need for the increases.
“It’s never an easy process,” Welch said during the meeting, held at the ASU-Newport campus in Jonesboro. “We realize it is a burden on students and parents.”
That cost includes a new facilities fee of $3 per credit hour, which campus leaders expect to generate about $750,000 in annual revenue.Proceeds from the facilities fee in the short-term will be used for critical maintenance work, facility upgrades and renovations. In the long-term, it will be used to finance capital projects.
The fee is similar to facilities fees at other campuses, such as UA-Fayetteville, that have been put into place in the absence of a dedicated capital-revenue stream from the state, Welch said.
The board also approved tuition and increases for its ASU-Beebe, ASU-Mountain Home and ASU-Newport campuses.
On the Beebe campus, tuition and fees increased 6 percent from $2,610 to $2,760. At ASU-Mountain Home, students’ tuition and fee costs will rise 3.4 percent from $2,640 to $2,730. At ASU-Newport, tuition and fees will increase from $2,640 to $2,790, a 5.7 percent bump.
ARKANSAS TECH UNIVERSITY
The Arkansas Tech University board of trustees unanimously approved a 6 percent increase in tuition and fees in Russellville on Thursday. An in-state, undergraduate student enrolled in 30 credit hours for two semesters will now pay $6,918 for the 2013-14 academic year, compared with $6,528 in 2012-13.
Arkansas Tech spokesman Sam Strasner said the new tuition rate will help fund increases in health-insurance costs for university employees and the costs of maintaining programs that are “expensive to operate” - such as engineering and nursing.
STATE FUNDING
Arkansas’ higher education leaders have asked state lawmakers for years to increase the amount of money they channel toward public colleges and universities. But other areas have been larger budget priorities, and chancellors and presidents don’t expect that to change soon.
The state is constitutionally mandated to fully fund its kindergarten-through-high school public schools according to a court-approved formula. Arkansas also must pay for its share of the state’s Medicaid program, and prisons present a significant needs, higher education leaders said.
Unlike many other states, which have cut total higher education funding during the recent economic slowdown, Arkansas has maintained consistent levels of funding for its colleges and universities in recent years, sometimes approving increases. But those increases have not been enough to fund all of Arkansas’ institutions at levels called for by a state-approved higher education needs funding formula.
Despite a state funding increase totaling about $6 million for the fiscal year that starts July 1, six of the state’s 10 four-year, public universities are funded at below 75 percent of their need.
The Arkansas Legislature recently approved 16 measures that the state estimates will reduce total state tax revenue by $11 million in fiscal 2014, $97.2 million in 2015 and $160 million in 2016. Higher-education leaders said they fear those tax cuts may result in subsequent reductions in funding for their institutions, giving them little choice but to continue to increase student costs.
“When our chancellors are faced with that kind of situation, they only have one place to make it up,” Gibson said.
Information for this article was contributed by Jacy Marmaduke and Kenneth Heard of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/24/2013