BENTONVILLE -- Northwest Arkansas Community College President Evelyn Jorgenson said she is encouraged by efforts to change how the state allots money to its colleges and universities but added it's too early to tell what the impact of any change will be.
The state's higher-education leaders have worked for months to design a new funding formula that emphasizes outcomes and performance to replace the current formula, which is based largely on enrollment.
State funding
Northwest Arkansas Community College, the largest two-year school in the state, expects to receive $11.6 million this fiscal year in state money, about 28.7 percent of its total anticipated revenue for the year. The rest of its revenue comes mostly from tuition, fees and a millage that applies to the Bentonville and Rogers school districts.
Source: Staff report
"Absolutely, I think there's room for improvement," Jorgenson said. "It's a good thing to emphasize positive outcomes for students. We're not opposed to being graded on our performance. We think we're going to fare very well in some kind of environment that measures performance."
At the same time, the college wants a formula that's fair, she said. Details of the plan have yet to be finalized.
"That's part of the concern. None of us know how it's going to impact our institutions, because we haven't had a formula given to us yet that we can really run the numbers through," Jorgenson said.
State funding to public colleges and universities has remained flat for several years. Northwest Arkansas Community College officials long have pointed out they receive far less state money per full-time student than other two-year schools in the state, meaning the college must make up for that deficit with tuition and fees.
"I'm a bit puzzled by the current formula, because it isn't applied equally across the state," Jorgenson said. "Some schools are funded at 100 percent or even a little beyond that. Some schools are funded at 50 percent. That kind of begs the question, why have a formula if you're not going to apply it equally across institutions?"
The push for an outcomes- and performance-based funding model is driven by the state's master plan for higher education, which calls for increasing the number of postsecondary credentials by 50 percent over the 2013-14 academic year levels by 2020.
Job projections in 2020 show 59 percent of adults will need some postsecondary credential to be prepared for the workforce. In 2014, less than 40 percent of Arkansas adults possessed such credentials, according to Brett Powell, director of the Arkansas Department of Higher Education.
A committee of about a dozen community college and university representatives worked since last fall on a new funding model. Debi Buckley, Northwest Arkansas Community College's vice president of finance and administration, served on that committee.
A framework for the new funding model will be presented at the Arkansas Department of Higher Education's Coordinating Board at its next meeting July 29. Jorgenson plans to be there.
If the board approves the proposal, additional work would be needed to refine the details, Powell said. The plan then would require the Legislature's approval.
Higher-education funding traditionally has been driven largely by enrollment, but several states have adopted outcomes and performance-based models. Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana and Oregon are among the states that have moved in that direction.
"We've definitely read the literature about those states in particular," Powell said. "But we've intentionally not tried to replicate what has happened in other states because we want to build a model that works for Arkansas."
Institutions want to be held accountable for the money they receive, and an outcomes-based model does that, Powell said.
If the colleges and universities succeed in achieving the goals for degrees and certificates awarded, they will be rewarded with more money.
"More resources means more success, and we're more likely to reach that goal by 2020," he said.
Powell is leaving the director's position at the end of this month to become vice president for finance and administration at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia. Ann Clemmer, a former state representative who now serves as the department's senior associate director for academic affairs, has been named interim leader.
State Sen. Uvalde Lindsey, D-Fayetteville, is vice chairman of the Senate Education Committee. He said he hasn't followed the development of the new funding plan closely and has no idea what the effects of it would be.
"Someone's got to prove to me it's the right thing to do," Lindsey said. "If it's better for the students and institutions and delivers a better outcome, if you can prove that to me, that's fine."
Any time a formula is changed, Lindsey added, "There are winners and losers, and there are unintended consequences."
NW News on 07/10/2016