Under a proposed budget released in March by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, public funding for higher education in Arkansas would be reduced by more than $2.4 million.
Nearly all of the schools in the University of Arkansas system would each see funding cuts in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, along with cuts for two-year state institutions.
University of Arkansas-Fayetteville was the only four-year state university campus that saw its funding increase in the budget proposal — a modest by 0.29%.
University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff will receive an increase in funding, as is required by federal law because of its status as a land-grant university.
The proposed budget would also increase the Children’s Education Freedom Account, which funds vouchers for private and parochial K-12 education, by nearly $66 million, or over 200%.
“I am proud that this year’s budget puts an end to government’s spiraling growth, while still fulfilling the priorities Arkansans elected me to implement,” Sanders wrote in a March letter to the General Assembly’s Joint Budget Committee.
In the letter, the governor also touted the increased funding for University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff.
But not everyone is pleased with the proposal.
Hershel Hartford, president of the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville Education Association, said that these funding cuts are part of a pattern across the country of programs and even departments being shut down or consolidated “because the programs are not profitable. … That concerns me.”
“The University of Arkansas-Fort Smith recently cut at least four majors,” he said, “including political science.”
He said he sees changes to the structure or offerings of a university because of funding concerns as a case where “public policy is deciding what research should be done.”
April Reisma, president of the Arkansas Education Association, said the state has been running a budget surplus for several years. She said that money should be used to broadly expand funding for education.
“Taking budget cuts from higher ed, instead of using the surplus to help higher ed to be more effective is just a gut punch,” she said. “It’s a slap in the face.”
How does the state’s funding model work?
The outcome-based model of funding, first adopted in Arkansas for fiscal year 2018, uses factors like graduation rates and amount of time to complete a degree.
According to documents from the Department of Higher Education’s website, “productivity” is measured based on “effectiveness” and “affordability.”
Effectiveness takes into account credentials awarded, “progression” and “transfer success” and is weighted to account for 80% of productivity.
Affordability, which makes up another 20%, is based on “time to degree” and “credentials at completion.”
Nick Fuller, assistant director of finance at the Arkansas Division of Higher Education, said Monday that colleges and universities are evaluated based on a three-year rolling average.
This year, the average for 2020, 2021 and 2022 was analyzed next to the “baseline average” productivity from 2019, 2020 and 2021.
Fiscal year 2025 will be the first time that the “comparative average” is taken all from years during the height of the COVID pandemic, which suppressed enrollment and graduation rates.
“This is the seventh year we’ve been using this model,” Fuller said. “This is the first year we’ve been negative” since the model was adopted for fiscal year 2018.
“More than likely,” Fuller said, productivity will rebound when statistics from 2023 are swapped out for those from 2020 in the three-year average.
“Even with that year added, we’re just barely negative,” Fuller said, citing a decrease in productivity of 0.14% between the two averages. Funding will be cut proportionally on a school-by-school basis.
“I don’t expect it to be devastating” for the universities, he said, noting that outcome-based funding cuts are capped at 2%. “Most of them are really good at making do with what they have.”
Officials of the University of Arkansas system did not respond to requests for comment.
What does this mean for the state university system?
Mike Pierce, a professor of history at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, said that cuts like these are part of a pattern of public policy going back to the 1980s.
Under a new pattern of austerity that emerged during that time, “Colleges and Universities weren’t seen as providing essential services that would lead to the prosperity of the state but were seen as drains on the state’s coffers,” he said.
The funding decreases “are not death blows,” Pierce said, but “thousands of cuts, if added up, will really strike at the heart of these institutions.”
“The leaders of these institutions are not going to say anything critical about the state government, but these are significant cuts,” he went on. “Half a million dollars at UALR? That [means] laying off several people, including instructors.”
Pierce said that, while the leaders of the university system signed off on the outcome-based funding model when it was adopted, that was because they didn’t have any practical ability to push back against the plan.
University leaders were faced with a message from the state, he said.
“‘We’re going to cut your funding, tell us how you want us to cut it,'” Pierce said. “The Hutchinson administration forced the college chancellors and presidents to come up with a formula rather than to fight it out.”
“It’s a signal to the state schools, that they need to look elsewhere if they want to increase revenue,” he said, “that the state is not going to help them.”
The governor’s proposed budget will go before the General Assembly during its next fiscal session, which begins on April 10.
