Feature image: Chris Thomason, vice president of planning and development at the University of Arkansas System, speaks about the upcoming merger with North Arkansas Community College in Harrison. (Photo courtesy of Northark)
The higher education landscape in Arkansas is changing. The newly signed Arkansas ACCESS Act has challenged colleges and universities to ensure a robust return on investment from their programs in the form of postgraduation earnings and employment while enhancing noncredit workforce training.
Meanwhile, institutions of higher learning are preparing to navigate a demographic trend known as the enrollment cliff stemming from a significantly reduced pool of high school graduates. Add to that emerging technology and shifting industry needs, and it is clear that colleges and universities need to be smart about balancing budgets, structuring programs, and recruiting and retaining students.
Instructor Rick Williams will teach the drone program at North Arkansas College. (Photo provided by Northark)
Major Merger on the Horizon
North Arkansas College in Harrison is preparing to join the University of Arkansas System, Rick Massengale, president of the soon-to-be North Arkansas College of the University of Arkansas, said the merger is a boon to the college’s students, employees and community.
Rick Massengale
“We’re just a small piece of the puzzle, but they are a bigger piece of the puzzle,” he said. “With their resources and us with our skill sets that we bring to the table, it gives our region here that ability to at least have the opportunities to have the same education that they’re getting in some of the major areas of the state.”
Students who earn their associate’s degrees from North Arkansas College will be able to complete their four-year degrees at the U of A for Northark prices, he said, while employees can advance their education using in-system discounts. The merger also allows for partnerships with the UA System Division of Agriculture Cooperative Extension Service and other system-affiliated entities, he said.
Arkansas State University in Jonesboro is banking on its athletics program to help facilitate community engagement. (Photo courtesy of ASU)
A Focus on Partnerships
Colleges and universities across the state are honing in on partnerships with industries, K-12 schools and the local community. At Arkansas State University, Chancellor Todd Shields is banking on the success of the school’s athletics program to facilitate community engagement.
“In many ways athletics is the front porch of the campus to the community,” he said. “It’s really helped the community and industries become involved in ways they never were able to before, and that’s been great for the campus, it’s been great for students, and it’s been great for the industries too.”
Todd Shields
He added that ASU has been working with Arkansas Northeastern College in Blytheville and ASU-Newport to provide workforce development programs in manufacturing, food processing and steel, as well as providing research and development for steel companies.
Other ways the university is working to address workforce shortages include enhancements at its medical school and the forthcoming college of veterinary medicine.
Northark is working with the Clinton School District, Clinton Municipal Airport and Dawson Aircraft to provide hands-on aircraft maintenance training to high school seniors, said Massengale. The college is also working to meet the needs of the future by building the Northark Center for Robotics and Manufacturing Innovation and conducting drone training in partnership with the U of A.
Bruno Hicks
Meanwhile, Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia is partnering with companies such as Albemarle and Standard Lithium to prepare students for careers in the burgeoning lithium industry, said Bruno Hicks, president. SAU is also working to expand its engineering program and partners with local public schools to provide education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, he said.
A student participates in the phlebotomy program at UAM. (Photo provided by UAM)
Partnerships are front of mind at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, said Chancellor Peggy Doss. The university’s campus-within-a-campus model, the first of its kind in Arkansas, allows students at several two-year colleges to earn four-year degrees in areas such as nursing, education, computer information systems and business administration from UAM without leaving the campus where they earned their associate’s degree.
Peggy Doss
“That’s a way that we’re doing outreach across the state to be able to deliver more four-year degrees to areas of Arkansas that those students may not always have the opportunity and the ability to go to other places or to travel to a campus,” she said. “We are expanding that program and will continue to expand that program with other community colleges across the state.”
A similar program is underway to provide phlebotomy education to students at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock.
The University of Arkansas at Monticello is home to the region’s premier forestry program. (Photo provided by UAM)
UAM is also working on a pilot program for a collegiate academy that would allow select high school students from Drew Central School District in Monticello to study on the UAM campus and graduate high school with an associate’s degree.
That is on top of existing partnerships with Five Oaks Duck Lodge, and Doss said she expects the Arkansas Forest Health Research Center currently under construction to facilitate further engagement with the forestry and agriculture industries.
The Enrollment Cliff
The enrollment cliff weighs heavily on the mind of Houston Davis, chancellor at the University of Arkansas in Conway, who began helping UCA prepare for the drop-off in enrollment when he joined the university in 2017.
Houston Davis
“We began looking not at things that we had to do in 2017 but looking forward. We talked about the bridges that we would need to develop into the fiscal year ῾26, ῾27, ῾28,” he said. “That was kind of crazy to be talking about a decade before we really had those pressures.”
Taking a revenue-centered management approach, the university began working on “right-sizing” its staff, shrinking from 1,475 to 1,330 full-time employees over the past eight years with no layoffs, Davis said. Right-sizing scholarships was also a concern, he said, adding that it would be a mistake to award excessive scholarships or significantly reduce tuition in hopes of attracting applications from a shrinking pool of students.
UAM is working to offset the impact of the enrollment cliff by not only working to make its offerings attractive to traditional students but by reaching out to nontraditional and stop-out students. Doss said the university is exploring flexible degree options and providing students with “on- and off-ramps” that will allow them to leave and return to higher education as they advance in their careers.
Restoring Confidence
As manufacturing jobs that promise six-figure salaries for recent high school graduates and concerns about student loan debt have more people questioning the value of a college degree, one of the biggest challenges for colleges and universities is restoring confidence in higher education.
“It’s hard to overcome the national narrative, the constant beating of the drum that it’s not worth it to get a degree,” Davis said. “You’ll hear people talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt that students take on. Well, that’s not the story when it comes to University of Central Arkansas or Arkansas State University or Arkansas Tech [University in Russellville]. That’s not what’s happening.”
He added that UCA has worked to change that narrative through the UCA Commitment, which provides students a debt-free path to a college degree.
Shields named a lack of confidence as one of the main obstacles to higher education, adding that it is important to promote the value of earning one’s degree.
“There is the public perception of, ‘Am I getting a return for my collegiate experience?’ and I don’t think that higher education’s done a good job of saying, ‘Yeah, you really do,’” he said. “I mean, studies show that people who go to college make a lot more over their career. They’re promoted more frequently. They do better. They have better quality of life. They live longer.”
Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia is looking to highlight its return on investment with the Mulerider Next Step Guarantee. (Photo by Thomas Turner, SAU)
Career Readiness
One of the keys to restoring confidence in higher education is demonstrating that students get a good ROI for their degrees. Perhaps no school is more bullish on that than SAU, which recently launched the Mulerider Next Step Guarantee, which provides graduates with additional training if they are unable to secure a job or placement in a graduate degree program after leaving SAU.
“That’s an interesting initiative, and it seems to have caught people’s attention with what we’re trying to do,” Hicks said. “It’s really making sure that they’re ready for the workforce and that we help them in all the ways we can as a campus to make sure that our career services have put them in touch with the right people to do that next step.”
The University of Central Arkansas Aviation Academy in Conway allows students to become workforce ready without a four-year degree. (Photo provided by UCA)
Davis said he is excited about noncredit programs such as the UCA Aviation Academy and the Arkansas Coding Academy that allow students to earn certifications without having to invest time and money in a four-year degree.
“I think higher ed’s going to be called upon to be a little more entrepreneurial and think about how can we not just be in the mold of traditional academic programs, but how can we think about workforce credentials?” he said. “I love that we’ve broken the ground with a couple of really good examples in the last five years. It’s exciting to think that we’re well positioned for the future of that.”
The Arkansas Outlook
Building on the groundwork of the Arkansas LEARNS Act, the Arkansas ACCESS Act works to streamline the pipeline from K-12 education through higher education and into the workforce. The act’s emphasis on ensuring ROI and facilitating K-12 and industry partnerships reinforces some of the work already underway at Arkansas colleges and universities.
“One thing I love about ACCESS is that it’s really put a light on the connections between K-12 and higher education,” Davis said. “I’m really excited about some of the focus there that I think will come from being able to bridge not only relevance but just the strength of the curriculum coming out of K-12. I love that higher ed gets to be a part of developing that as we prepare the teachers.”
He added that he appreciates the act’s nod toward support for short-term certification programs and that he embraces the productivity funding model put forth by the degree.
“I like that there’s going to be an element of the funding formula to be able to measure the value of a degree and making certain kids’ families are investing their hard-earned dollars in a degree that can provide them with any opportunity or upward mobility for advancement, whatever that means in their life,” he said. “I’m excited about that.”
The Federal Outlook
President Donald Trump has been vocal about some of the changes he would like to see in higher education, and leaders at institutions of higher learning in Arkansas are most concerned about cuts the federal government may make to grant programs that help fund university programs and make college a possibility for many students.
Shields and Hicks expressed concern about potential cuts to Pell Grants, while Massengale said he was worried about National Science Foundation grants that fund various forestry programs, as well as first-generation students reliant on Federal TRIO programs. Davis added that his institution is watching for any changes to accrediting bodies.
Hicks said that he ultimately hopes an understanding of the value of higher education will prevail at all levels.
“I think we’ll see more and more students accessing higher education in more pathways than just the traditional four-year degree,” Hicks said. “Then we’ll see more opportunity for people in the workforce to use higher ed as a tool for gaining more knowledge and skill sets that progress their career and help the industries that they’re in. I see the relevance of higher ed increasing over the next few years, not going down.”
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