Investing in Arkansas’ Homegrown Talent

Across the country, the number of high school graduates is expected to decline over the years ahead. Nationally, the graduating class is projected to shrink 13 percent by 2041 from its 2025 peak, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. The South, however, is the only U.S. region projected to have more high school graduates in 2041 than it did in 2023.

That puts Arkansas in an important position. As other parts of the country compete for a shrinking pool of graduates and workers, we have an opportunity to develop the talent already growing up across our state.

At the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, we are seeing that potential firsthand. Enrollment reached a record 34,161 students in fall 2025, including a record number of Arkansas students. Through the Land of Opportunity Scholarship campaign, more than $141 million is committed to expanding access. More than 100 scholars represent 57 of Arkansas’s 75 counties in the first cohort.

The initiative’s early reach spans communities large and small across Arkansas, underscoring the importance of ensuring talented students statewide have the resources and support to succeed.

As Arkansas’ land-grant university, the University of Arkansas has a responsibility to serve the entire state and expand access to education. The scholarship program puts that mission into practice by creating pathways for students whose circumstances might otherwise make that access feel out of reach.

Access does not end with an acceptance letter, either. The program pairs financial support with mentoring, academic coaching, financial planning and career development to help students persist through graduation and prepare for work they will do in their careers and communities.

Philanthropy Can Open Pathways

After more than two decades working in philanthropy, I see this as more than a higher education story. It is about creating pathways that allow more Arkansas students to thrive.

I moved to northwest Arkansas in 2010. It is where I have continued to build my career, raise my sons and become a part of the fabric that makes this a community that I care deeply about. Over the years, I have seen how one opportunity, one relationship or one person willing to believe in someone can change the direction of a person’s life. Often, that impact reaches well beyond individuals to their families, their communities and the people who come behind them.

I am excited to step into this new role as senior director of philanthropic initiatives and help lead the next phase of the Land of Opportunity Scholarship campaign. Within this position, I have had the privilege of connecting with individuals, businesses and foundations that want to pay forward opportunities they received, strengthen the communities that have shaped them or create opportunities they may not have had themselves. Every story is different, but there is often a common thread: a desire to make a meaningful difference for capable, smart and deserving students in Arkansas.

What makes this work meaningful to me is the ripple effect the Land of Opportunity Scholarship has on our scholars. Education paves the way for more career paths, economic security, and a stronger outcome for their futures and our state.

The first cohort of Land of Opportunity Scholars is impressive, and I often find myself thinking about the individual student’s journey to arrive on campus: where they grew up, who encouraged them along the way and what they hope to do with the opportunity in front of them. That is when the magnitude of the initiative becomes real.

In conversations with Arkansas business and philanthropic leaders, I hear a shared sense of responsibility for the future. They understand that developing talent is not simply about filling jobs. It is about helping people build lives here, contribute to communities they care about and eventually create opportunities for others.

The talent pipeline begins long before an employer posts an opening. It begins when young people can imagine futures for themselves and have people willing to help them find paths toward those futures.

As the South becomes increasingly important to the nation’s pipeline of new talent, developing and retaining that talent will remain central to Arkansas’s economic future. Today, Land of Opportunity Scholars come from 57 Arkansas counties. The ambition is to reach all 75 counties, but our measure of success goes beyond how many students enter the program or earn a degree. We follow career placement and other postgraduate outcomes to understand where scholars go, what they do and how the opportunities created through their education continue to shape their lives.

That is the larger promise of the Land of Opportunity Scholarship: creating a path for young Arkansans to turn their potential into lasting opportunity — for themselves, their families, their communities and the generations that follow.

Loria Oliver is senior director of philanthropic initiatives at the University of Arkansas Division of University Advancement in Fayetteville.