Stick to the books

Community college avoids trouble with sports decision

Northwest Arkansas Community College, or more specifically its president, has saved the institution a lot of headaches. President Evelyn Jorgenson decided that a sanctioned sports program is “not in the best interest” of the college. She announced her decision last week during a board of trustees meeting.

It may have disappointed some who see a sanctioned sports program as a natural progression for the Bentonville-based campus. But her decision was the right one for now and maybe for a long time to come.

Northwest Arkansas Community College is, and should be, focused first and foremost on meeting the more traditional education needs of its student.

Jorgenson explained to board members that the administration arrived at its decision based on feedback from the community, from faculty and staff and students.

The administration also got feedback from state legislators, whose voices are critical to this decision.

A board committee has been exploring the possibility of a sanctioned sports program at the college for months and presented a plan in March to start programs for women’s volleyball and softball and for men’s baseball. The sports were identified in a student survey as those most likely to draw students’ interest.

The committee completed its report and was disbanded by board of trustees Chairman Ric Clifford, who had created it.

He said then that programming decisions are the administration’s responsibility and left Jorgenson and her staff to respond.

“We tried to be very thorough,” she told the board last week, noting among other steps that administrators hosted a forum for the college faculty and staff members on the topic.

They heard concern from the faculty and staff that sanctioned sports would take the college’s focus off education, an argument that might certainly be applied to sports programs in other institutions, too.

In fact, the argument is as old as sanctioned sports programs. There have always been some who believe the tail wags the dog in some colleges and universities, including the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

No one would suggest an end to Razorback sports, which do attract not just student athletes but other students — and financial support — to the UA. Campus sports are integral to the UA experience and economic studies clearly confirm their impact in all of Northwest Arkansas.

The difference is that Northwest Arkansas Community College has not gone that route so far and neither have most other two-year public colleges in this state.

Out of 22 such institutions, only two have sanctioned sports programs. They are at MidSouth Community College in West Memphis and North Arkansas College in Harrison.

The two-year colleges were intended to make access to education convenient to any resident of Arkansas, including the nontraditional students who work jobs and raise families and must squeeze their higher education into demanding schedules.

Other students may have the time to fit sports into their days at Northwest Arkansas Community College but that opportunity could come from club sports, as Jorgenson suggested last week. Club sports at the college include baseball, basketball, soccer and volleyball.

Joe Spivey, a board member, said the college should consider supporting intramural sports and building fields on the main campus. His argument is that such offerings might increase student enrollment and even entice some people who haven’t been traditional donors to donate to the effort.

They would also involve less commitment of college resources, which gets back to an underlying source of concern and the role state lawmakers play in all of this.

All institutions of higher learning struggle to find that sweet spot financially where they can meet programming needs while holding down tuition for enrollees.

Northwest Arkansas Community College, because of its rapid growth through the years, has certainly had its challenges along that line. For-credit enrollment is dropping, however, and the college is projecting another decline next year in credit hours.

The college is avoiding a tuition increase but is raising some fees and not giving raises to faculty and staff. The 2016 budget reflects those facts as well as the reality that state funding will be flat.

Lawmakers, when presented with other funding demands and the desire to cut taxes as current legislators are, simply don’t choose to boost funding for colleges and universities.

They don’t need another reason to ignore the need for increased funding for higher education but a sanctioned sports program might have given them one.

Just imagine the reaction among lawmakers, particularly those from other parts of the state with community colleges of their own to support, if Northwest Arkansas Community College were to venture into sanctioned sports.

Whatever the cost, it would give rise to arguments that the college might not need so much state support.

Scuttling sanctioned sports should avoid such headaches for a college that really ought to be known instead for the educational value it offers.