Losing touch with NWACC’s roots

At least one longtime Board of Trustees member is to be commended for voting against the largest tuition increase ever passed in the 35-year history of Northwest Arkansas Community College.

As the college’s only trustee with higher education administrative experience, Joe Spivey has been around long enough to know that financial challenges are the No. 1 impediment to student persistence toward academic achievement.

The wish here is that his fellow trustees will come to know and appreciate the harmful impact a $12 per credit hour tuition increase will have on their students.

This unprecedented tuition increase comes not only at a time of financial hardship for all aspiring young people, but on the heels of an ill-conceived, poorly executed failed millage increase this past fall. Never before had NWACC trustees asked for more property tax revenue than what was initially approved in an August 1989 vote that brought the college to fruition.

That initial proposal (which came after 15 years of steady study and pursuit) was that in-district students and their families would get a break on their tuition in exchange for paying a 3.0-mill property tax.

Other parts of that 1989 proposal were these “promises”: that 1) quality academics would be stressed over exaggerated enrollments, 2) tuition and fees would be kept at affordable rates, 3) there would be no intercollegiate sports to compete with student dollars and 4) there would be no dormitories.

The millage has always been the lifeline for the college, and it can go away (just look at what happened to the sales tax at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith).

The local millage generates north of $13 million. State support is $11 million and change. NWACC is the only school in Arkansas that receives more local support than from the state of Arkansas. That is how important Rogers and Bentonville taxpayers are to this college. There is not another college or university in Arkansas that receives a fraction of NWACC’s local support.

Voters this past fall were not told any of that. Nor were they told about the impending countywide reappraisal that will increase the amount of property tax we all will soon pay.

Also, some who withheld their support were not pleased with the way the campaign was conducted in other ways.

My hope here is that NWACC gets back to the business of educating as many students as its funding will allow, if that means 5,000 students instead of 7,000, then so be it. Few will remember but there was a time when the college “capped enrollment” to maintain quality instruction.

In the meantime, perhaps more trustees will become sensitive to student finances and ask more questions. Lest trustees forget again, many of these students are financially challenged.

The simple fact is NWACC cannot afford to educate 7,000 students a semester. It does not have the resources. That is, unless you ask students and families to pay even more.