Guest Commentary: Chancellor's priorities skewed

University of Arkansas Chancellor Joseph Steinmetz, foreground, sits on a bus with athletics director Jeff Long, background, on Monday, May 16, 2016, in Fayetteville.

Three thousand or so luxury seats. This is what the University of Arkansas' Board of Trustees elected to borrow $120 million to construct. In doing so, they betrayed their vital and precious responsibility: to advance the state of Arkansas through the power of higher education. I wonder how many of them will be sitting in these new seats come 2018.

But let's be clear--this isn't the fault of Jeff Long. His job is to advance the interests of the Athletic Department. He has been--and continues to be--exemplary in this regard. The university is lucky to have him.

It's not even the sole responsibility of the Board of Trustees. Boards are most effective when they provide support and resources for the institutions they govern. I may disagree with their decision, but they were doing their best to support a new chancellor. I can respect that.

The fault here lies with the university's new chancellor, Dr. Joseph Steinmetz who, for reasons passing understanding, decided to expend his precious political capital on the construction of a luxury athletic product. In doing so, he demonstrated a perspective on higher education that is antithetical to the "Students First" mantra of his predecessor.

After his kitschy listening tour around the state, it appears that Chancellor Steinmetz reached a strange conclusion: that the most pressing concern for the students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends of the UA is the construction of a more posh football stadium. If he truly believes this, then I fear for the future of higher education in Arkansas.

Though it's true that the Athletic Department functions as an auxiliary of the UA writ large--meaning that its finances are managed separately from those of the campus--decoupling their financial relationship is not so simple. Who will be responsible for the debt obligations of this stadium construction should the Athletic Department be unable to service it? Who enables the Athletic Department to operate as a tax-exempt entity despite engaging in commercial activities? The answer, of course, is the University of Arkansas and, by extension, the residents and taxpayers of Arkansas.

Even if it were true that the two operations were completely distinct--that their futures could be completely decoupled from one another--it is undeniable that they draw from the same reservoir of political capital. Energy and time spent on this stadium expansion cannot be spent on other, more pressing things.

It is also true that the best measure of one's priorities is their budget. It worries me that our new chancellor's top priority seems to be borrowing money to construct a luxury product that few Arkansans--and even fewer faculty, staff, and students--will ever get to enjoy.

Unfortunately, it's too late for this issue to receive the public debate and consideration it deserved. But ample time remains for our new chancellor to pursue a set of priorities better aimed at enhancing the power of our state's flagship university.

He could decide to make the development of a dental, optometry, or veterinary school the focus of his tenure. The state already spends millions of dollars each year to send Arkansas residents to out-of-state schools in each field despite the relative scarcity of--and high demand for--dentists, optometrists, and veterinarians in the state. Those students have no obligation to return to Arkansas after graduating, nor should they. Why not give them the option to spend another four years in Fayetteville to complete their medical studies? Surely this would be a worthy use of the university's bonding capacity.

He could also decide that the only way to create real access to higher education for all the residents of Arkansas is to adopt a zero-loan policy at the UA. Under this system, students would only be responsible for paying what they or their parents could afford. This means that students from wealthy families would be billed for full tuition while those from working-class or low-income families would pay little or no tuition. Much of the Ivy League operates under such a policy and it is precisely why it's often cheaper for a bright student from the Delta to attend Harvard, Penn, or Yale than it is to attend the UA. Why not tell the children of Arkansas that their educational and financial futures need not be inextricably linked to their parents' wealth? Surely this would be a worthy use of the chancellor's scarce political capital.

But if he does not, my affinity for the UA will not change. I will still donate to my alma mater, I will still serve one of its campaign steering committees, and I will still recruit its excellent students to my current institution, the University of Pennsylvania, for graduate education.

I will simply be resigned to doing so with the knowledge that we hold disparate views about the role of higher education. For me, education--especially higher education--is a transformational force. It is our only hope for enjoying a more egalitarian, just, and free society. But for higher education to serve such a lofty purpose, we must invest in it accordingly.

If our football stadiums must be cathedrals, then so too must our classrooms and campuses.

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Billy Fleming is a former UA Student Government president (2010-2011) and is a Campaign Steering Committee member of the Fay Jones School of Architecture.

Editorial on 06/20/2016