UA System President Aiming for Better Efficiency

For Donald Bobbitt, president of the University of Arkansas System, the tumultuous world of higher education is exhilarating.

His high status means he must face the challenges in the world of higher education head-on.

Bobbitt called those challenges a “perfect storm.” Federal budget disagreements are resulting in slashed funds across the board, including for Pell Grants, which provide students federal aid that does not need to be repaid. That cut will hurt colleges from the bottom up.

“Higher education is the ticket to transcend the class you’re born into,” Bobbitt said. “Social mobility can occur with higher education degrees, and the failure of the Pell Grant system could have important ramifications in society.”

More challenges, Bobbitt said, come from a state budget that will likely not increase and tuition rates that are rising sharply.

Recent years haven’t “been a bonanza for higher education,” he said. “We’re simply trying to maintain our current position. We’re going to have to figure out what we can do to lower costs and reach more students if we want to survive.”

Bobbitt “caught the bug” of higher education while studying to become a research chemist. He taught chemistry at the University of Arkansas for 20 years. After moving up the academic ladder out of state, Bobbitt returned to Arkansas in November to succeed B. Alan Sugg as president of the UA System.

Bobbitt detailed several actions he hopes will increase the UA system’s efficiency.

First, he will be working to determine which classes need to be taught in mass lecture form versus smaller, one-on-one mentorships.

“We have to be very specific where we use our resources,” he said. “We can’t teach everything the same way with the resources we have available.”

He also wants to pull in more non-traditional students: adults who have some college experience but no degree. Bobbitt estimates there are between 10,000 and 50,000 such students in the state.

“I believe we can create some innovative online programs to bring them in,” he said. “That will create revenue streams to build new programs and supplant funding losses.”

Finally, he is hoping to relieve the high and oft-hidden cost of textbooks.

“We have an initiative — just a pilot program — we asked each of the provosts to identify four or five, maybe 10 courses, taken by a large number of students, part of the core courses,” Bobbitt said.

The faculty for those courses would be paid a modest stipend for adjusting their curriculum and the textbooks would be removed entirely, Bobbitt said, and replaced by a free digital text.

“I threw this out as a pilot, and I was very pleasantly surprised by the faculty that’s risen to the challenge to convert courses to this type of format,” he said. “I think what the faculty finds is that the material available online is as good, or almost as good, as the textbook format, as long as they’re willing to put in the time.”

If it catches on, Bobbitt said, he hopes to change another handful of courses in the following year.

Bobbitt said the diversity of the UA system “bodes well for students.” One of his major goals as president is to eliminate barriers hindering students from progressing from one UA college to another.

He also wants to use UA’s brand recognition to market to a wider array of students outside of the state. Similarly, he wants to offer UA courses to more students who may not be able to attend classes in person.

“We want to offer programs through new technology, to do so with the same level of quality, the same level of rigor as face to face,” he said. “I firmly believe we can do it.”

As for the importance of higher education, Bobbitt said it’s vital for people to realize that degrees are worth more than just occupational training.

“One would hope that as a consequence of the rigors of a four-year degree, one would be able to handle a number of occupations,” he said. “But I view it as having more applications; one is teaching people to think critically. They should be able to keep a number of diverse and conflicting thoughts in their heads without necessarily agreeing with any of them.”

Being able to consider multiple points of view is a skill that many without degrees never develop, Bobbitt said.

And the future of higher education, he added, will be a challenge for him and everyone else involved in the industry.

“That’s a crystal ball that still has a little bit of haze,” he said. “Unfortunately, I believe the challenges we’re facing are not limited to the next year or two. They’ll probably be with us a decade or more, but I find that exhilarating. We need to rethink everything we’re doing in higher education. We need to adapt and improve. It certainly won’t be the status quo.”