Written by Samantha M Holschbach
Amid the recession, Harding’s budget remained relatively untouched from last year to this school year, but that did not halt the student body’s growth to record levels.
“As far as it was feasible, we tried to keep the budgets similar this year to what they were last year, all this with an eye towards not having to raise tuition as much,” Harding President David Burks said. “The increase [in student costs] was the lowest it’s been for the last ten years.”
Harding’s student costs rose 3 percent from the 2008-2009 school year to this year. The previous year, that increase had been 5 percent. Within the past six years, annual increases had otherwise risen 3.5 percent or more. To date, Harding ranks as Arkansas’ least expensive private university and least expensive Christian university within Church of Christ schools.
“Comparing our costs with a lot of other schools, even our sister institutions, Harding is now a great bargain,” said Glenn Dillard, Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Management. “This year we had a large number of families come to visit, and they only visited because we cost less.”
To further accommodate students, financial aid was not cut.
“We knew that we could not cut student aid because students need their scholarships,” Burks said. “So none of that was cut. In fact, money for financial aid was increased.”
Additionally, Harding has not reduced any of its services, either in quality or quantity.“We’re very blessed because many institutions have seen a cutback in terms of number of faculty, faculty salary, staff decisions or even services provided,” Burks said. “We’ve not cut back not any of these – we’re simply trying to be prudent in terms of how we manage what we can.”
Harding’s department managers were “flexible and cooperative” when managing the budget, according to Mel Sansom, Harding’s vice president of finance.
“We thought we’d try to encourage our department managers to try to keep their budgets flat,” Sansom said. “They did a very good job with complying with our request and even found ways to not only keep things flat, but make some decreases.”
Overall student enrollment is estimated to have increased by 90 students compared to last year. According to Burks, this increase is solely attributed to an increase in graduate students, many of whom are filling the newly developed pharmacy, communication disorders and engineering programs.
The economy did, however, negatively influence undergraduate numbers.
“The undergraduate enrollment decreased at about the same number that we budgeted it to decrease,” Burks said. “So we were impacted by the economy. The undergraduate number is the biggest factor that drives the budget because undergraduate students are full-time students, and that’s what generates most of the budget.”
Harding received another economic hit when its endowment distribution – 4 percent of the budget decreased $400,000 because of market decreases. Sansom said 5 percent of the endowment is distributed to the operating budget each year, and the decreased value of Harding’s endowment will negatively affect the distribution.
Still, all things considered, Harding has fared well financially.
“Across the board there are lots of businesses and certainly lots of institutions of higher education that are facing all kinds of tough acts and all kinds of challenges, which we’re not facing,” Burks said. “We feel very fortunate to be where we are at this point with our increased enrollment.”
