Over the past few years, Arkansas Baptist College has received media attention for its troubled finances, administrative mishaps and sharp declines in enrollment. The new leadership at this HBCU is hoping to turn a new page in the institution’s long history.
“We realized what people read in the news is very short-sighted, so we know we have to be intentional about telling our story and reintroducing the campus,” said President Joseph Jones, who began his tenure at the historically Black college last year.
The Little Rock institution ran into trouble several years ago when the student population grew too quickly for the college’s infrastructure. Arkansas Baptist went from serving under 200 students in 2006 to over 1100 in 2011. This rapid growth burdened the financial aid office, explained Dr. Fitz Hill, the former president of the college. Despite the increase in volume, the office’s personnel were still manually processing the students.
“We grew too fast. We didn’t have the technology and infrastructure to manage that significant growth,” said Hill, who served as president from 2006 to 2016. He said while his primary focus had been increasing enrollment, he eventually realized the importance of balancing and optimizing the student population through campus infrastructure. Hill recalled having to rent out apartment buildings and hotels to provide dormitories for students. “What I learned through that process is that bigger is not better. Better is better.”
Enrollment has dropped dramatically since 2011. This fall, the student body is just under 600. Even with the smaller numbers, Jones has found the business side of running the college to be much more difficult than expected.
“Arkansas Baptist College has had its trouble with finances, and we’re really trying to navigate those waters to ensure that we move to become more sustainable,” he said. “That’s something I completely underestimated.”
Currently under heightened oversight by the Department of Education, the college submits forms for reimbursement each month. As a result of negligence on both sides, payments to college employees were delayed in both July and November this year.
