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Welch expects higher education funding to stay flat; not to be touched during special sessions

Arkansas State University System

As the State Legislature starts its next special session on highway funding next week, higher education funding is not expected to be touched this year. Arkansas State University System President Dr. Charles Welch informed the Board of Trustees that there are no funding increases for higher education coming, but there are no cuts coming either.  He says that is good news as the legislature looks at how to plug in $50 million into the budget for highways.  He expects the $50 million dollars to be the short term fix for highways and for a long term highway fix to take place during the 2017 regular legislative session.  Welch says he was also appreciative of the state legislature passing Arkansas Works, which provides health insurance for over 250,000 Arkansans. Welch says if that didn’t pass, there would have been a huge hole in the budget that would have likely come from higher education funding.  He says consideration of budgets and tuition and fees for 2016-2017 didn’t make it to this meeting because they didn’t know the appropriations until Sunday.  They will have a special meeting for that in a few weeks to pass those items.  

Johnathan Reaves is the News Director for KASU Public Radio. As part of an Air Force Family, he moved to Arkansas from Minot, North Dakota in 1986. He was first bitten by the radio bug after he graduated from Gosnell High School in 1992. While working on his undergraduate degree, he worked at KOSE, a small 1,000 watt AM commercial station in Osceola, Arkansas. Upon graduation from Arkansas State University in 1996 with a degree in Radio-Television Broadcast News, he decided that he wanted to stay in radio news. He moved to Stuttgart, Arkansas and worked for East Arkansas Broadcasters as news director and was there for 16 years.