Houston Davis delivered a prodigious announcement that holds the potential to change hundreds of incoming students’ college experiences. 

UCA Commitment was declared a go after the university’s 2021 national fundraising campaign UCA Now surpassed its ambitious goal of $100 million by $9 million. 

UCA Commitment aims to provide eligible incoming freshmen with debt-free college, and it sounds a little too good to be true. 

While this could be a wondrous opportunity for our future Bears, some could say this is an injustice to current students who weren’t offered proper aid and now have thousands in student loans to show for it. 

To qualify for the initiative, a student must be an Arkansas resident, and either be Pell Grant-eligible or have an annual household income must be $100,000 or less. They also have to apply for the Arkansas Challenge Scholarship and submit a FAFSA.

Current students, transfer students, out-of-state students and spring starters are not eligible for the program. 

Davis said at the big announcement that UCA Commitment will provide more opportunities for incoming freshmen to go through college with fewer financial barriers. 

It aims to do this by offering scholarships, work-study and volunteer hours for eligible students. 

This brings up the question of how this will affect other students who already fight for scholarships and work-study: Will current students be stripped of their aid, or job, to help deliver this ginormous promise to new first-years? 

Davis describes UCA Commitment as a “groundbreaking, debt-free pathway for tuition and fees for incoming Arkansas freshmen,” but one can’t help but wonder if this is just a ploy to gain more student bodies on campus, and ultimately just a way to get more money in the long run. 

If that’s the case, someone should let the new kids know about the parking struggles, because imagine just how bad it’s gonna get when UCA continues to grow. 

Growth is not a bad thing, and that isn’t the message here. 

This is a wake-up call that current students are not prioritized, and instead of revamping and improving their financial turbulence, they’re only helping conditions for future students. 

Instead of focusing on future students, it would make sense to try to fix the foundational issues — current students struggling financially — and build from there. 

This program is a great opportunity for low-income families to get the education they deserve. While scholarships and aid help, not everyone who needs it qualifies or has the high school GPA and ACT score to back it up. 

They resort to loans and maxing out credit cards, which Davis mentioned during the announcement last Thursday. 

This new development doesn’t offer a helping hand to students already enrolled who struggle every month to make their tuition payments. Between working or doing work-study and a full class load, it doesn’t leave much mental capacity for dealing with financial troubles. 

While UCA Commitment looks excellent on paper, some students will still pay out of pocket when you break it down. 

The program will pay tuition and fees, but not housing costs, textbooks or class materials. Even after students exhaust their scholarships and work-study, these looming costs can still add up to be a pretty penny. 

How the announcement was made, and the setup of the UCA Commitment website make the program sound like a miracle from above. 

This can be misleading to future 2024 first-year students who think their balance will show $0 when, in reality, this just isn’t the truth. 

While this is a step in the right direction, we won’t honestly know how the program will work until the fall of 2024, and hopefully, more questions will be answered by then.