There was a little back-and-forth in a legislative hearing yesterday over the almost $6 million Arkansas colleges and universities are devoting to advertising.

The University of Central Arkansas is spending the most: $920,000, mainly toward television advertising.

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UCA President Lu Hardin defended his university’s spending for advertising, saying it has helped the state as well as his school in the number of college students who were considering going out of state but decided to stay in Arkansas after seeing the advertisements.

“We’ve got to get the message out and change higher education in this state,” Hardin said. …

However, Sen. Sue Madison, D-Fayetteville, said lawmakers “don’t want our various institutions to get into a position where they are competing against each other and spending state dollars to do it.”

Hardin said competition was healthy and improved all colleges and universities. Each school should stress its strengths in advertising.

“I just want institutions like UA (University of Arkansas) and (Arkansas) Tech talking about engineering, and us talking about honors college,” he said.

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