Last week, I was delighted to read on these pages that roughly three-quarters of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences' students are from Arkansas. A separate article highlighted that the inaugural dental school class of Lyon College also enrolled a very high proportion of in-state students, notwithstanding that it is a private college. Fantastic!

In addition, I already knew that my school, the William H. Bowen School of Law, requires that Arkansans constitute approximately 80 percent of each entering class. And I've since learned that my university does even better than that! At the University of Arkansas-Little Rock, 85 percent of all students are from Arkansas, and 90 percent of undergraduate students are Arkansans. Outstanding!

And the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville--which justifiably boasts on its webpage that it reached a new high for the number of Arkansans it enrolled, for the fourth year in a row--soundly ends its mission statement with "all in service to Arkansas." Well said!

These data demonstrate a commitment to the foundational principle--articulated by, among others, Justice Clarence Thomas in an early affirmative-action case from Michigan--that the mission of state universities is to serve their residents. (You might recall my, uh, occasional mention that Thomas later cited me in the opinion declaring affirmative action unconstitutional.)

Thomas wrote in the Michigan case: "The only cognizable state interests vindicated by operating a public law school are, therefore, the education of that State's citizens and the training of that State's lawyers.

"James Campbell's address at the opening of the Law........

© Arkansas Online