Texas Students Don't Get In-State Tuition at the U of A

A Texas student does not get in-state tuition at the University of Arkansas. I said on camera that "adjacent states like Texas are able to get in-state tuition if they go from Texas right to Arkansas for college," and called it "huge marketing on their side." That's the correction I most need to make in this video, because a family could build a college budget on it and come up short.

What the tuition program actually is

The program is the New Arkansan Non-Resident Tuition Award, and it's a scholarship, not a change in residency status. It pays a percentage of the difference between out-of-state and in-state tuition. It never reduces anyone to the in-state rate.

Three things make it meaningfully different from what I described:

It's GPA-gated. For students from surrounding states, a new freshman gets 90% of the differential at a 3.80 GPA or better, 80% at 3.60, and 70% at 3.20. Below 3.20 you get nothing from this award. Transfer students have their own thresholds.

It isn't a Texas program. It covers a group of nearby states, and there's a second tier for students from farther away at lower percentages. I framed it as a Texas-recruitment tool. It's broader than that, and my "huge marketing to get people from Texas here" read was too narrow.

Even at the top tier you pay more than a resident. For 2025-26, University of Arkansas tuition and fees ran roughly $10,104 a year in-state and about $29,966 out-of-state — a differential near $19,862. A Texas freshman at the 90% tier still covers 10% of that gap, landing around $12,000. That's a genuinely good deal and a real reason to look at Fayetteville. It is not in-state tuition.

If you're running numbers for a kid, check the current award tiers on the university's scholarship page rather than my percentages, and check the February 1 admission deadline — the award is automatic for eligible admitted students, but the deadline isn't.

The soccer stadium: right that it moved, wrong on the acreage, and the date has slipped

I said Ozark United FC was relocating its stadium to a bigger site and guessed the new parcel at "almost 11 acres, I believe there, or even more than that."

It's about 36 acres, at West Perry Road and South Bellview Road — roughly three times my guess. Eleven and a half acres was the size of the original Pinnacle Hills parcel, which may be where the number in my head came from. The plan grew along with the land: it's now a $250 million to $350 million mixed-use entertainment district built around the stadium.

One thing worth being precise about, since I said they moved for "a bigger venue": the stadium itself is planned at 5,000 seats, which is at the low end of the "about 5 to 7,000 people" I described for the original site. What got bigger is the land and the surrounding development, not the seating bowl.

The bigger update: the club has pushed its inaugural season back again, now targeting 2028. Not 2026, not 2027. As of now no men's or women's team has begun play. If you were planning to buy season tickets or a house near the site on the strength of a 2026 kickoff, that timeline has moved twice.

Two corrections to my history of the club, too. It was awarded as a USL expansion on July 12, 2023 — so "two years ago" was about right when I filmed. And it wasn't "soccer for North America" that announced it; it was the United Soccer League, with owners Chris Martinovic and Warren Smith. The club spent its first year as USL Arkansas and rebranded to Ozark United FC in October 2024.

The Verve: I was right that it would get solved

I said the student housing project was "put on hold and paused for just a minute as they fix a couple issues," and predicted "this will get solved, I promise you that."

It did. Here's the fuller version. The project is VERVE Fayetteville, at 707 W. Treadwell Street, developed by Subtext with FrontRange Capital and Kayne Anderson Real Estate. Seven stories, about 532,300 square feet, roughly $97 million to $100 million. My numbers were right on the nose: I said 272 residential units and 847 bedrooms, and 272 units is correct, with published bed counts running 845 to 847 depending on the source.

The "couple issues" I was vague about was one specific issue. In December 2024 Fayetteville's Planning Commission held up the development plan over a water-line capacity question. The developer appealed, and in February 2025 the City Council granted the appeal on an 8-0 vote. It's approved and moving, targeting an August 2027 opening.

Worth noting what that sequence actually shows: residents and a planning commission raised a real infrastructure question, it got resolved through an appeal rather than by killing the project, and the housing is getting built. That's the process working, and it's more interesting than "a couple issues."

Enrollment: higher than I said, growing slower than I said

I hedged on the number and then claimed it "has grown about 2,000 every single year."

Fall 2025 enrollment was a record 34,175, so I was under. (I said "about 30, over 30,000 students, I think 32,000 students this year.") But the growth claim was over. Fall 2024 was 33,610, which makes the year-over-year increase about 565 students, or roughly 1.7% — not 2,000. The 32,000 figure I was reaching for is from an earlier year that two more record years have since passed.

The housing pressure I described is real and quantifiable: on-campus capacity is about 6,274 beds against 34,000-plus students. The university is designing two new north-campus residence halls near Garland Avenue that would add somewhere in the range of 1,200 to 1,400 beds, with one phase landing around 2028. So the Verve isn't "scraping the surface" of a vague need — it's one of several projects chasing a gap you can put a number on.

Botanical Garden of the Ozarks

I called it "the botanical gardens in Fayetteville, it's like the Botanical Gardens of Northwest Arkansas." The name is Botanical Garden of the Ozarks — singular garden, of the Ozarks.

Everything else I said about it holds. It's on the east side of Lake Fayetteville, adjacent to the Razorback Greenway. It's a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that opened in 2007, covering roughly 42 acres across twelve themed gardens, and it has the only butterfly house in Arkansas — which is what I was describing when I mentioned the butterflies.

The milestone: it crossed 100,000 annual visitors in 2023, up from somewhere in the 70,000 to 80,000 range before that. Admission runs $10 for adults, $5 for children four to twelve, free under four. My shout-out stands and I'd add that the butterfly house is the thing to time your visit around.

Dave and Jenny Marrs: I got the store names right, and the surname is Marrs

The one thing I'll fix here is spelling, since it's a family name and it matters. It's Dave and Jenny Marrs, two Rs. The show title I had right: Fixer to Fabulous.

And I had both store names right, which surprised me on review. Marrs Mercantile is at 289 N. Main Street in Centerton, in a restored 1905 former bank building. The Bentonville store is Marrs on Main, at 111 S. Main Street, and its grand opening was April 4, 2025. It's open.

On my puzzlement about why the Bentonville store took so long — I framed it as a mystery and guessed "maybe it's a rent thing, maybe it was a cost thing, I don't know." I still don't know, and I'd rather leave it there than dress up a guess as an explanation. The verifiable part is the sequence: Centerton first, Bentonville second, and both open now.

One small overreach: I said "all their flips and all their designs, all their video shoots are in Bentonville." The show is set in Bentonville and centered there, but projects range across the wider area. "In and around Bentonville" is the accurate version.