Can I speak for what is considered the two Northwestern counties in Arkansas where the UofA and Fayetteville is located?
My MSA, aka Fayetteville AR, has been named to the Top 10-15 of Best Places To LIve And Work for over a decade by Forbes, Money, Kiplinger and a host of other publications. There are over 300 of the Fortune 500 in the world who have offices in our quaint little MSA of 465,000 people. Your entire state has 3 Fortune 500 companies and yet our 2 counties in the northwest corner of Arkansas have 2 not counting JB Hunt which is the largest privately owned trucking company in the world.
In the last 10 years, our university has raised over $1.5 billion in academic endowment funds. Outside of that, we have spent $250MM on athletic facilities since 1992 and just announced another $300MM in athletic facilities including the $35MM football operations center where construction began a month ago.
DO NOT confuse the Benton and Washington counties where the UofA is located with a poor little ole Arkansas. Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Bridges Museum which houses THE best collection of American Art in the world just opened last month which cost well over $1 billion. New art sharing was just struck with museums in Paris and around Europe as well as all around the U.S.
I've been driving south on I-35 and West on I-70 to get to ski resorts in Colorado for 35+ years. If I judged Kansas ONLY on those driving experiences, I'd say it's the wasteland of the midwest. However, I'm not that short-sighted. And all of you K-State fans should realize those of us living in Northwest Arkansas where Fayetteville is located is far more advanced and sophisticated than you EVER imagined just as I don't judge KS on my experience.
Oh, and Little Rock is as bad as it seems in those HBO specials. But Northwest Arkansas has a VERY low crime rate and has NOTHING like the problems portrayed in the HBO documentaries of Little Rock which is 3 hours away.