ARIZONA (By Judd Slivka, Arizona Republic) February 13,
2004 - The idea of a five-university system for Arizona is dead.
The drastic, historic changes proposed last year are being replaced by a
tamer set of goals for the state's three universities that would produce
only a slightly different flavor than exists today.
After meeting for four hours Saturday, the group redesigning the public
university system offered a plan that will avoid separating Arizona State
University West from ASU and calling it Central Arizona University. Nor will
it create a two-tiered system featuring new universities in southern and
western Arizona.
"Maybe we don't have to shake things up and see where they fall," said Edith
Auslander, a member of the group and University of Arizona vice president.
Instead, the proposal, which is not yet final, establishes several themes
that would bring about gradual changes. They include:
The need for students to have a variety of different options for tuition,
perhaps even within a single university. This would pave the way for
differentiated tuition, perhaps not at the university level, but within
different schools and colleges within a single university.
A renewed commitment to diversity at all three universities, which will
require significant increases in financial aid. The discussion Saturday
focused on the Board of Regents' 1989 initiative, "Our Common Commitment,"
which had a goal of doubling the number of minority students the
universities attracted each year.
A commitment to work better with community college systems to move more
students through.
A plan for Northern Arizona University perhaps to expand its successful
"2+2" programs at community colleges. Students pay community college rates
and attend community college classes for their first two years. Then they
pay the higher NAU tuition to attend NAU classes at sites around the state
to complete the final two years of their degree.
Options to deal with growth in Pima County, which is gaining more
college-age residents than any other place in the state. It is going to need
some place for them to go once the University of Arizona caps its enrollment
at 40,000 students in a few years. And Maricopa County may need another
option as well.
The plan does not affect a proposal for an expanded downtown campus for ASU,
nor does it change plans for a downtown Phoenix medical school.
The previous plan
It appears the suggested changes will break a few plates in the
universities' china cabinets. The changes won't be the cataclysmic
earthquake that was anticipated after then-Regents President Chris Herstam
suggested a five-university system almost a year ago.
Herstam's plan was based on projections that the state will face a college
capacity crisis over the next two decades.
It proposed breaking ASU West into a free-standing university and combining
the University of Arizona-South and Northern Arizona University-Yuma into a
single university. Both schools would have been under a single president as
a regional university system, along with Northern Arizona University in
Flagstaff.
That plan caused an outcry among many, particularly in the West Valley and
among NAU boosters. West Valley residents emphatically wanted ASU West to
remain part of ASU, and people in northern Arizona didn't want NAU to be
part of a second tier of the university system.
As a result of that outcry, and as an acknowledgement of a tight-fisted,
conservative Legislature that probably wouldn't pay for new universities,
the redesign committee chose to tweak, not level.
"The best model for the state is a three-university model," said David
Longanecker, the executive director of the Western Interstate Council for
Higher Education, and the state's consultant on the redesign study. "But we
have to do it in a better way tomorrow than we're doing it today."
The key, Longanecker said, was two fundamentals.
"Three (universities) for now. 'Who knows?' for later.
"Three for now, if people play."
Factional differences
And that is a crucial part, because even in the eight-person redesign group,
40 minutes of productive conversation led into an hour of factional
differences over details of what a tweaked university system should look
like.
Kathy Church, ASU's vice-provost and a member of the committee, suggested
the ASU concept of "One university in many places." That would have ASU
offering similar courses on its four campuses, but with tuition pegged to
the quality of the courses.
Under the ASU plan, which will be implemented next year, a student enrolled
in the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering at the university's main campus
would pay more than a student enrolled in the university's general
engineering course at the ASU Polytechnic Campus in Mesa.
But if you do that, said Rufus Glasper, chancellor of the Maricopa Community
College District, are you saying that the admission requirements to get into
the Fulton school are higher than the other program? And if so, does that
require a community college student to have to take more classes just to
qualify? And if that's the case, aren't you then limiting access to the
universities, when the point of the redesign process was to increase access?
Tenure for teaching
Another
suggestion by Longanecker, to consider a system that would award tenure to
faculty who primarily teach, rather than research, drew the group into
another debate. It focused on the traditional notions of what tenure should
be awarded for, but also took another twist.
The state's two large research universities, ASU and UA, do a fairly
efficient job at educating undergraduate students, as far as research
universities go. But, Longanecker said, in the context of teaching
efficiency, a professor who teaches three classes a semester isn't as
efficient in moving students through a system as a professor who teaches
four or five classes a semester.
"If, frankly, there's only one model," Longanecker said, "you'll lose that
battle because the community colleges will come along and say, 'We want to
concentrate on teaching.' "
The wild card
The community colleges remain the wild card in this. No one really brought
up the subject of the colleges offering baccalaureate degrees, although it
is a topic of concern.
A bill is moving through the Legislature, scheduled to be heard by a House
committee Tuesday, that would give the community colleges carte blanche to
offer four-year degrees in any discipline they desired.
Even the community colleges' representative, Glasper, didn't bring it up at
the meeting. He chose, he said, to focus on the issues of higher education
that are under the purview of the state Board of Regents, which
constitutionally controls four-year education in the state.
The next step for the redesign process is a revision of the ideas discussed
Saturday, which will happen over the next 10 days. The group will provide a
concept or concepts for the university redesign to the full Feasibility and
Planning Study Workgroup on Feb. 23. The proposal will then go on the road
to various groups, such as alumni, students and university faculty. A
completed concept is expected to be presented to the regents at their April
meeting, but where it will go from there is unclear.
