University of Arizona President Robert Robbins says the school’s administration is a big part of the financial problem the UA is currently dealing with. Last month, the University acknowledged it had far less cash on hand than it thought — officials blamed an outdated financial model for the $240 million miscalculation.
In response, Robbins has said there would be layoffs in the athletics department, but there are other impacts, as well.
Ellie Wolfe of the Arizona Daily Star has been reporting on this and joined The Show to talk about it more.
MARK BRODIE: So it sounds as though President Robbins is saying that the administration has been a big part of the problem, and he plans for it to be at least a somewhat big part of the solution it sounds like.
ELLIE WOLFE: Yes. In an address to faculty during the faculty senate meeting on Monday, he acknowledged that a lot of this crisis does stem from administrative fault. You know, administrative units have grown exponentially, especially compared to the number of professors over the last 10 years. And we've had individual colleges speaking out saying that they were encouraged to make financial decisions that they deemed risky by senior leadership within the university.
BRODIE: Well, and one of those colleges that you reported on is the College of Agriculture, Environment and Life Sciences, which is now dealing with a $20 million deficit. As you report, they've instituted a hiring freeze and it sounds like, understandably so a lot of faculty in that school are not real thrilled.
WOLFE: Yeah. So it is really interesting, the case of the college is known as CALES, because senior leadership within that college had internal models that they are proud of and they used to make sure that they're not overspending. And the CFO of the university, Lisa Rulney, and the then Provost Liesl Folks told that college that they need to be spending down more of their central reserves, which is basically their savings account. And senior leadership within the college specifically claimed that they warned university leadership like Lisa Rulney about three times over the course of two years that if they continued to spend down their central reserves, they would be in this deficit. And senior leadership within the university did not listen. CALES' faculty claimed that President Robbins himself was in one of those meetings. And now, as you said, the college is in a hiring freeze, they can't hire for an important water sciences position. And, as you might imagine, they're pretty angry about it.
BRODIE: Yeah. Well, what is Rulney saying about all this? I mean, she is the head financial person at the university and this is a pretty bad financial situation for the university.
WOLFE: Well, she has been at the last two faculty Senate meetings alongside President Robbins. And at Monday's meeting, we had Ted Downing, who is a senior research professor at the university. He's been at the university for about 50 years. He's one of the longest serving faculty members And he asked her, you know, why have you not tendered your resignation? She stood up, she spoke to the faculty, and she said she was not going to resign until President Robbins asked her to, that her family went to this university that she loved it, and that she wants to help it get out of this problem that she herself has helped to create. So unless President Robbins decides it's time for her to go, it seems like Lisa Rulney is going to be sticking around for the foreseeable future.
BRODIE: So, is it a safe assumption that there are other schools within the UA that are in a similar situation as CALES's, where even if it's not so much that they've been told that they needed to spend a certain amount that they themselves are also dealing with, with budget shortfalls and potential hiring freezes, things like that.
WOLFE: Yes, actually, we have internal documents that almost every college is actually going to be in a bit of trouble because the university recently switched their budgeting models. So now a lot of the colleges that got money from the university for teaching, you know, gen ed classes, big service classes are not going to be getting the same amount of money. So, a lot of colleges are gonna be in trouble, and we're gonna to see how much the university is going to support them. But now that the university itself, of course, is in this financial issue, and is instituting budget cuts and hiring freezes, it seems that that's probably less likely to happen. And faculty did push back against Robbins in Monday's meeting and asked him repeatedly about the amount of support they're going to get and, you know, he couldn't really give a firm answer on that.
BRODIE: Well, that's interesting because the university has until a week from Friday to present its plan for dealing with all of this. Does it seem as though the school is going to be ready for that?
WOLFE: Robbins says so. Faculty members were upset because he showed up to the meeting without, you know, his full outlined plan that he has to submit to the Arizona Board of Regents. And many of them were hoping that there would be some shared governance involved and that faculty members could critique the plan. But Robbins did not bring any sort of hard written plan. He did say that he wanted to hear from faculty, but a lot of faculty are angry because they say, you know, we have less than two weeks now to make our voices heard. So Robbins has to submit a plan by Dec. 15. I have sources within his administration telling me that, you know, it's almost done and he's getting ready to go with it, but he didn't bring a lot of concrete answers to Monday's faculty meeting. And actually the faculty Senate is conducting an emergency faculty senate meeting next Monday as well. Normally they only meet once a month. But most of them are so concerned about this, that they're going to meet again.
BRODIE: Any sense of what action if any they might look to take next month next week.
WOLFE: Well, you know, Faculty Senate President, Leila Hudson, she's an anthropology professor and she said in her opening remarks last week that she gets asked almost every day by faculty members if it's time to take a vote of no confidence against Robbins. She said that she wanted to wait and see, she wanted to wait and see what Robbins' plan was actually going to be. So I don't see that happening. But I do see Ted Downing, the professor, I spoke about earlier, he tried to pass a motion based on state law that the university president was not properly working with shared governance that did not pass, but I could see them trying to pass a similar motion next Monday.
BRODIE: All right, we'll have to wait and see. That is Ellie Wolfe of the Arizona Daily Star. Ellie, thanks for your time. I appreciate it.
WOLFE: Thank you, and thank you for supporting our journalism.
