The Arizona House of Representatives has approved a measure that would change the shared governance policies at the state’s public universities.
Under the bill, the Arizona Board of Regents would be allowed to delegate certain authority to university presidents, but those presidents would not be allowed to delegate it further. It also specifies that faculty’s role is that of consulting, not participating in university governance.
The bill has been approved along party lines, both in committee and in the full House. It now moves to the Senate for consideration.
Carolina Cuellar, a reporter for Arizona Luminaria, has been following the measure. She joined The Show to talk about why supporters of the bill say it’s needed.
Full conversation
CAROLINA CUELLAR: So the primary sponsor of the bill actually is Travis Grantham, and he, during the original hearing for the bill, emphasized that the bill focuses on making sure the state universities and all of their faculty understand that the president is a decision maker at the state university.
And the way that he explains it is that this stems from the University of Arizona's financial crisis, and the fact that the president, sort of, from his interpretation, delegated the management of budgets to each department, or as they refer to them organizational units, and that the budget kind of got scrambled in that so Grantham's ultimate purpose with the bill was to a really outline what the role of faculty representatives are in the decision making process, and also make it very clear that the buck stops at the president. That is all of the power and decision making at the university is concentrated in that particular person, and there is an additional provision which makes it so universities have to make their finances accessible and their financial systems accessible to the Board of Regents to help with oversight over those sorts of matters.
But really, I think the crux of the bill has been putting more responsibility or putting more accountability on the president. And I guess what he says, clarifying the role of faculty representatives in universities decision making.
MARK BRODIE: Right well, and the bill would essentially make the faculty consultants right. They'd have sort of an advisory role. Has there been any discussion about what in practice that would look like in terms of, you know, let's say a university president has questions, or, you know, wants some guidance on what a particular college is doing, or what a particular department is doing, like, do we know how far the people who are directly affected or who are impacted by that particular unit would be able to like, how far they'd be able to go in advising the university president?
CUELLAR: So that is a great question. And it gets a little bit complicated when you see that the provisions in the bill that it's attempting to change by many faculty are sort of seen as the foundation for this concept of shared governance. And that's sort of what we're talking about, is this dynamic between the faculty representatives, the president and the Board of Regents and decision making. And it gets a little bit difficult when you realize that each university has their own shared governance policy.
So in the University of Arizona, they have an established policy where there is, I guess, this consultation role, but the faculty that their opinion is supposed to contribute substantially, I suppose, the decision making. But what happened, even under the current provisions, which are presumably a lot more powerful than the provisions that are recommended in the bill, is that faculty spoke out against a lot of the decisions that were made by University of Arizona administrators, even before they were made, sort of, as you know, a part of their role in helping make these decisions, but they were ignored.
So I think UA faculty right now is worried that with the existing protections, they're already being ignored, and if the language is lightened or given less power, that problem will go even further. It will allow them, it will allow UA administration and the Board of Regents basically, to disregard any input that they don't like, and not take faculty representatives, opinions and insights into serious consideration.
BRODIE: Is this something that faculty at ASU and NAU are also concerned about?
CUELLAR: Yes. So in the last board of regents meeting, there were people from both ASU and University of Arizona who spoke out against the bill. I have yet to speak to anybody from NAU who has shown or has vocalized any concern, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't exist.
What kinds of things are faculty saying in terms of how it would impact them and maybe how it would impact their ability to have a say in how their departments or their colleges or their university is run?
So I spoke to the University of Arizona Faculty Senate Chair, Leila Hudson, and she gave me this sort of, I guess, quote, which is, to give these people more power, referring to the board of regents and the president, and to try to constrain and remove the only functioning source of checks and balances on their otherwise out-of-control spending and poor decision-making is simply hastening the collapse of a great university. And so that's a very powerful statement.
That also echoes what I hear from a lot of faculty is just that the power is moving further away from the people who are trying to guide the University of Arizona away from the situation in which they're in.
BRODIE: How does what this bill is attempting to do compare to how the structure works in other states with public universities? Is what Arizona has now similar to what other states do? Is what this bill is trying to move toward more similar to what other states do in terms of who's the ultimate decision-maker at public universities?
CUELLAR: So the whole university governance system sort of varies from state to state. Some states actually make it so each public university has their own board. So it's really going to depend. And like I said, it even varies within universities in Arizona.
So it's hard to make that comparison. But the structures at the University of Arizona do differ slightly from NAU and ASU in terms of the methods and also the resources that faculty have.
BRODIE: Has Governor Hobbs or anyone on her staff indicated how she's feeling about this?
CUELLAR: No. So I've reached out to Gov. Hobbs three times asking her about the bill and whether she would veto it if it made it past the Senate. And she hasn't responded. I did speak to Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, who was one of the few people who spoke out against the bill and committee. And she essentially echoed what a lot of the faculty at the University of Arizona are saying because her decision sort of came from speaking with them.
And it is basically that this bill really limits faculty governance protections in their ability to contribute to decision making at the school and in matters that really affect them the most.
