Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a bill aimed at stripping power at the University of Arizona away from faculty — and giving it to the president and Board of Regents. The bill was passed by the Republican-led Legislature and would have given the authority to approve academic degrees or create new departments to the regents — who could only delegate it to a university president.
While it would have applied to all three state universities, the bill’s sponsor, Republican Travis Grantham, made it clear he was motivated by the University of Arizona’s ongoing financial crisis — a $177 million budget shortfall university leadership didn’t announce until the fall of 2023. They now say that shortfall has been reduced to $52 million.
Grantham blamed that crisis, at least partially, on the fact that UA President Robert Robbins didn’t have complete control, unlike someone like ASU President Michael Crow. Ellie Wolfe, who’s covered the UA’s financial troubles since the beginning, sat down with The Show to talk all about it.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning there, Ellie.
ELLIE WOLFE: Hi. Thank you for having me.
GILGER: Thanks for coming on. So give us first some more details about what this bill would have done, how it would have stripped power from the faculty at the U of A.
WOLFE: It's really interesting because this bill merely changes language. So it states that the Arizona Board of Regents and university presidents would consult rather than share responsibility with faculty regarding educational and personnel matters. It's interesting, right, you were talking about how this bill came because of the UA financial crisis. But the Faculty Senate at the University of Arizona actually does not do anything with budgets. That's all President Robbins. The Faculty Senate mainly kind of overseas you know, course offerings and majors and minors and and, and creating new programs.
GILGER: Right. So what kind of power do they have at the U of A this Faculty Senate, like as, as Travis Grantham described it, described it as, as a shared governance model. What does that mean?
WOLFE: Right. So, that's a good question. The University of Arizona Faculty Senate can do a lot of things where they don't actually kind of make policy but instead vote on referendum. So for example, this spring, they voted overwhelmingly in favor of three referendums, demanding delays in layoffs, reinvestment in athletics and downsizing of senior administration jobs. Now they did do this, right.
But, but what does that actually mean? It's more of a symbolic vote but, but like I said before, really, their main power comes in the form of approving programming and doing things that have to do with the academics of the university, which isn't the thing that was really losing money and creating the deficit.
GILGER: Right. So back up and remind us what was creating the deficit here.
WOLFE: That's a good question. So President Robbins has gleamed kind of overinvestment in his moonshot projects which include building buildings, putting a ton of money into research. You know, athletics was a huge cause the university ended up loaning the athletics department just over $87 million over the last couple of years that the department hasn't been able to pay, right, they're in their own deficit of $30 million.
And, you know, making decisions like increasing financial aid for out-of-state students, which is, which is now going to stop and be cut down. So, really, those core academic programs aren't causing the deficit. In fact, they're bringing in money by attracting students.
GILGER: So, where does the financial crisis at the U of A stand now, Ellie, like they say, they've shrunken it down to $52 million. How?
WOLFE: So they are projecting that by next year, the deficit will be down to $52 million from $163 million currently. That's due to a lot of factors. There have been layoffs both at the senior administrative levels and everyday employees, right?
There's also been drastic cuts to budgets, especially in a senior administration. Robbins said last week during the Arizona Board of Regents meeting that they were cutting administrative units by between 10% and 15%. And they were adding or, and they were only cutting academics by between 3.5% and 4%. So, a lot of strategic cuts and shaves but unfortunately, with the state budget, the University of Arizona is getting kind of cut in multiple ways. So they're going to have to work harder to keep finding that money.
GILGER: Right. I wanted to ask about that because there are pretty significant state budget cuts to all of the universities including the U of A in the state budget this this year as there were cuts kind of across the board. How might those cuts to higher ed affect all of this going forward? Where else can they turn for more cuts there?
WOLFE: Yeah, so the cuts to higher ed in this year's state budget are twofold because the state is cutting funding for ASU, NAU and the UA. But they're also cutting funding for various E board programs including the Arizona Teachers Academy, which is meant to increase teachers in the state and help with the teacher shortage. And also the Arizona Promise Program, which is a guaranteed scholarship program for low-income Pell eligible students who had a certain GPA who are in the state of Arizona in high school.
So, but the problem is, is that the Arizona Promise program is an unfunded mandate, meaning the government can cut, you know, $15-$20 million from it. But that means that the universities themselves are going to have to find that money and still give out those scholarships because it is a mandate. So these universities are being hit twice, right? Individual funding and cutting of the Arizona Promise program.
And that's really going to affect everything, right? Like the cuts to the teacher program, it means that the waitlists are going to get longer and it's going to be even harder to address the state's teacher shortage. And the Promise program, it means that, you know, the UA is gonna have to find that money from someplace else, which means more cuts in, in other programs, more cuts to financial aid for out-of-state students. It'll probably be more difficult on athletics as well.
GILGER: All right, we'll leave it there for now. That is Ellie Wolfe with the Arizona Daily Star joining us from Tucson. Ellie, thanks as always. Appreciate it.
WOLFE: Thanks for having me.
