ARIZONA (By Judd Slivka, Arizona Republic) March 29, 2007 — Two major reform proposals are being considered this spring for higher education in Arizona, both of them filled with competing, often confusing claims.

Here is a primer on what House Bill 2079 (which would revamp the state's community college system) and the redesign of the state's universities proposed by the Board of Regents' Feasibility and Planning Workgroup would mean to college students and to the state.

QUESTION: Why would I want to get a four-year degree at a community college?

ANSWER: It would be much less expensive. And if you don't live near a place with a university, a community college could offer a closer option for a bachelor's degree.

Q: Where would these degrees be offered?

A: Under a proposal by Rep. Laura Knaperek, R-Tempe, nearly any community college that is not in LaPaz, Cochise, Santa Cruz, Yavapai or Yuma counties could offer bachelor's degrees in limited areas. Only half of the Maricopa and Pima community colleges would be able to offer those degrees. And Eastern Arizona College would be able to offer bachelor's degrees in whatever area it wanted because it's scheduled to become a four-year liberal-arts college.

Q: How likely is it that these changes will happen?

A: The community colleges have been pushing this issue for two decades, and that pressure has increased during the past two years. The bill passed 31-24 in the House, but it's up for grabs in the Senate. And the governor has been a good friend of the universities. But with lots of politics on the table, it might not be worth a veto if it gets through the Senate.

If this fails, Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, has introduced a much broader bill that would allow community colleges to offer any four-year degree they wanted.

Q: Does sufficient demand exist for the community colleges to offer four-year degrees?

A: Probably. But it's difficult to tell. In the limited areas allowed by Knaperek's bill — health professions, teaching, nursing, law enforcement and fire science — there probably is the demand.

Rio Salado College's president, Linda Thor, likes to point out that when the college started its post-baccalaureate teacher certification program a year ago, it expected 100 students. It ended up with 1,500.

The state's community colleges have done their own analysis of the demand in the four specific areas and have come up with some compelling numbers: 3,918 potential students are interested in pursuing an advanced degree in nursing; 25,278 are interested in pursuing an advanced degree in teaching; 5,719 are interested in pursuing an advanced degree in fire science; 16,612 indicated they'd be interested in pursuing an advanced degree in law enforcement.

But when the Arizona Community College Association, the community colleges' lobbying organization, compiled the numbers, it didn't issue any guidelines to the individual colleges. So the numbers were accumulated in different ways.

People who are interested in degrees often don't pursue them. Northern Arizona University found this out earlier this decade when a survey showed overwhelming demand for bachelor's degrees in places that aren't near one of the state's universities. The entire statewide enrollment for NAU's distance learning and "2+2" programs that pair two years of community college with two years of NAU studies is less than 2,500.

Q: What would tuition be like if I pursued my bachelor's from a community college?

A: If you use the tuition number thrown out by Rio Salado's Thor during House testimony one day — the tuition for classes for juniors and seniors would probably be double that for lower-division classes — you'd get a bachelor's degree from the Maricopa Community Colleges for about $631 a year less than the lowest undergraduate in-state tuition for a university student ($4,142 for NAU's statewide campuses.)

Q: Are community college programs actually less expensive to provide?

A: Community college baccalaureate programs do save money. In Florida, for example, funding for the baccalaureates at St. Petersburg College is at 85 percent of the level the state's universities get. The savings come mostly from not having to pay as much for administration. At UA-Fort Smith, the per-student expenditure from the state is $7,152 as opposed to a per-student expenditure of $10,436 in the rest of the university system.

But less expensive doesn't necessarily mean cheap.

At Dixie State College in St. George, Utah, though, the cost per full-time student for lower division classes is $1,387.83. For upper division, the cost is $3,700, or 62 percent higher.

Q: Where's the money going to come from?

A: No one knows. Knaperek's bill included changes and adjustments to community college budgets to account for the additional costs of educating juniors and seniors. But the bill doesn't really address a funding source for startup money, something that virtually every community college around the country that offers bachelor's degrees had from the state. At Dixie State College, the college used $500,000 in seed money to go out and start its programs. At Great Basin College in Elko, Nev., the state Legislature appropriated $1.5 million for the college to begin offering courses and an additional $800,000 in the second year.

Q: Under the university redesign plan, how much difference might there be in tuition levels at the other campuses?

A: The Board of Regents began enacting this policy earlier this month when it approved different tuition levels at different campuses in the system. Although there's not a huge difference right now — $256 between the highest and lowest for full-time, undergraduate, in-state students — over time, the difference is expected to widen substantially.

Q: Would lower tuition make a university education more accessible?

A: Not necessarily. In fact, the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education gave Arizona an "F" last year for its higher-education affordability, despite Arizona having one of the lowest public university tuitions in the country. The grade was mainly based on the lack of financial aid. The state provides about $1 million a year, or 0.1 percent of the total aid provided to students in the state. The federal government and universities provide the rest.

Q: Does lower tuition mean the quality of education will be lower?

A: That depends on whom you ask. Some people feel that lower tuition means not having the money to go and hire high-quality faculty and that focusing on teaching rather than research means attracting less-talented faculty. Then there are people who say such places attract people who want to teach.

Q: Do tuition levels affect the kind of students a university attracts?

A: Yes and no. A Republic analysis of four-year universities in Colorado, Illinois and Washington revealed that although their lower tuitions tend to attract lower-income and minority students, it's not all that cut and dried.

Q: Do NAU's "2+2" programs work?

A: The programs, which pair two years of community college classes with two years of upper-division university coursework, do work. But they're not all that popular. When the 10 community college presidents were asked if they were happy with NAU's level of "2+2" programs at a March meeting of the state community college association, only one president raised his hand. The satisfaction problem has been an NAU problem for years, as the university has moved forward, then drawn back on staffing at the distance sites off campus.