PHOENIX (By Judd Slivka, Arizona Republic) January 26,
2007 — The eight Arizonans who are redesigning the state's public university
system meet today in Tempe to pore over data that could affect every facet
of public education in Arizona.
Ultimately, their recommendations will help determine how much people pay
for college in Arizona, who gets in, where people go to college and what
kind of college experience they will have.
They also are likely to decide whether Arizona State University West will
split from ASU's main campus and become a university that specializes in
undergraduate education. And the group will consider whether to diversify
Arizona's university system by creating new colleges in southern and western
Arizona.
They expect to have their proposals in place by the Feb. 23 meeting of the
Arizona Board of Regents.
"The need to redesign a four-year system for the state is obvious," said
Chris Herstam, the regent who started the process in May by suggesting his
own plan to redesign the system. "We need more undergraduate options for
students throughout the state."
The redesign team consists of representatives from the state's three
universities, the Board of Regents and the community college system.
For almost a year, they have been collecting data from a variety of sources.
Their conclusions will lay the foundation for what comes next: a plan to
restructure the state's public higher-education system.
Some of the data that will shape the conversation:
• The models done in 2000 that predicted 170,000 enrollments in the state's
universities by 2020 seem to be holding up, pointing to the need for more
places to educate. The system currently has about 105,000 students.
• Projections suggest the state will have a serious gap in the number of
college graduates it produces and the number it needs, indicating a need to
find new ways to produce college graduates. Over the next 10 years, a needs
assessment determined, the state will need some 300,000 people with
bachelor's degrees; over the past 10 years, the state has only graduated
about 170,000 people with bachelor's degrees.
• Information on the finances of the 10 states being used for comparison
will shape the debate and suggest how to pay for the changes, including
whether different schools should have different tuitions.
• The group designed subjective ways to evaluate what makes a good proposed
system. Those criteria will become the foundation of the new design. Among
the criteria: Does a proposal provide affordable access to a bachelor's
degree? Will any new universities be equitably funded with existing
universities? Will any new institution address workforce development needs?
• The group also will consider the relative success of some two-year
colleges around the country offering baccalaureate degrees.
Herstam's original plan spun off the ASU campus in west Phoenix as a
freestanding university. It also had Northern Arizona University-Yuma and
the University of Arizona-South combine to form their own freestanding
university.
A key to the formation of the new plan is the success of ASU West's faculty
in lobbying members of the Legislature to not be split off from ASU. At the
heart of that issue is the argument over whether universities such as ASU
West and NAU should focus mainly on undergraduate education.
NAU's administration has already decided to go that way, as directed by the
regents. The majority of the ASU West faculty has spent the past few months
fighting the suggestion that the university focus on teaching undergraduates
and lessen its research emphasis.
"A lot of the talk has been about the cost efficiency," said Bill Simmons, a
political science professor and head of ASU West's faculty senate. "Not a
lot of talk has been about the quality of education. There's been a lot of
talk about graduation rates, but not much talk about quality. If one of the
recommendations is to build a university, we hope the goal would be to build
an institution that's a quality institution."
