A bill working its way through the state Senate would eliminate the Arizona Board of Regents and replace it with an entirely new system to govern Arizona’s universities.
Senate Bill 1115 proposes sweeping reforms, including disestablishing the Arizona Board of Regents, making ASU’s Polytechnic campus a freestanding university, and funding universities and community colleges on a per-student basis.
Bill sponsor Sen. Andy Biggs, R–Gilbert, has said the aim of the bill is to drive innovation and increase competition among universities. He has also called the Board of Regents a stumbling block to change.
Supporters of the bill argue it would reduce state spending and allow the universities to create a governing structure more compatible with their individual missions.
The bill passed the Senate Appropriations Committee last week and will now proceed to the full Senate for discussion and amendment before a final vote.
ASU officials would not comment on the bill as it is against University policy to speak about pending legislation.
Student leaders voiced their concerns over the implications of the proposed legislation.
Associated Students of ASU Polytechnic president Dominick Hernandez said the bill throws everything into chaos.
“I’m strongly opposed it,” he said. “It’s an overall bad idea.”
ABOR spokeswoman Katie Paquet said the board is also firmly opposed to the bill, adding that it would substantially reverse progress made in the last few years toward the board’s long-term plan known as Vision 2020.
Vision 2020 includes increasing low-cost options for students and doubling the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in Arizona by 2020. The bill would affect both of these plans, Paquet said.
“We’ve already begun to see progress on that plan,” Paquet said. “Breaking up the Board of Regents as it stands today and establishing four new boards, one for each of the existing universities and one for the new Arizona Polytechnic University, would really, really set us back in terms of planning and progress we’ve established in those areas.”
The new governing structure would lend itself to redundancies and duplication, which could potentially cost students or the state more money than the current structure does, Paquet said.
“There’s a lot of unknown costs right now,” she said. “We don’t have a ton of detail other than what has been written in the bill, and there’s still a lot of blanks.”
Hernandez echoed the concern of redundancy and lack of information, specifically those dealing with the separation of the Polytechnic campus.
Student fees, for example, are not allocated by campus, meaning fee money is not specific to each campus and is used for projects throughout the University.
The main example Hernandez gave to illustrate this point is that fees from students at all four campuses are contributing to the construction of a recreation center on the Polytechnic campus.
“The bill doesn’t take those things into consideration,” Hernandez said. “How will they compensate the students for their investment on that campus if it is separated?”
Business administration junior Kryslen Holt said she has seen the Polytechnic campus decimated by state budget cuts in the last three years, and that separation from ASU would hurt the students and campus even more.
“I wouldn’t want to see that,” she said. “My dad went to ASU, so I only applied to ASU and one other school. It would not be OK at all to just be part of another university.”
Other funding-related questions raising concern among the bill’s opponents have to do with the new funding model proposed in the bill.
The funding model would be based on enrollment, which would apply to both community colleges and universities.
Students accepted to any state university or community college would be given a voucher toward tuition and fees, which the universities would then redeem for state aid.
This system would put the universities in direct competition for students in order to receive state funding. Supporters of the bill say this would encourage each to improve, innovate and become competitive nationwide.
Neither the amount of the student voucher or the amount of state aid given for each is specified in the bill.
Universities would also have the opportunity to earn additional funding through incentives determined by a government committee.
The oversight committee for the universities, which would also be created in the bill, would consist of the governor, House speaker, Senate president and chairperson of the higher education committees of each legislative chamber.
The committee would annually set benchmarks for each university and recommend monetary incentives for reaching the goals.
Hernandez and Paquet agreed that, overall, the lack of details makes it difficult to determine the potential impact of the bill.
“We don’t have a lot of answers,” Hernandez said.
But he was confident about one thing.
“The Polytechnic campus is as much of a part of ASU as ASU Tempe. Our campus is tied to ASU,” he said. “I’m part of ASU. Wherever ASU goes, we’re going to go with it.”
Reach the reporter at keshoult@asu.edu