A Senate committee passed a bill Thursday that would even out the disparity in per-student funding for each of Arizona’s three universities.
The legislature approves state funding for UA, NAU and ASU each year, and Arizona House Bill 2090 would appropriate $15.3 million from the State General Fund in order to slowly phase out the funding disparity among students from the universities.
The state’s general fund appropriated $6,598 per student to UA in 2011, $896 more per student than ASU.
Over the next three years, ASU would receive $12 million, and NAU would receive $3.3 million to allow the two universities’ per-student funding to catch up to UA, bill sponsor Rep. Bob Robson, R-Chandler, said.
After advocating for an end to disparity in funding among the universities for the past eight months, Undergraduate Student Government Downtown President Joseph Grossman declared Thursday a “historic day.”
Grossman said finally addressing the issue of disparity among the three universities is a “huge win” for higher education in Arizona.
“It’s making it seem that (an) UA student is more important than an ASU student,” Grossman said. “Even UA thinks the problem needs to be addressed.”
Grossman, who spoke at the Senate committee meeting Thursday morning, said after months of working toward addressing the issue, legislators had already heard all of the talking points and his speech was more of a “thank you” to the committee for pushing HB 2090 through.
“I’ve been putting (in) I don’t know how many hours of work into this,” he said. “It’s never gotten to the point where it did anything.”
Robson said the issue is something he has been involved in for many years.
“A student that goes to ASU or NAU or UA should get the same amount of funding,” Robson said. “It’s pretty basic.”
Robson said he believes the funding became disproportionate over the years because each institution may have required more or less funding at one time.
“It just got further and further away,” he said.
Bill documents state the three universities were originally created with different focuses, meaning they required different levels of funding. As the universities broadened their programs, funding needs have become more proportionate.
ABOR spokeswoman Katie Paquet said in an email that the Board is supportive of HB 2090.
“In ASU’s case, disparity funding would be used to expand faculty, increase instructional support and student services and address problems created by unfunded enrollment growth,” Paquet said.
Grossman said it is important that the issue be addressed now in order to begin a performance-based funding model on a clean, even slate among the universities.
“We can use that to subsidize the cost for in-state students to achieve our state Constitution’s goal of a free — or as free as possible — education,” he said.
Reach the reporter at kmmandev@asu.edu
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