Tim Steller's column: No need to sideline UA's revenue-generating faculty

Some people seem to long for an authority figure.

A CEO, a head, a ruler — a single sun to guide their gaze through the days and the seasons. Someone they adore even when he is wrong.

As the effects of the University of Arizona’s financial crisis shake out, that’s the only way I can make sense of the current political repercussions. A struggle over the university’s future is playing out before us, and after all this, the president may come out ahead.

To review, the UA administration, led by President Robert C. Robbins, failed to catch overspending, much of it through his own initiatives, over the course of years, leading to a financial crisis that became clear in November. The Arizona Board of Regents also missed it before the annual deficit reached $177 million.

Spending cuts have begun, and layoffs are forthcoming.

Somehow, all this is leading to efforts to put more power in Robbins’ hands, take it from those who have questioned him and strengthen the powers of the regents. In other words, some of the people who messed up are being rewarded for it, while some who warned of the problems are being punished.

Most recently, that’s come in the form of an effort to sideline the Faculty Senate. This decades-old body, elected by faculty members, is often crosswise with whoever is the president at the time, and that’s especially been the case since November’s revelations.

The senate is a central part of the structure of “faculty governance,” which puts professors in charge of hiring and administration within their own departments and also requires, under a 1992 state law, that they participate in the running of the university.

The economic engine

Lately, they’ve been especially ornery. Senate chair Leila Hudson has become more harsh in her criticisms, but also has built what I view as a compelling case of the academic units as the economic engine of the university.

The departments, she has repeatedly noted, generate the vast majority of the university’s revenue through tuition and grants, but the central administration sweeps it in and only returns a portion to the departments. At a Feb. 19 meeting, Hudson said, taken together, the academic units get back only 42 percent of the revenue they generate.

It’s the Faculty Senate’s best case for relevance — they represent the money-makers, while the administration represents the money-takers.

But then she went further. She questioned the previous business dealings of then-regents chair Fred DuVal. He was managing director of a private equity firm called Amicus Investments, which advertised itself as specializing in university real estate, infrastructure and master plans. She suggested he has had a conflict of interest as a regent, given that the company previously said it did business with the UA and ASU.

Hudson didn’t have the goods. It was more of a suggestion of a conflict than an accusation. DuVal reacted angrily, saying his work with Amicus ended before he became a regent in 2018. And he threatened to sue, hiring a lawyer to send Hudson a cease-and-desist letter.

It was ugly and apparently pushed regent Lyndel Manson over the edge. She lashed out at the Faculty Senate and asked that Robbins “establish new faculty leadership.”

Well, the president can’t just unelect the people whom the faculty has elected, but he seemed happy to take the suggestion. In a matter of days, he announced the establishment of a new “University Advisory Council,” reporting to and apparently selected by him. It will include faculty, staff and students, he said.

Robbins, in his letter announcing the council, described it as complementary to existing faculty governance. But it’s obviously a response to Manson’s call and to the growing conflict between the Faculty Senate, the administration and the regents.

If he chooses, Robbins can consult his new council more, consult the hostile bodies less, and consider the requirement for faculty participation complete.

‘From the top down’

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That would undoubtedly please Rep. Travis Grantham. His bill, HB 2735, would weaken the requirement for faculty “participation” in university governance, changing it to a requirement of “consultation.” That, of course, could be minimal and fulfilled by the new council.

Grantham unfurled his reasoning at a Feb. 14 hearing of the House Appropriations Committee by emphasizing the need for hierarchy.

“Our state university system, which is ultimately run by ABOR, the Arizona Board of Regents, has the ability to run their universities from the top down, meaning the president down,” Grantham said.

“Arizona State University is a great example of a university that runs the operation from the president down,” Grantham went on, citing longtime president Michael Crow. “He’s the decisionmaker at the university. He makes sure that his budget stays in order. He also makes sure that additional expenditures don’t occur without his knowledge.”

“UA wasn’t having as much success in that realm,” Grantham said. “I’m not going to blame this on their president or anybody in particular. What was going on at the UA was more of a holistic model, where they kind of have this model taking place that was shared governance. Shared governance is not how the universities are supposed to operate.”

He went on to blame the UA’s budget deficit on shared governance, but that is just plain wrong. The main causes of the budget deficit are:

— Excessive discounting of tuition, especially to out-of-state students

— Bailouts of the university’s intercollegiate athletics department, totaling $87 million over three years

— The cost of absorbing online Ashford University into the University of Arizona Global Campus

— Strategic initiatives of the central administration that cost more than $140 million.These were all administrative decisions, and faculty members warned about them at different times. But the appeal of the authority figure, the university CEO, apparently overwhelmed Grantham’s capacity for reason. The bill passed the House and is awaiting action in the Senate.

‘Not like any other business’

Down through the years, calls have often come from the Legislature and elsewhere, for the universities to be run like a business.

When a group of UA donors rallied around Robbins last month, several referred to him as a “CEO.” Humberto Lopez, who founded HSL Properties, decried how tenured faculty hold back a president.

“If I could not fire or get rid of my employees, like with these tenured professors, I don’t know how I could run my company,” said Lopez, whose company was accused by Arizona’s attorney general Wednesday of price-fixing in apartment rents.

But the university never was intended to be a company. It’s a land-grant institution established to educate Arizonans. That’s still true, even though declining support from the Legislature has forced the university to seek out alternative ways to make money.

“If the CEO model had yielded insights and practices that make it work, no one would be happier than the faculty,” faculty senate chair Hudson told me in an interview.

“I speak as a business owner,” added Hudson, who owns Zayna Mediterranean restaurant with her husband. “A university is not like any other business, especially a public, land-grant university. This is one of the highest and most precious aspirations of our society.”

Not held to account

Even for people who want the university run like a business, further empowering the central figure doesn’t make a lot of sense. An administration not held to account is what has put the university in this position.

Besides, the money is made largely by the dispersed academic units, not by the CEO-president. Even if the faculty can be annoying, chaotic or wrongheaded in their criticisms, they represent the university’s main source of revenue. For the most part, the head guy just spends it.