Incoming president expected to manage controversial UA Global Campus 'differently'

Incoming President Suresh Garimella’s approach to managing the UA Global Campus “is going to be different” than his predecessor who bought the controversial online university, according to the University of Arizona’s interim provost Ron Marx.

At a Faculty Senate meeting earlier this week, Marx, who has spoken to Garimella “two or three” times about the global campus, said that he suspected the incoming president to take stock of things a bit differently than current President Robert C. Robbins, who is leaving at the end of the month.

Marx declined to go into the “weeds” on the issue until Garimella is fully on campus, but said there was a plan for integrating the online school into the main university, including academic review of the programs.

UAGC, formerly known as Ashford University, was acquired by the UA in 2020. The UA purchased Ashford, a for-profit online university, from its parent company, Zovio, for $1 to create the nonprofit UAGC. The online college is affiliated with, but separate from the UA.

Additionally, Marx told the Faculty Senate, “there is some discussion about whether UAGC faculty would be brought over” to become UA faculty.

“It would be a mistake to integrate the faculty, given the fact that so little has changed from the days of Ashford and its predatory and subpar academic (programs),” Faculty Chair Leila Hudson told the Arizona Daily Star. “We have seen no evidence that that kind of faculty integration would be appropriate.”

Hudson did add, however, that she is in favor of creating a stronger pathway for UAGC students to become UA students.

“That’s part of our obligation to all students,” she said. “But the faculty, not without a serious filtering process in which faculty governance, through its appropriately elected leadership, plays a role.”

Marx did note that administrators were “not going to do anything until we have more certainty.”

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The U.S. Department of Education’s ongoing fight with the online university, and therefore the UA, over paying back the $72 million in student loans for 2,300 borrowers who say they were cheated by Ashford University is one uncertainty that Marx pointed to. The Biden administration canceled the loans for the borrowers and is now trying to recoup the costs from UAGC.

Marx said that the Department of Education was “kind of a wild card in all of this,” adding that the UA is moving forward towards integration using the outside audit, conducted by Ernst and Young, for that process.

The Ernst and Young report, which was released in June, concluded that UAGC has “broken even or generated surplus” since fiscal year 2022, though noted that the six-year completion rate for UAGC students is in the 15-20% range, well below the UA’s rate, which is in the 60-70% range.

Additionally, the report states that the online school has consistently seen a shrinking annual headcount of about 14% since it was acquired by the UA.

Despite the Ernst and Young report’s generally positive tone, Arizona-based think tank the Grand Canyon Institute, a nonprofit firm that monitors policy and education, bashed the audit.

“While the E&Y report indicates that UAGC is breaking even, that occurs because 95% of its faculty are poorly paid adjunct faculty,” GCI’s report says, adding that paying faculty more “would move UAGC from breaking even to (being) a financial drain on the university.”

Adjunct UAGC faculty are paid $19.25 per hour for undergraduate courses and $24-$25 per hour for graduate classes. An adjunct at UAGC teaching a class of 50 enrolled students makes $1,810, while a similar adjunct position at the UA pays at least $5,000 per course.

“They’re only break even because they pay their faculty practically nothing,” GCI Research Director Dave Wells told the Arizona Daily Star.