Regents approve UA Global Campus integration, $2.7B UA budget

Nearly three years after it first acquired the assets of a troubled for-profit online school, the University of Arizona’s absorption of UA Global Campus is expected to take effect at the end of the month.

The Arizona Board of Regents approved the integration Thursday, which means the online school with roughly 25,000 students will soon be part of the University of Arizona.

The board did that right after it approved the UA’s $2.7 billion annual budget, which includes the budget for UA Global Campus. The budget for UA Global Campus is roughly $249.4 million and includes about $153 million for salaries and benefits.

Under this arrangement, the UA intends to “acquire substantially all of UAGC’s assets, assume substantially all of UAGC’s liabilities, and employ substantially all of UAGC’s faculty, staff, and administrators.” In addition, the UA will acquire two properties UA Global Campus already has leases on in Chandler.

Unlike the UA’s diverse revenue strategy, which includes tuition, grants and state funding, UA Global Campus’ sole revenue base at this time is tuition.

Within the fiscal year 2024 budget plan the UA presented to the board, the university expects to net $766.3 million in tuition and fees from students at the UA. It expects to net an additional $231.1 million from its UA Global Campus students, which adds up to $997.4 million in total revenues from students paying for an education.

Critiques

In August 2020, when the UA announced it was acquiring the assets of the for-profit Ashford University (that’s what UA Global Campus was previously known as) and rebranding it as the nonprofit UA Global Campus, it faced both internal and external criticisms.

Many of those critiques focused on both student welfare — Ashford attracted high numbers of veterans, low-income students and students from historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups — and the UA entangling its upstanding reputation with a school that has faced multiple lawsuits for misleading students about the cost and value of an Ashford degree.

The UA isn’t the only major public university to affiliate with a for-profit college in recent years. Purdue University in Indiana acquired Kaplan University in 2018 and has since rebranded it Purdue University Global. Last month, the University of Idaho acquired the University of Phoenix shortly after the University of Arkansas system trustees rejected the deal.

At the time of the Ashford acquisition, the UA said it planned to keep the two entities separate. But by early 2022, the UA announced its new plans — and the regents approved it — to absorb the school and its assets.

Since then, leaders of the UA and UA Global Campus have been working on details of that plan, which would substantially grow the UA’s presence in the online higher education space that schools like Arizona State University have dominated for years.

Those discussions, however, faced continued criticisms from the UA Faculty Senate, whose members have repeatedly accused the administration of lacking transparency and shared governance in developing its strategy.

'I'm personally very excited'

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Nonetheless, since the Board of Regents gave its final approval of that plan on Thursday, integration of UA Global Campus into the UA will be complete by June 30. That completion is contingent on the online school's accreditor, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission, accepting a substantive change application the UA submitted in conjunction with UA Global Campus earlier this year. WSCUC is expected to make a final decision at its meeting scheduled for June 28-30.

“We’re in the position now of being able to achieve the ultimate objective of bringing UAGC into the University of Arizona,” UA President Robert C. Robbins told the board Thursday before it unanimously approved the request for the asset acquisition transaction.

“I’m personally very excited about this, given that there are 40 million Americans that have some college experience but no degree. It’s part of our offerings to serve these students and we’re looking forward to having these students be Wildcats for life," Robbins said.

Leila Hudson, chair of the UA faculty, told the Arizona Daily Star Friday that Robbins' “idealistic vision” for UA Global Campus will involve “more, not less, transparency about UAGC finances and educational practices to ensure that the tuition revenue generated from underserved populations of non-traditional and international students truly breaks with UAGC's problematic past, delivers value and excellence worthy of our name, and does not compromise our institutional operations or reputation.”

Hudson added that it’s “a tall order,” but she’s “hopeful that recent and continuing changes at the University of Arizona will make us healthy enough to sustain President Robbins' vision.”

UA will grant the degrees

Once the integration is complete, UA Global Campus will operate as a separate business unit within the UA, and Robbins will be held accountable to the regents for its academic, financial and operational performance.

Paul Pastorek, who is president of UA Global Campus, will now become the UA’s senior vice president for UAGC and report directly to Robbins. UA Global's senior leaders will at first report directly to Pastorek, but also to their corresponding senior leaders at the UA.

The following are key elements of this new structure for UA Global Campus:

• UA will be the degree-granting institution;
• A graduate of UAGC will receive a UA degree with a UAGC designation;
• UA Global Campus will maintain its current admission standards, which are different than UA’s admission standards;
• UA Global Campus will maintain its current tuition and fees, which are different than UA’s tuition and fees;
• UA Global Campus will retain its current faculty, separate from UA’s faculty;
• UA Global Campus will retain its current student body, separate from UA’s student body;
• UA Global Campus will have separate faculty-shared governance;
• UA Global Campus will continue to enroll and register its students separately from UA;
• UA will provide UA Global Campus’ annual budget to the Board of Regents for review and will periodically report UA Global Campus’ financial performance to the regents; provided, however, that UA Global Campus’ budget will be included in UA’s overall annual budget, which is reviewed and approved by the regents;
• UA Global Campus will have separate and distinct accounts within UA’s finance and treasury organization; and
• UA Global Campus will retain its own academic programs (as approved by the regents), faculty council, recruitment and enrollment services, and financial aid support.

Hudson said this new structure, which she said elected faculty representatives did not see before the vote, “seems designed to keep a firewall between the University of Arizona faculty and the students, programs, graduation requirements, and faculty of UAGC.” That structure, she added, makes her “worry that it could produce its own costs, inefficiencies, and frictions.”