Academic units at the University of Arizona should face fewer cuts than others on campus, including administrators in the school’s athletics program, which needs to balance its budget and repay $69 million in loans, a faculty committee report says.
The General Faculty Financial Recalibration Committee’s 16-page report includes more than a dozen recommendations for senior administrators amid the university’s $177 million deficit.
In addition to the recommendations, which include cutting 20% of the administration of the athletics department, the report also attacks parts of interim Chief Financial Officer John Arnold’s financial plan and criticized the university for a decreasing percentage of tenure-track faculty.
The committee, chaired by Educational Policy Professor Gary Rhoades, also requested a formal meeting with Arnold.
“That will be important for enhancing the financial plan, ensuring clear, accurate calculations of units’ ‘overspending,’ to recalibrating the plan’s implementation to mitigate its adverse effects and optimize its effectiveness, not just immediately, but for the long-term health of the university,” the report reads.
Recommendations
It’s unclear how many of the committee recommendations will sway senior administrators.
One of the recommendations is to disaggregate the academic units from the support and auxiliary units. The committee argues that the academic units should be cut by less compared to the others. In January 2020, the university implemented mid-year cuts in that manner: academic units were cut by 1.5%, while non-academic units were cut by 3.5%.
Besides just approaching Arnold with scenarios for budget cuts of 5%, 10% or 15%, the committee suggested that units “develop 5% and 10% growth scenarios addressing what resources would be required to achieve particular levels of growth in productivity and efficiency.”
At a staff council meeting last month, Robbins signaled that he was interested in giving more funding to some units, despite the deficit.
The committee also recommended that the athletics department not just create a plan to balance its budget, but also to repay the $69 million in loans the unit took from the university’s operating budget between 2020 and 2021.
Furthermore, the committee recommended a 20% reduction in the athletic department’s administration through attrition, retirement and layoffs at the senior level. Additionally, it recommended freezing coaching salaries and hiring.
CFO criticisms
The committee wrote that Arnold’s plan, which asks all units to come up with scenarios for a 5%, 10% or 15% cut “perpetuates the under compensation/underinvestment in the university’s production units that threaten and undermine the university’s academic strength.”
The group argued that the plan punishes units that have only just barely overspent.
“Of the 81 units, 20 are balanced or are running surpluses, 20 are running less than $1 million deficits and 11 account for roughly 95% of the overspending,” the report reads.
The report accuses the plan of making it so that “those who are most likely to be on the chopping block are those least responsible for the challenges we face.”
“This blunt edged cure is worse than the disease,” the committee wrote about Arnold’s cut plan, “as it is already comprising the productivity and revenue generation of academic units and may reduce revenues even more than expenditures.”
Cutting administrative roles
Though most have approved Robbins’ commitment to cutting administrative positions first, the committee is concerned about the lack of details released about it.
“At present, beyond indications that all senior positions are being reviewed, it is not clear what actions at that level are being taken,” the report states.
Members of the Faculty Senate have repeatedly asked for even a benchmark percentage or number that Robbins wants to cut his senior administration by. He has yet to present one.
“There are some high-profile examples of senior level administrators who have stepped down but whose salaries have been continued,” the report states. “It is hard to overestimate the negative fallout among employees and in the communities we serve.”
Former Chief Financial Officer Lisa Rulney is retaining her salary of over $500,000 despite losing her title and being blamed for not catching the causes of the financial crisis earlier. Dave Heeke, the university’s former vice president and director of athletics, left at the end of January but will be paid $1,042,500 and additional incentive compensation through 2025.
Investing in academic units
“The University of Arizona has been spending less on educators and more on senior administrators, even as student numbers have increased substantially,” the report states. “It has been wrong sizing the academic workforce and compromising our missions as a public research university and in education students, who are paying more for less access to the people who serve them.”
The financial plan, according to the committee “is already perpetuating and amplifying that trend.”
In 2022, just 10% of new faculty hires were tenure-track, down from 24% in 2017. The tenured and tenure-eligible share of the faculty workforce declined from 47% in 2013 to 44% in 2021.
Tenure-track professors aren’t the only ones who have been suffering in recent years, however.
Between 2014 and 2023, graduate assistants have decreased by 3% and over the last three years, graduate student employment trends have decreased in proportion to enrollments, despite an uptick in undergraduate student enrollments.
That matters because at a larger research university like the UA, graduate students are essential workers on campus that teach and tutor undergraduate students.
From 2019 to 2023, total staff numbers have increased by just 1%, despite student numbers increasing by 16%. Staff workload has increased because of that disproportionate increase, the report states.
“On a longer timeframe of 2014-2023, staff members increased 9% compared to a 25% increase in enrollments,” the report reads. “In sum, the university has been disinvesting in those who support our students and faculty.”
University of Arizona Global Campus
The committee met with University of Arizona Global Campus Vice President for Finance Lisa Kemp to discuss its concerns about the global campus project.
They report that already this year, “there have been reductions in operating expenditures on the order of 6% to 7%,” which is close to half of what the committee first recommended in December.
The total reductions amount to $17.2 million, meaning the projected budget deficit in operating costs for UAGC is now $2.4 million.
The committee also wrote that the report released last month by ABOR to Gov. Hobbs about UAGC “falls well short.”
Financial Aid
The committee repeatedly praised Kasey Urquidez, the vice president of enrollment management and dean of undergraduate admissions enrollment management.
According to Urquidez’s statements to the committee, scaling back on merit aid tuition discounting is estimated to reduce student enrollments by around 1,300 undergraduates.
