When University of Arizona President Robert Robbins announced the institution is in a βfinancial crisis,β faculty were shocked.
Now that their initial surprise has worn off, many are hitting back against the university president, claiming the turmoil is not a financial crisis, but instead a management one.
βWe have a long history of concerns about lack of transparency, lack of accountability and management problems at the University of Arizona,β said chair of the faculty and anthropology professor Leila Hudson. βBut even I was not prepared for the scope, scale and suddenness of this management crisis.β
At the Arizona Board of Regentsβ Nov. 2 meeting, Robbins and Lisa Rulney, UA senior vice president for business affairs and chief financial officer, admitted to a financial miscalculation that left the university much more fiscally vulnerable than they originally predicted. Administrators originally believed they had 156 daysβ worth of cash on hand, but are now projecting only 97 for this fiscal year. Thatβs a miscalculation of $240 million.
The UA is now significantly lagging behind the regentsβ requirement of at least 140 days cash on hand. Arizona State University currently has 171 days cash on hand while Northern Arizona University has 180, according to board documents.
UA faculty members who spoke both on and off the record to the Arizona Daily Star claim that a series of financial moves, including acquiring the online Ashford University (now known as the University of Arizona Global Campus), and loaning the universityβs athletic department more than $50 million during the COVID-19 pandemic that has yet to be repaid show mismanagement from Robbins and his central administration.
βIn an institution of this size and this scale and this importance to the life of our state and the people of Arizona, we need the very highest level of professional management,β Hudson said. βI do not have confidence that we currently have that.β
UA officials did not respond to multiple questions and comment requests from the Arizona Daily Star submitted to UA spokeswoman Pam Scott in the last week.
In both his statement to the Board of Regents and in a Faculty Senate meeting Monday, Robbins blamed the financial situation on overspending in athletics and financial aid. He said the university is considering cutting some sports programs and lessening the amount of financial aid given to students. There will also be a 2% budget cut put in place.
But some faculty members arenβt buying Robbinsβ proposals.
They point to information shared by the university in a nearly 400-page document produced by the Board of Regents, which states that βthe acquisition of UAGC added $265.5 million in operating costs, thus increasing the denominator in the days cash formula.β
This statement, Hudson believes, shows that the purchase of UA Global Campus has had a much larger impact on the universityβs cash reserves than officials are letting on.
βIt seems to me that theyβre trying to obscure the role of UAGC in this,β Hudson said. Robbins did not mention UAGC in his statements to ABOR or in the Faculty Senate meeting he attended earlier this week.
βThe costs and risks of the UAGC deal continue to manifest themselves in ways that the administration and the Board of Regents resolutely refused to see even when we predicted them over the last three years,β Hudson said.
Despite the ABOR report stating that UAGC was a reason for the lower cash on hand, the statement continues to say that βthe current budget model is designed to support investment in high revenue growth and high margin potential areas, such as University of Arizona Global Campus.β
The university acquired Ashford University in 2020 and began the process of integrating it into its UA Global Campus earlier this year, despite faculty going on the record against the project.
In August, the Biden administration cancelled $72 million in student loans for borrowers who say they were cheated by Ashford University. The U.S. Department of Education is seeking to recoup the money from the UA, which is claiming it should not be held responsible because the actions occurred well before it acquired the school. If it is held responsible, the UA will face even more of a challenge in its efforts to rebuild its central reserve funding.
The handling of the UAGC deal is not the only qualm the faculty have. Many are disgruntled with the way the money they bring into the university is managed. According to Gary Rhoades, an education professor, the colleges actually made the university $79.4 million this past year.
βBasically, they took our money and went out and bought an expensive car,β Rhodes said. βThe big problem with (our) budgeting system is that thereβs no internal regulations on central administrationβs spending.β
The problem is not the colleges, which have been generating a net surplus, Rhoades said. Itβs that βthe central administration is spending money in an undisciplined way.β
Rhoades said that rather than spending some of the central reserve on bailing out the athletic department, Robbins and senior leadership should have put more resources towards hiring tenure track faculty. Currently, only 10% of new hires are tenure track, a statistic that Rhoades said even Robbins was surprised by when he told him about it.
βThatβs not the profile you need for a research university,β Rhoades said. βYou cannot have a research university without tenured faculty. It just doesnβt work.β
Ted Downing, a research professor who has been at the UA for more than five decades, said he finds the situation to be βembarrassingβ for the university.
He is especially angry that the UA spent so much of its central reserves on the athletic department. During the pandemic, Downing said, faculty and staff were asked to take furloughs, which helped make the university about $45 million. The athletic department accepted a loan of $55 million from the universityβs general operating budget with no way of paying it back, he said.
βSome people had trouble paying their mortgages and car payments, especially the staff,β he said. βWhat kind of a role model is the athletic department setting for the public and the students who are taking out student loans by refusing to repay their loans?β
The clock is ticking, Downing said, and the university βis in crisis.β Robbins has until Dec. 15 to submit his plan to ABOR.
One of the key parts of Robbinsβ plan seems to be instituting a hiring freeze, something he mentioned both at the ABOR meeting and at the Faculty Senate meeting. Downing, Hudson and other professors are hoping that he cuts some senior staff positions to reduce βadministrative bloatβ instead.
The business affairs staff, which is responsible for calculating the days cash on hand, has 28 employees. Rulney, who many faculty blame for the financial mismanagement, has a staff of seven that report to her alone.
βLetβs start by reducing administrative salaries,β said Katie Zeiders, a family services professor. Zeiders spoke on behalf of the United Campus Workers Arizona union. βItβs time for senior administrators to truly take responsibility for this.β
Zeiders pointed to the severe pay discrepancies between senior staff and faculty.
She cited writing professors who make $44,000 a year in comparison to Rulney who, according to public records, makes just under $500,000 per year.
βThese faculty members are teaching the basics of writing in college to 100 students a semester,β she said. βRulney makes ten times that amount.β
Robbins makes just under $1 million per year, according to public records. The two highest paid employees at the UA are head basketball coach Tommy Lloyd, who makes $3.6 million per year, and head football coach Jedd Fisch, who makes $2.1 million per year.
In comparison, Zeiders said, custodial staff make an average of $28,000 and dining services workers make an average of $21,000 a year.
The pay difference is gaining attention especially in light of Robbinsβ statements to both ABOR and the faculty that the athletic department as a whole is not making the money it needs to financially sustain itself.
Downing said he was βdisgustedβ by the pay discrepancies.
βThe role model weβre getting is a president who doesnβt want to pay his bills and a set of multi-million dollar paid coaches and an athletic director saying βweβre not going to pay our bills,ββ he said. βThat makes no sense. Itβs called a deadbeat role model. That is not what we need right now.β