Arizona cuts student aid and freezes hiring, but defends sports

The University of Arizona is cutting student aid, freezing hiring and removing its chief financial officer, but apparently sparing for now its athletics programme, in the ongoing fallout of a surprise $240 million (£190 million) budget shortfall.

A month after admitting the unexpected hole in its balance sheets, the university’s president, Robert Robbins, outlined a solution that falls heavily on future students by cutting merit aid for new non-Arizona students and eliminating guarantees against future tuition fee hikes.

The university is also freezing staff pay and new hiring through the end of the current academic year, in yet another example of major US public institutions sharply curtailing their academic operations in response to mounting financial worries and prioritising sports.

Dr Robbins, a cardiothoracic surgeon, also accepted the resignation of the university’s chief financial officer, Lisa Rulney, without indicating the degree to which she was being blamed for the situation.

“Immediate actions are required to recalibrate our financial path, address the structural deficit and replenish an appropriate level of reserves,” the president told the Arizona Board of Regents, which controls the state’s public university system.

When initially reporting the matter last month, university leaders said that “accelerated spending” between its 2022 and 2023 fiscal years – mostly in the areas of sports and student financial aid – totalled $140 million more than expected, and they calculated that they would need $240 million to restore the budget to the place it was expected to have been.

At that time, Dr Robbins said that spending in both of those areas would need substantial adjustment. He said the university spent roughly $20,000 per student per year on educational costs, but only charged its in-state students about $5,000 – and he admitted not having fully understood that fact. He also said at the time that the athletics department would “require some draconian cuts”, with the possibility of eliminating some sports teams altogether.

But in the solution the president has now put in front of the regents, Dr Robbins included the cuts affecting staff and student aid, while holding out less specific expectations for athletics. The plan for sports envisions improving ticket sales and media revenues, and reducing administrative costs, on a timeline of “multiple years”.

The University of Arizona is looking ahead to the annual March Madness college basketball tournament with one of the nation’s top-ranked men’s teams, and Dr Robbins reiterated that athletics “is a core part of the University of Arizona and a key element to our long-term success”.

The regents generally signalled support for the plan. The board’s executive director, John Arnold, offered praise for the president’s “integrity, leadership and effectiveness”.

Many students, however, are upset by the idea of putting the burden on tuition and academics while sparing sports, said Eddie Barron, a sophomore public policy major serving as executive vice-president of the university’s student government organisation.

Dr Robbins appeared to have taken care to minimise such protest, Mr Barron said, by loading the costs onto future students and announcing the plan as current students were preparing for and taking their semester finals.

But Arizona’s students, Mr Barron said, recognised that they and many of their classmates – especially “low-income, first-generation black and brown students” – already struggled to afford food, housing and medical care, and that the Robbins plan would only make things worse. “This president fails to meet the moment in regard to actual solutions,” he said.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com