Since 1992, with the passage of the “Shared Governance Law” (ARS § 15-1601B), Arizona’s university system has increasingly gone feral. Their latest caper is a $240+ million pissed-away, overspent boo-boo for the state’s #1 single source, budgetary black hole. Another festering, fetid cavity from that sinecured flagship, UA-Tucson.
That specious 1992 law, passed at the behest of vastly overpaid educrat elites, was designed to attract the “best and brightest” faculty in an effort to compete nationally with other [blue] state public universities, all doing the same thing. Instead of competing technologically or economically, it has backfired in spectacular fashion; Tucson’s entire university dominated (and retarded) urbanity being Exhibit A.
Under the arrogant ruse of “academic freedom, etc”, the law has unfortunately given UA and its home city, the reputation as a kind of giant, pity-party refuge for every Hard-Left woke influencer, and credentialed looney-tune in the American collegiate firmament. This latest, quarter-billion $$$ caper is just more evidence. Ditto the Board of Regents, still asleep at the switch, like in the salad days of their previous Prez, the imperial diva Ann Weaver Hart, Empress-Extraordinaire.
Send the message Legislators; it’s time for the repeal of ‘Shared Governance’, pure & simple. Increasingly depressed & angry Arizona voters need a university system that works for them. Arizona Legislature, you owe this to your constituents.
Item #2 is one of plain old management oversight for taxpayers, parents, and voters: the creation of a state Inspector General Corps. One comprised of qualified forensic auditors, stationed onsite, with carte-blanche access anywhere inside UA.
I know this comes as a shock to many, but hey, they’re state employees! Not a bunch of academic prima donnas, golden educrat cat-herders, medicrat empire builders, real estate speculators, or high-dollar pro sports insiders. Big shots who cannot be bothered by the mundane affairs of those who pay their salaries, have entrusted their children, or have to function in the real world within normal limits.
If the US Government can have a dedicated, Inspector General Corps for its myriad, billion-dollar assets, the State of Arizona can surely afford a smaller version for its $ 10-figure “education investments”. Make this statutory; forming the final leg of an effective, enforceable MIS (management information system), so this ridiculous financial blindsiding will never happen again.
But here’s the difference: your Inspector General Corps is for the AZ Legislature, first & foremost. Right now the fox is guarding the henhouse, and your tenant farmer overseers, the Regents, are probably at a resort for some bozo consultants’ conference.
In the years ahead, these measures will be critical. It is no small coincidence Arizona’s federally designated Land Grant University hasn’t done zippity-do-dah for the state’s #1 looming problem, water supply & security. Except to constantly scold us with the Hard-Left’s tired old nostrum of more government controlled conservation (& deprivation). They don’t even understand the term, “supply side economics”, as in MORE WATER.
AND …just wait until AI starts wrecking UA’s basic operating model;another giant looming challenge they’ve done zippo to address. What happens by 2030, when AI-based, using virtual & augmented reality programs from private vendors, at 5-10% the COST AND TIME of college, with broadly accepted private performance certification, starts radically reducing their student body population? Early units will be here by 2025.
And UA is still whining they need more money (yeah, right!). A lot to think about, Arizona Legislators.
Sellers is a Southpark Republican living in incorporated Oro Valley; his background is federal technology commercialization