WASHINGTON – Arizona’s colleges and universities will likely bear the brunt of budget cuts forced by rapidly rising health care costs, the state’s budget director told a Washington audience Tuesday.
John Arnold, director of the Office of Strategic Planning and Budgeting, said that Medicaid and other health-care expenses are predicted to grow to as much as 40 percent of the state budget by 2015. That will force the state to cut higher education funding because there are few other options, he said.
“It certainly seems to be on a collision course,” Arnold said in a speech to an American Institute of Certified Public Accountants conference.
Higher education officials reacted to the news by saying that public universities are reaching a “breaking point,” after seeing their state funding reduced from $1.2 billion in fiscal 2008 to $682 million this year.
Schools cannot continue to raise tuition without significantly hurting enrollment, said Katie Paquet, spokeswoman for the Arizona Board of Regents.
“We’re going to start to have an access issue if state budgets continue to decline and we’re forced to continue to raise tuition,” she said.
But higher education spending is where the Arizona Constitution allows the most flexibility, Arnold said in an interview after the speech.
The constitution says the state must provide higher education that is “as nearly free as possible” but does not specify spending requirements.
A spokesman for Gov. Jan Brewer said it is “simply a fact that higher education is a large bucket when it comes to state funding.”
“It’s something where the state has discretion in terms of cuts,” said Matthew Benson, the spokesman.
State Rep. Tom Forese, R-Gilbert, said he is concerned by the idea of further cuts to higher education.
“We’re really putting ourselves in a position where we’re not going to be able to meet these unfunded federal mandates without taking part in several very bad positions,” said Forese, the chairman of the House Higher Education, Innovation and Reform Committee.
State funding currently accounts for about a quarter of university and college revenues in the state, Arnold said.
“Could we completely get out of university funding and still meet that constitutional requirement? I don’t know,” he said.
Paquet said the board of regents plans to submit a performance-based funding recommendation Oct. 1 with its fiscal 2013 budget request. The recommendation would include a baseline budget that would increase based on degrees granted, research activity and credit-hours earned by students.
“We feel like that’s a pretty bold move on our part, to say, ‘Hey, of course we want revenues, but we’re willing for them to come to us based on meeting those performance goals,’” Paquet said.
Regents Chairman Fred DuVal wrote in an email that the state put correctional facilities spending and tax cuts ahead of education spending.
“Pitting Medicaid against education is not a full disclosure of the choices,” he wrote. “If education is their fourth priority — they should just say so.”
Arnold said some savings could be found in prison budgets, but they would be small because Arizona’s prisons are already fiscally efficient.
Benson agreed that cuts to other areas would be hard to find.
“When you look at things like public safety and corrections and things like that, there’s difficulty in reducing spending in those areas, so higher education often has a target on its back,” Benson said.
Joshua Armstrong is a reporter for Cronkite News Service.
A posted at 4:56 am on Wed, Aug 24, 2011.
How many millions of dollars is generated to ASU, yearly, by its parking sales and parking enforcement systems? Where does that money go? Seems to me also that the university should not be expanding to the extent that it has and is if revenue shortfall is an issue. There are new buildings everywhere and a separate new campus downtown with infrastructure. I would also like to see a list of the salaries and benefits from the top down, in every department, at this public institution.
davidflucier posted at 7:22 am on Wed, Aug 24, 2011.
The University system is one of the most productive and efficient economic engines in Arizona. Not only does it provide good jobs now, it produces the high wage earners of tomorrow. It acts as a magnate for businesses and high tech resources. It produces ideas, which is, in fact, a source of wealth. (What kind of question is, “Where does the parking money go?”)
The universities and colleges of Arizona produce thinkers, creators, innovators, new businesses, higher incomes, better lives.
The prisons of Arizona, on the other hand, help produce…criminals…and it produces criminals at a higher cost than the price of a four year undergraduate degree.
Perhaps its’ time for our leaders to consider what “business” and enterprises they want to fund and promote: the highly educated population business or the criminal production business.
randalland posted at 8:26 am on Wed, Aug 24, 2011.
So we re-direct money from prisons to Universities....now what do we do with the criminals? Let them walk?
A_Rose_By_Any_Other_Name posted at 8:59 am on Wed, Aug 24, 2011.
University of Arizona President Robert Shelton had a $549,400 package. Northern Arizona University President John Haeger made $421,918. Perhaps we know why they always need more money.
So lets just close down the prisons, let the criminals go, and send them to davidflucier's home. He has a plan to educate them to become thinkers, creators, and innovators
davidflucier posted at 9:17 am on Wed, Aug 24, 2011.
How did the conversation go from universities and colleges produce all manner of good stuff to mean that the prisons should be closed and criminals should go free?
Can anyone define "non sequitur"?
jezzabella posted at 1:25 pm on Wed, Aug 24, 2011.
davidflucier: Your posts are always articulate and I enjoy reading them. I completely agree with you about the VALUE of education and the impact it has on the entire community. Thank you for your post.
cure posted at 4:16 pm on Wed, Aug 24, 2011.
The Arizona State Government ownes over 9,000,000 acres of land. The State Land Department has a very large number of office workers= sale a portion of land ( and now collect new taxes on the newly sold property also) to pay off the debt. NO MORE SALES TAX or personal tax. @ $1/acre = $9,000,000 or $10/acre=$ 90,000,000 or $1000/acre=$9,000,000,000 The land market value of course is much higher. We could put ARIZONA FIRST in State funding for everything and not sell but a small portion of the land available. Our KIDS would benifit oh heck! everyone would love it with plenty of land for many many generations to come
A_Rose_By_Any_Other_Name posted at 9:24 pm on Wed, Aug 24, 2011.
Hey davidflucier, can you tell us how much more money education needs and what this money needs to be spent on to produce the kind of results Asian countries have with children's education? Feel free to be specific and don't just say more stuff if you please. Everyone understands the value of education, but no one seems to know how to get it except for maybe the South Koreans. And they spend a lot less money per capita on education than we do.
NothingButTheTruth posted at 7:30 pm on Thu, Aug 25, 2011.
Can't you answer Rose's question davidflucier? You talk a mean game, but when it comes right down to it you don't have a clue what the problem is with our education system or how to fix it, do you? None of you do. You say it's terrible that money is taken from education to pay for other needed programs, but you never say what that money will take away from our children that will harm their education. Just a bunch of liberals looking for something to complain about as usual.
davidflucier posted at 12:03 pm on Sun, Aug 28, 2011.
I know that the problem is very complex and very complicated, so I also believe that the solutions are also complex and complicated, but that doesn't mean that there are not answers. It also doesn't mean that because one individual doesn't know the answer, that there are no answers or solutions.
I believe that education is a life long process and it begins with birth.
I believe that education is a basic American value and that our economic, financial, scientific, social and cultural heights have been reached because of it.
I believe that education is the source of hope for our future and that of our children.
I believe that as our world becomes both "smaller" (relative to each other) and more complex, the need to sustain ourselves becomes increasingly dependent upon education, research and development...discovery, innovation and invention.
The solutions begin with a broad and keen sense of our past...our history, and an appreciation and understanding of our current lives and that of our neighbors (locally & globally). And it requires a focused vision for and of the future.
Our solutions lie in an educational model that serves the entire spectrum of our nation's people: young to old, the mentally and developmentally challenged, the very gifted and the average...the poor, the middle class and the affluent.
We know that the earlier a child begins to learn, the more likely the child is to adapt, learn and prosper emotionally, intellectually and physically, and, therefore, we'll prosper socially, culturally, financially, and economically as a nation the sooner we the educational process.
We must tailor our educational model to the users just as every other successful business model does. Meet the demand by supplying the right customer with the right product. Doing so requires an investment of human and capital resources to remain competitive in a global economy.
In the Venture Capital world, there is a phenomena called "Funding for Failure"...that is, give the enterprise just enough capital to survive, but not enough to succeed.
In Arizona, we seem to have reached that point...the point where our leaders are satisfied with a funding level which keeps the educational enterprise on life support, but fails to fund in order for our children to succeed in the future...a future which requires global competitiveness in order to not only sustain themselves, but to prosper.
In Arizona, our measures of success in education are not very impressive. In fact, those measures indicate that we are funding for failure on many levels.
There are solutions. There are some very good solutions.
Remaining ignorant of those solutions will not make things better. Funding for failure will not make success more attainable. Name calling and blaming children, parents, teachers, unions, administrators, or the poor, the hunger, the uninsured or the Mexicans, Koreans or the Chinese is also very counterproductive.
NothingButTheTruth posted at 9:08 pm on Sun, Aug 28, 2011.
A lot of pure rhetoric david, but still you didn't answer the question of how much more money needs to be spent and on what things that students don't already have should it be spent on. Everyone I hear complain about Pearce -as if he did it alone- cutting money to education never says what the children will now be lacking that will harm their ability to get an education. Another question might be does everyone deserve the best education money can buy? Maybe to a socialist who lives to spend other people's money.
davidflucier posted at 9:12 am on Mon, Aug 29, 2011.
Here's the short answer to "How much money will it take...": 1) cutting the education budget in Arizona by well over $2 billion is NOT the answer. 2) Since the Arizona Department of Education hasn't pulled this number together, the answer is that I personally don't know, but cutting our educational budget, I'm sure, is not going to give us a positive outcome.
But what you call "Rhetoric" is more of a vision statement...a statement I find nowhere in the State budget process. Anything that does come close is contradictory to any behavior or outcomes that we have experienced in the last several years.
Another non sequitur from Nothingbutthe truth..."complain about Pearce",,,"maybe to a socialist who lives to spend..."
I'm done...this is like having a logical conversation with a 13 year old.
NothingButTheTruth posted at 9:51 am on Wed, Aug 31, 2011.
So you admit that you don't have a clue, but you know it's bad, so it shouldn't be done cause it sounds bad? WOW! I'm impressed! And you insinuated that I'm a 13 year old? lol Chatting with you is like trying to carry on an intelligent conversation with a Cro-Magnon. He says, "education good, education cuts bad. ug." But ya just can't say how that is except that it must be Pearce's fault. You're done with this conversation because you can provide no intelligent arguments in support for your unintelligent assertions. If I were you I would have stopped talking long before you showed just how really uninformed you are.