What’s New
After facing pressure from the University of Arizona’s Faculty Senate and the state’s governor, the chair and executive director of the Arizona Board of Regents are leaving their positions. Fred DuVal stepped down from his position as chair. John Arnold, the board’s executive director and not a voting board member, took a leave of absence.
The University of Arizona faces a projected budget shortfall of $177 million, leaving many in the state pointing fingers. The board oversees the university, as well as Arizona State and Northern Arizona Universities.
The Details
The University of Arizona’s budget woes hit the news last November, when its president, Robert C. Robbins, announced that the university had miscalculated its cash on hand by hundreds of millions of dollars. As a result, the university has said it will undertake a number of measures, including freezing hiring and raises, deferring nonessential capital projects, eliminating a tuition-guarantee program that promised students their tuition wouldn’t go up for eight semesters, and rethinking merit aid for out-of-state students.
In response to the university’s budget problems and local reporting about possible causes, the Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, expressed grave concern about the board. In January, she posted a letter she sent DuVal and Arnold in which she questioned their leadership, and wrote she worried about a “real or perceived conflict of interest” in Arnold serving both as the board’s executive director and the university’s interim chief financial officer. Then, on Monday, Hobbs posted a statement saying “the Arizona Board of Regents failed in their oversight role” of the University of Arizona. She criticized DuVal for his handling of accusations, made by the chair of the university’s Faculty Senate, that he, too, had a conflict of interest, due to his past employment with a firm that invests in universities. Hobbs began researching whether she had the power to remove regents, KJZZ reported.
It’s not clear whether she does, but in any case, the board announced DuVal’s resignation as chair and Arnold’s leave on Thursday evening, the Arizona Daily Star reported.
“It’s imperative that we move away from the heat of rhetoric and politics and refocus on addressing the genuine challenges facing our institution,” DuVal said in a news release posted on the board’s website. “By resigning as board chair, I want to do my part to create space for collaborative efforts toward real solutions.”
DuVal will remain a board member through the rest of his term, which ends in January 2026. Arnold remains the university’s interim chief financial officer. Another board member, Cecilia Mata, will take on DuVal’s responsibilities as chair.
The Backdrop
The University of Arizona’s troubles are startling because the university has many financial strengths. Its enrollment and credit ratings remain strong, as The Chronicle previously reported. But it also has increasingly missed the mark in its budget projections in recent years. Since 2018, in every fiscal year but one (2021), the university projected it would have greater liquid cash reserves at the end of the year than it turned out to have.
As Leila Hudson, chair of the Faculty Senate, argued to The Chronicle in February, the university is not undergoing a budget crisis so much as a “management crisis.”
The Stakes
Armand Alacbay, senior vice president of strategy for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which advocates for university boards to exert stronger oversight, found it “hard to ascribe fault here.” On the one hand, with many colleges struggling with enrollment and finances, all board members should examine their institutions more closely. On the other hand, “there’s a huge information asymmetry with boards.” Boards depend on colleges to give them good data.
As for Hobbs’s sharp and public criticism of DuVal and Arnold, Alacbay pointed out that it’s unusual for a governor to have the power to remove public-university board members, even though they are frequently responsible for appointing them. Board members often have terms that span different governors’ administrations; Duval is an appointee of Doug Ducey, the Republican governor who preceded Hobbs. The point is to protect board members from political interference and allow them to focus on the good of the university, Alacbay said. But also: “It’s normal for a governor to be concerned about the higher-education policy in her state,” he said. “It’s the governor’s prerogative to make public statements.”
