Arizona Education News and Discussion Thread
This has been oft discussed on this board, and out of nowhere it might be a reality: The Board of Regents, which oversees ASU, UofA, and NAU is considering growing.
AFT. ASU West becoming its own college or letting the community colleges upgrade to City Colleges--at least PHX College--and offer 4-year degrees would be my suggestion. Regents' plan: A new college Tuition hikes fuel push for cheaper 4-year alternative to state's 3 universities 2 comments by Anne Ryman - May. 6, 2009 12:00 AM The Arizona Republic Quote:
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I dont mean to be profane but, this news gives me a boner.
:banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: Id like ASU West to become "Central Arizona U"/"Phoenix State" and I think the Yuma campus becoming "Southern Arizona U" would be nice too. Though we'd still need probably one more 4 year school in the Phoenix area, so either Phoenix College or MCC becoming a city college would probably be the best choice. Though if Phoenix College did graduate to a City College, we'd need it to be replaced because there wouldn't be any Community College in CenPho. Perhaps the P.C. Downtown Campus could be expanded to a full size Community college. The only bad news is, both the headline and the article make it sound like they're looking to found a new college not colleges which is what we really need. |
What we really need is a freakin liberal arts school. It wouldn't hurt if we had an A&M school too. This state needs to stop turning out people with business and marketing degrees and start training people to do work that benefits everyone. We need more poets, artists, and psychologists as much as we need people who know how to grow crops in a desert with a dwindling water supply.
I would be ecstatic to see Phoenix College turn the downtown campus into something more significant. I'd also like I see them build that freaking proposed culinary school on 2nd Ave & Fillmore but that will never happen. |
^^Agreed!
Here is my dream plan for public higher education in Arizona: http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/683...nacolleges.jpg ABOR (total enrollment: 140K) So you'd have ASU & UA as the main research type schools in the state. Having more schools available would (hopefully) mean ASU wouldn't have to be such a behemoth, and I'd like to see its enrollment go from its current 67K down to about 45K (between 2 campuses, main and downtown). Cap UAs total enrollment at about 40K. NAU would continue its smaller research component and continue on about how its been. Cap their enrollment at about 25K. Arizona Polytechnic University Spin ASU Poly into its own independent school, something like Cal Poly with maybe 20K enrollment. Yuma & Phoenix State Colleges Then for students just looking for bachelors degrees in things like teaching, business or liberal arts you'd have a school in Yuma and in NW Phoenix (ASU Wests current campus). Im not sure what good enrollments for them would be, probably between 15-20K each. City of Phoenix: (total enrollment: 50K) Then I'd like to see the city of Phoenix (which would maybe get money from the county or the Fed as well for this) start its own small university system like CUNY. Phoenix Institute of Technology Convert the Arizona Mental Hospital site to a technical, engineering and medical school. This would fall within the 'opportunity corridor' plan the city once touted for biomed uses. Even with UAs medical school downtown it seems like we are still in a deficit in that department, so this may help. These City run schools would be much smaller, maybe 10K makes each. Phoenix A&M In Laveen where the agriculture lifestyle is still somewhat in existence, Id like an A&M school. Mining has always been and likely will always be very important to Arizona. The agricultural portion could focus on sustainable, desert agriculture which will be a major issue in the 21st century. Encanto College Then like Ive mentioned before on this board Id like to see a liberal arts school on the South end of the Fair grounds property (along with an expanded Encanto Park). It could maybe have as few as 5K students. American Indian College Then (this may be a silly idea) Id love to see the City buy the empty lots near Steele Indian School park. The lot on the NE corner of Central and Indian School and/or the lot on Central and Glenrosa and gift that land to the Native tribes of Arizona for the purpose of building a college. The Native American population has really struggled with higher education and perhaps this would be a way to help with that. Students going to the school could perhaps sign deals to use their degrees to work on the reservations for a certain number of years after they graduate. Phoenix wouldn't necessarily have to pay for the school (other than providing the land) it could be provided by the tribes themselves perhaps. Of course a school only letting in one race of people wouldn't really be palatable to most folks these days, so Im not proposing that. They could let in anyone though perhaps have an admissions system that would make it easier for Natives to achieve higher education. Anyway, my system or something like that would mean a lot more competition and choices for students. Instead of a huge number of young people fleeing the state to get an education (and many never coming back) perhaps we'd start to import people looking for an education. Quote:
EDIT: Plus the best thing about all of this would be, all these smaller schools we'd have a bunch of new small college basketball teams and that would be fun :D |
^Ya, I think I still have the documentation on it. About 2 years ago, they came to the RAA meeting and handed out this stuff on a proposal for the lot bordered by Fillmore, 2nd Ave, McKinley, and 3rd Ave. It would house a facility that would rival Scottsdale's Culinary School and would feature a series of restaurants along the ground floor that would allow students to work and train. It was maybe a 3-story complex with the vision of also building on the PHX College side of the lot in the future - filling it with shopping and residential. It sounded like a really good idea at the time and I was excited to see like 5 new restaurants open across the street from me. Of course, it never happened, but I know the company that bought the apartment complex and all of those houses on 2nd Ave still owns it and they were the ones looking to build there. Who knows anymore...but it would be nice to see PHX take a stab at being a culinary leader by building from the bottom instead of just bringing in top culinary talent from other places.
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I'm glad the Board of Regents has finally woken up to this new reality.
A four-year option has been on the table from the Maricopa Community College District for years now. They could easily start with a few select degrees, such as Nursing, Criminal Justice, or a variety of applied programs in computer science/CIS/Networking, etc. The Arizona Board of Regents will have almost no control when it comes to the Community College's decision. The MCCD colleges answer to their own Board, and have their own sources of funding, with very little coming down from the legislature. To think that the ABOR would even consider buying a MCCD campus shows just how desperate they really are. A good article from the NY Times from just this past weekend addressed this very issue. Quote:
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Excellent post Hoover. City University Phoenix ... another tier? Thinking big are we? ;) Phoenix A&M sounds very intriguing. Not sure about where the indian college might go. the lot at Central and Indian School is owned by Colliers... I love the idea of a small liberal arts university, but I'd stash it somewhere off the light rail line in the airport ghetto around 24th St. Wouldn't compete with Gateway at all, where as it might with Phoenix College. Splitting ASU East into Arizona Poly is a no-brainer, as well as ASU West becoming Phoenix State University. Some guy has been fighting the good fight for a long time over at http://psuandaztech.blogspot.com/ that talks more about this. I think what bothers me most about ASU is their conflicting mission of trying to be all things to all people yet be the best school possible. I got jaded out of a business degree when I realized I had a snowball's chance in a sauna of getting into their CIS program.. These days since i picked up keyboarding ASU is again out of reach because their music school is in the top 10 and I'm just not that good a musician. I may end up going to Ottawa University for that music degree, which is in an office building off I-17 somewhere. It's a branch of a non-profit sort-of-religious affiliated school in Kansas. The only reason Ottawa is here is because they were looking to expand many moons ago and found this horridly underserved area. I'd like to see them grow. It irks me to no end that there's like 2 places to get a music degree in a metro of 4 million plus. Quote:
The houses on 2nd Ave are north of McKinley and had a separate RFP with the neighborhood realtor Sherry Rampy that didn't go anywhere. |
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Seriously though, I think a small, specialized school serving 5-10K wouldn't really hurt the UA and just be another option for people in AZ/the Valley. I think a big thing to remember is, while a lot of the things Im thinking of/proposing may not be needed now when we've doubled our population in 25 years or whatever, they will be. So better to think ahead for a change. Quote:
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I am confused by this title. Do you guys only have 3 four year universities in Arizona now?
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^ Yes. There are only three 4-year public universities run by the state. The County community colleges only have 2 year degrees.
There are a bunch of small, specialized, extremely expensive private schools around tho. |
Why only 3? I mean Colorado has about the same population and I can think of 10 4 year universities/ colleges.
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I would say it's because we're backward and broken, but that still wouldnt explain it.
Fucking Alabama has 14 public universities. |
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For the majority of its history the ABOR has been controlled by people in Tucson and people with ties to the UA. All they want is whats best for the UA and the rest of the state can't die for all they care. They did everything in their power from preventing ASU from becoming a "U" and only allowed it to eventually happen by granting NAU "U" status as well. For years its been obvious that ASUs enrollment was spiraling way too high and would become an undesirable, untenable solution, but that didn't effect UA- so who cares? Further, it hurt ASU and Phoenix, so all the better. Tucson leaders, and ABOR, have little brother syndrome and seem to still be annoyed that Phoenix has the capitol, the better water infrastructure, more growth, et cetera. so they take it out by punishing the entire states higher education system. The ASU-UA rivalry is one of the most bitter, and sadly petty in the country because of all of this. EDIT: VV Thats certainly a factor, but even with ASU being in the biggest population center (metro Phx) its still not proximate to a lot of people in the Valley. The Valley is so big it needs a bunch of schools, not just one. Think about it, the Valley has 4.3 million people and ONE traditional, four year, public university. ONE. Thats crazy. And its not like that gap has been filled by private schools, since Phoenix lacks a lot of high dollar philanthropist types we don't have anyone to found something like a Vanderbilt U, its all online colleges, technical schools and night schools that are mostly diploma mills that don't exactly produce high dollar workers or attract big companies to move here. |
Could it be because your population is not as spread out as in other states. So maybe you have less universities but each university has a larger student population?
I could be wrong but is most of your population is the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas? |
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That sounds like the same water fight we have in every western state lol |
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Hoover dam said:
Think about it, the Valley has 4.3 million people and ONE traditional, four year, public university. ONE. That's crazy. And its not like that gap has been filled by private schools, since Phoenix lacks a lot of high dollar philanthropist types we don't have anyone to found something like a Vanderbilt U, its all online colleges, technical schools and night schools that are mostly diploma mills that don't exactly produce high dollar workers or attract big companies to move here. That is crazy considering the Pueblo/ Colorado Springs region has about 750,000 people and we have 2 major universities (CSU - Pueblo and UCCS) a academy (Air Force Academy) and a number of private school including Colorado College that is a 4 year school and community colleges. |
I disagree with you guys. I "fleed the state" to get a good education because Arizona doesn't have any universities REMOTELY comparable to Georgetown terms of quality of education. You can't give all of the best and brightest Flynns. However if the state, instead of spending all this money on these other colleges funneled it all into UofA (and let them raise their tuition) and tried to bring it onto par with schools like Michigan, Virginia, UNC, Berkeley, UCLA, and Texas, I think much more top talent would stay in state. Universities of this caliber also attract a lot of really smart people from out of state many of whom decide to settle down where they got their education after receiving their diplomas. UofA is the only university in Arizona that has the potential to reach this level and already has a pretty good rep. Give the best and brightest a place where we can get an incredible education in Arizona and I think you will see the state reap greater benefits then creating schools "lower" on the hierarchy then ASU/U of A. We should aim for the top, not the bottom. This whole affordability issue is getting redic. Do you guys know how much people pay in-state at the UC's?
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