Arizona regents to discuss U of A cash on hand; new anti-terrorism policy (2024)

The Arizona Board of Regents will meet Thursday to discuss the University of Arizona’s continuing to fall far short of required days’ worth of cash on hand; a proposed policy to bar student groups from supporting “foreign terrorist organizations”; new rules in college athletics; and other issues.

Here’s what to know about the packed agenda for the special meeting in Tempe, announced Tuesday:

UA finances

Agenda materials show the UA is estimating its days’ worth of cash on hand is down, which could be concerning since that is typically how ABOR measures financial success. It was an issue with cash on hand last year that alerted the UA to what its president Robert C. Robbins described as a financial crisis — a miscalculation and a budget deficit now estimated to be $163 million.

The fiscal year 2024 estimate is 76 days cash on hand, and fiscal year 2025 is estimated to hit a low of 70 days cash on hand. The university is supposed to have at least 140 days’ worth of cash on hand, according to ABOR standards. In November, when Robbins told the regents about the financial crisis, UA had an estimated 97 days’ worth of cash on hand.

UA’s presentation in the agenda materials notes the information is an “initial projection of snapshot to be taken June 30, 2025, and based on Q3 activity to date.”

The update comes as the state’s three public universities are scheduled to provide brief overviews Thursday of the planning assumptions used to build their budget requests, which will be submitted to ABOR in late June.

UA is projecting moderate enrollment growth. It expects an increase of 175 on-campus students and 2,225 distance-learning and global students. The university also expects an increase of 1,200 students in its online programs.

It is also “projecting very modest increases” in grants and contracts, by $9.7 million or 1%.

The university is “projecting to hold fast on expenditures” of salary and benefits, infrastructure and “new initiatives.”

Current unknowns, according to the university, include potential impacts of the state budget on new economy initiatives, the promise program (Arizona’s guaranteed scholarship program), and Arizona Teachers Academy.

Foreign terrorist organizations

ABOR’s university governance and operations committee is set to discuss a potential new policy for the state’s three public universities titled “Prohibition on Support for Foreign Terrorist Organizations by Student Groups and Organizations.”

“Beginning last year, political events have led to a nationwide rise of allegations of both discrimination and harassment and support to foreign terrorist organizations that are calling for discrimination, harassment and even genocide of people worldwide,” the agenda reads.

ABOR’s proposed policy states that all students, including those who are “perceived to be Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab or Palestinian, must be provided a school environment free from discrimination based on race, color or national origin, including shared ancestry.”

Board policy would, if approved, prohibit student groups from “knowingly (providing) material support to a designated terrorist organization.” They could not call for violence and/or genocide against any individual group and “engage in or promote in person or in any other medium, including but not limited to social media, threats of genocide or harm against any student based on their race, color, national origin or shared ancestry.”

This comes on the heels of student-led pro-Palestinian encampments at all three state universities this spring.

Student groups or organizations that violate the proposed policy “may face sanctions that include revocation of the use of university facilities for a definite period of time or denial of recognition or registration, as well as other appropriate sanctions, permitted under the code of conduct.”

The policy, however, is “not intended to prohibit any expressive activity that is protected by the First Amendment.”

Changes in athletics rules

The board’s strategic initiatives and planning committee is set to hear a presentation from Brett Yormark, commissioner of the Big 12 conference, on “current changes in college sports including elements related to professionalization.”

After Yormark’s presentation, the committee will “discuss the information and issues shaping the future of college sports and the strategic implications for the state’s public universities.”

UA and Arizona State University are both joining the Big 12 conference this year. Additionally, after the NCAA and its five power conferences voted to approve settlement terms for three landmark antitrust cases involving student-athlete compensation, UA is expected to figure out how to pay about $20 million annually to its athletes in future seasons.

For context, that represents nearly 15% of Arizona’s annual athletics budget.

New majors, programs

UA is proposing a number of new majors and programs. It also seeks to establish a new academic organizational unit.

The unit proposed is a new School of Global Studies within the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. It would include the “relocation” of the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies, the Centers for Latin American Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, gender and women’s studies, the global studies program, the human rights practice program, Middle Eastern and North African studies and the Southwest Center.

The new school would partially “address the $2.8 million structural year-over-year deficit across these small units.”

The university is also asking to add eight new programs in the fall 2024 academic semester. Those are a bachelor of science in real estate, a bachelor of arts in molecular and cellular biology, a bachelor of science in nursing in collaborative nursing education, a master of science and PhD in computer science and engineering, a master of arts in sport and recreation leadership, a bachelor of science in nutrition and dietetics, a bachelor of science in nutrition and wellness, and a bachelor of arts and science in justice and global security.

UA also seeks approval to add master’s of science in marriage family therapy and in midwifery for the fall 2025 semester.

“Each of these new programs has been fully accounted for in the university’s (fiscal year) 2025 budgets,” says UA’s proposal. “The programs included in this submission make extensive use of existing faculty and courses, and the university is confident they will have strong enrollments.”

The UA is also “disestablishing” 14 majors, eight minors, 16 certificates and 13 emphases “as part of the university’s effort to update curricula and mitigate financial issues,” according to the proposal.

Details of those program cuts were not provided.