Dive Brief:
- Arizona State University plans to add a tuition surcharge of about $350 for full-time students living on campus starting in spring 2025, the public institution announced Monday.
- Arizona State attributed the surcharges and other moves directly to $24 million in state funding cuts to the university approved by Arizona’s government this year. “These necessary actions reflect the continuing lack of public investment from state government for higher education in Arizona,” Arizona State President Michael M. Crow said in a statement.
- The university also announced it would close its center in Lake Havasu, located in western Arizona, next summer. The move affects about 225 students and 20 jobs at the campus, according to Arizona State.
Dive Insight:
Signed into law this summer, Arizona’s cuts to public universities have hit the budgets of its flagship institutions.
At University of Arizona, millions in reductions came as the institution was already working to chip away at a massive budget deficit far larger than and which preceded the cuts in state funding.
Arizona State’s financial position, on the other hand, is far more comfortable, with surpluses in the hundreds of millions. Still, the university’s total surplus of $341.6 million in fiscal 2023 represented a 16.3% decline from the prior year.
With the recent actions, Arizona State is trying to cover the losses in state funding, including directly through its students with the surcharge on those living on campus.
The university wasn’t shy about placing blame at lawmakers’ feet.
“For whatever reason, state leaders want the public universities to be tuition-driven, independently funded and to advance on their own,” Crow said.
Arizona State detailed other impacts of the state funding cuts, which include an $11 million reduction to the base operating funds the university receives from the government.
Specifically, Arizona State said over 2,600 students could be impacted by state cuts to the Arizona Promise Scholarship Program, which covers tuition and fees for Pell Grant-eligible students.
Another 800 or more new students will be affected by cuts to the statewide Arizona Teachers Academy, which covers tuition and fees for students who go on to teach in the state’s public schools.
Arizona State said the fate of the statewide teacher education program is now “uncertain” following funding reductions.
A spokesperson for Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who signed the cuts into law in June, said in an emailed statement: “Facing a $1.8 billion budget deficit she inherited, Governor Hobbs brought together a bipartisan majority to balance the budget without raising taxes while protecting critical services for everyday Arizonans.”
The spokesperson added that Hobbs “remains committed to partnering with ASU to provide students with a world-class education.”
Arizona’s higher education funding has garnered national attention of late. In a report this year, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association found that Arizona showed the largest gap between current and pre-Great Recession levels of funding. Adjusted for inflation, the state appropriated $7,103 in higher education funding per full-time-equivalent enrollment in 2023, down 34.6% from 2008 levels, according to SHEEO.
Arizona State’s release noted that the state provides less than 9% of the university’s total funding, and spends half of what Texas or Florida do per capita on higher education.