Tim Steller's column: It's time to stop paying off former UA presidents
For 37 minutes Thursday, the Arizona Board of Regents made a compelling case for demanding more public funding for the state's universities.
What justifies their $732 million funding request , they argued, is the need to increase Arizonans' educational levels, for the people's wellbeing and to compete with other states. "These investments are essential to the state's success," ASU President Michael Crow said, before painting a grim picture of our recent performance.
"The median income of Arizonans has gone down faster than any other state relative to the national average over the past 20 years. For 50 years Arizona was at the 90th percentile of the national average — we're now below the 75th percentile and declining rapidly."
"If your median income is decreasing but it still seems like there's a lot of money around, it means very few people have all the money."
That was item 3 on the Regents' Thursday agenda ; item 4 gave a good example of how it is that very few people end up with all the money.
In one minute, without discussion, the regents unanimously approved changes to the contract of Dr. Robert Robbins, the outgoing UA president, who leaves office Monday.
They agreed to pay him what he was getting as president , an annual salary of $734,407, a payment into his retirement plan of $154,226 per year, and a $10,000 annual vehicle allowance. He's also eligible for a performance bonus.
He will become a tenured professor of surgery, and may also take a sabbatical before his contract ends on June 30, 2026.
Same song, previous verses
You may feel like you've seen this before. You have.
Ann Weaver Hart, who was Robbins' predecessor, got a similar deal when she was pushed out as UA president in 2017.
She took on a transition role as a faculty member in the College of Education and took a sabbatical during that time. She never taught a class and was paid more than $800,000.
And there have been other similar deals. Former athletic director Dave Heeke, who was let go by Robbins in January, will receive more than $1 million before his contract expires in March 2025.
This is despite the fact that in some of these instances, a case could be made for termination with cause. Robbins had some good accomplishments during his tenure. His fundraising game was strong; he guided the university ably through the pandemic; construction of new facilities has been constant.
But there were a couple of egregious, possibly fireable offenses.
One was the university's failure to intervene adequately when a grad student was threatening members of the Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences in 2021-2022. The student ended up killing chair Thomas Meixner on campus. But in that case, Robbins was more indirectly than directly responsible.
The other instance, directly attributable to Robbins, was his spending his way to a surprise $177 million deficit that appeared seemingly out of nowhere in November 2023. That was an objective failure of Robbins and his administration that he acknowledged .
The Board of Regents could have simply fired him.
They never take the risk in these cases, though, arguing that it would lead to costly litigation. It may well be the case that Robbins would have sued if they had tried to fire him with cause. But consider the numbers at play.
If the Regents had fired Robbins for cause in January, they would have saved more than $2 million on his salary and benefits. The cost of litigation would have to be high to reach $2 million.
But this is simply not done at the upper reaches of society. Once you reach a certain level of income, those who are supposed to oversee you will protect you, if not out of loyalty than out of fear of litigation. It's a club that you have to behave egregiously to be kicked out of.
Think Harvey Weinstein or the recently indicted Sean Combs.
Sending a message
This matters not just because of the dollars that we could potentially save, but because of the message we're sending.
The Legislature's GOP majority is suspicious of the universities because they perceive the campuses as bastions of political leftism . That's why they've richly funded conservative outposts such as the UA's Center for the Philosophy of Freedom at all three universities.
But in fact, as the regents pointed out Thursday, the universities are essential to the economic vitality of everyday people throughout the state. The educational achievements of in-state students translate directly into the state's economic health and the spread of its wealth.
And the state funding of education has been waning: Since 1980, state funding of higher education per student at Arizona's universities has dropped by 20 percent , according to research by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.
Due to the low state funding, Arizona's universities have been forced to go beyond their planned maximum of only 30 percent out-of-state students, as Regent Fred Duval said Thursday.
"Out of necessity, it has grown to well over 40 percent of out of state students," he said. "Why? Because they pay full price, and that's what keeps our doors open."
Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs is likely be receptive to the regents' call for increased funding in order to better educate Arizona's workforce. She may even put their full request in her proposed budget, come January.
But as long as the Legislature is in GOP hands — and it may not be next year — regents will have to overcome their suspicion of the universities.
The $1.5 million or so that we'll be paying Robbins through June 2026, to do little or nothing, is not that big an amount on its own. Neither is the $1 million we're paying Heeke.
But these numbers add up. And they symbolize how we're guarding public money. Winning more public funding would probably be easier if we're stewarding it carefully, without fear of violating the upper-class compact.
Contact columnist Tim Steller at or 520-807-7789. On Twitter:
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