The Empire Continues To Grow.. Is It Evil?

There was recently a somewhat glowing review of the ASU downtown campus in the Arizona Republic. However, I think if you look at the numbers, they might be more scary than uplifting. They seem to want to brag about a huge percent increase in enrollment over last year. It is funny that originally they were reporting 11,500+ students and the Republic debunked how they were counting students and the actual number ended up being under 5,000. Nothing like an “honest” doubling of numbers when you are trying to justify a $200 million investment.

I am not sure these numbers are much better. They are reporting just over 7,000 students or roughly a 1,300 student increase. That sounds pretty reasonable, but if you really dig. You will find that 390+ were moved under a “reorganization of university classes” from the ASU West Campus and another 230 aren’t actually in a program offered downtown. So about 620 of the 1,300 new students were potentially manufactured to help bring numbers in alignment to give hope of the 15,000 students by 2020 promised in the beginning.

Truth be told I could care less if 5 people 500,000 people attended the downtown campus. What I take the most exception to is the downtown campus tends to re-inforce Dr. Crow’s desire to build his legacy through building the ASU empire. This is actually good to the bottom line of ASU, so he is doing a good job using that measuring stick. On the flip side it’s bad for Arizona in general. Let’s ignore the $40+ million Scottsdale sunk into SkySong and the dismal return they have seen there and lets look solely at the Downtown Campus. You have $200 million in city bond, $71 million in a journalism school that left Tempe. The City seems to justify it by saying another $34 million for the Civic Park and $1.4 BILLION in light rail and another $29 million in nursing school will make it pay off some day. So in the last five years we are looking at $1.8 BILLION investment in education. Yet, we scream that we are under funding the university system?

I’m concerned that council members believe that ASU should be the “major economic generator” downtown and that they try to link the promise to “opportunities with ASU” including the Convention center? Shouldn’t they be most concerned with providing us a solid workforce? Shouldn’t they be focused on educating students? What about research? I’m also glad that we now measure economic impact with concrete factors like “downtown is now more vibrant”.

I won’t pick on ASU too much though. They are doing what is right for them and their future. However, would we have been better off devoting that money to better things?

Note I realize things like the light rail benefit more than ASU students. I am not a moron. They seem to indicate that all those things were necessary in getting students to take classes downtown though, so it has to be discussed.

Comments (8)

Tyler Hurst says:

November 17, 2009 at 8:58 am

ASU downtown has brought limited WiFi to more places downtown. For that, I love it. Really.
Clayton says:

November 17, 2009 at 10:24 am

Sounds like a similar problem with the “Jobs Created or Saved” accounting done with regard to the stimulus money.
francine hardaway says:

November 17, 2009 at 8:31 pm

I liked the first thought process, where you wanted to give everybody $125,000 each and not invest in downtown:-)
Khamis says:

November 17, 2009 at 8:34 pm

Last time I checked, the light rail was a City of Phoenix (a bit Tempe & Mesa, and large-part federal) project funded by a various voter approved tax revenue streams and is a high capacity transit-line (the only such one in the ’5th largest’ U.S. city) ridden by more transit riders than students… so I stopped reading your post as soon as you lumped that $1.4bn under the ‘education expenditure’ tabulation you had going on.

Truth is that the State of Arizona has never funded the universities at this low of a level over the past three decades. Income and property taxes have been cut significantly over those 30 years, and where has the state made up for that? (Well it hasn’t… it’s still bringing in less revenue than ever before) Through the brilliant idea of raising sales tax of course. And if you know anything about social justice issues you’ll know sales tax is highly inequitable (since it severely hinders those below the poverty level, while benefiting those who make over middle income salaries).

That is why the Universities are facing a tough reality – they have to look elsewhere for funding, the only real source they can turn to (since philanthropic donations went down the toilet w/ the rest of the economy) is to raise tuition rates (while also pointing their blame at the legislator).

The State of Arizona doesn’t give a damn about education, and I in turn don’t give a damn about this State nor do I feel I should stick around to contribute to a sinking ship.

PS. Don’t worry about PHX funding any more of ASU downtown anytime soon. I hear that because of the extreme decline in sales tax revenues (they’re still falling faster than worst case scenarios predictions can keep up with) that the city of Phoenix is considering a 15% to essential services (police & fire) and 30% to all other departments. This is on top of the major budget cuts from last year (which the worst the city has gone through in modern times – almost closing the library system). I guess we don’t need a library system nor an university since we have one of the lowest literacy rates in any major city. (And since Tucson has a slightly higher rate, don’t try to blame immigration)

What’s going to happen when the stimulus money dries up in Arizona? I don’t know – but I picture it won’t belong before it’ll be difficult to differentiate between the urban fabrics of Phoenix and Detroit. I will be gone by that time – let me know how things are then. And let me know sometime sooner how the Light Rail is an education expenditure.

Thanks,
Khamis
Khamis says:

November 17, 2009 at 8:53 pm

Also, I find it interesting that you don’t mention the $350 million hotel that the city financed and built downtown, leasing it out to the Sheraton… if there is any single investment that has been made downtown by Phoenix, that one takes the cake in my book! Also the city is in partnership with the Biomedical Complex downtown that was suppose to bring those research jobs downtown… it just can’t take off in this climate (Biosciences are doing horrible around the U.S. major centers for bioscience research such as San Diego, Seattle and even Boston have been shedding jobs in that sector) so we still have to give it more time before that pays off too just like ASU’s Downtown Phoenix Campus.
Derek Neighbors says:

November 17, 2009 at 9:29 pm

” so I stopped reading your post as soon as you lumped that $1.4bn under the ‘education expenditure’ tabulation you had going on.”

Shame you didn’t read all the way down to the footnote where I stated that. I included it because the article I was commenting on did (and the fact that a large portion of the riders of the system are subsidized students)

“That is why the Universities are facing a tough reality – they have to look elsewhere for funding, the only real source they can turn to (since philanthropic donations went down the toilet w/ the rest of the economy) is to raise tuition rates (while also pointing their blame at the legislator).”

I can’t feel sorry for a university that has taken over $300 million in free handouts to expand it’s operation through land deals, instead of asking for operating capital for the operations it already has.

“The State of Arizona doesn’t give a damn about education, and I in turn don’t give a damn about this State nor do I feel I should stick around to contribute to a sinking ship.”

That is certainly your prerogative. It is much easier to duck and run than make a difference. That said, if you have no roots here and don’t care for the place I don’t blame you. I would leave too.

“I guess we don’t need a library system nor an university since we have one of the lowest literacy rates in any major city. (And since Tucson has a slightly higher rate, don’t try to blame immigration)”

The state has serious financial problems for sure. As do many states. I’m actually a proponent of immigration so you won’t see me citing it as an ill in literacy or elsewhere.

“What’s going to happen when the stimulus money dries up in Arizona? I don’t know – but I picture it won’t belong before it’ll be difficult to differentiate between the urban fabrics of Phoenix and Detroit.”

The biggest difference is the infrastructure in Detroit is half a century or more older than that of Phoenix. So while both economies might be bleak, the infrastructure here can go unmaintained for while longer.

“And let me know sometime sooner how the Light Rail is an education expenditure.”

Some 20% of ridership was slated to be from ASU and subsidized… Not exactly insignificant…

———
Valley Metro has projected 25,000 to 30,000 total trips per day, making the estimated ASU contribution close to 20 percent of the expected light rail ridership. The actual amount of ASU’s light rail ridership, however, will depend on several variables, Pendyala says.

According to the online survey results, the most significant factors in the decision to ride the light rail are service frequency and cost. A fare of $2, as opposed to offering a free service, drops the light rail ridership attributed to ASU by about 1,500 riders per day. A similar drop in ridership is predicted if service were reduced from a 10-minute frequency to a 20-minute frequency.

Other factors that will affect ASU student and faculty light rail use is the operation of the downtown Phoenix inter-campus shuttle, which would compete with light rail service for ASU riders, and parking costs and parking availability at the Tempe and downtown Phoenix campuses.
——–
Derek Neighbors says:

November 17, 2009 at 9:32 pm

“Also, I find it interesting that you don’t mention the $350 million hotel that the city financed and built downtown, leasing it out to the Sheraton…”

I only mentioned the things in the article, with a slight jab at Skysong.

“if there is any single investment that has been made downtown by Phoenix, that one takes the cake in my book!”

I agree this among others was a horrible investment.

“Also the city is in partnership with the Biomedical Complex downtown that was suppose to bring those research jobs downtown…. so we still have to give it more time before that pays off too just like ASU’s Downtown Phoenix Campus.”

I agree there will be an upside. I was implying that there were better investments to be made with larger upsides.
Khamis says:

November 17, 2009 at 10:04 pm

What investments do you think would be more productive than supporting high ed? (including a medical campus that should get funded – AZ produces a very low number of doctors at our one medical university a.t.m.)

The light rail predictions were just that – and ASU student passes are subsidized by the revenue generated at ASU from parking passes and tickets, not public funds.

Originally the passes were free for students – since they’re now $80 /yr (very cheap still!) less students are riding the rail than when those predictions were made – and Metro’s ridership is 60% above predicted levels right now. All in all the ASU community is not the highest user group riding the Metro.

A lot – but not a majority – of the users came from the discontinued Red Line bus route in PHX, which had the 2nd highest ridership numberss in the Valley Metro network. I think the light rail was the right system for our city.

Most of the riders are non-transit riders that ride it for cultural and sporting events. For example the highest ridership was this October on First Friday…. not so much an ASU event.

Also I have roots here for sure, and I am totally connected to this place. I’ve lived here for 18 years – I grew up here – I call Phoenix my home. But I see too many issues for Arizona to overcome for me to continue being happy here in the near future – and honestly I can’t stand the weather once it’s over 90.

With that, I support everyone who wants to call Phoenix home, and especially people who want to improve their community through dialog, I am still engaged in my community and I will continue to be until I leave.

I just really wanted to understand better what your reasoning is for finding fault in ASU Downtown Phoenix when it hasn’t had the time to even get off the ground.

I agree with you about a lot of the problems you see in ASU’s land development policies – but a lot of that comes from the veiled ASU Foundation (I seriously think the Foundation causes so many image problems for ASU, even though they also provide scholarships they do a lot of shady investments and they were the funder & project manager of Sky Song & ASU Research Park). It’s a completely private organization that is outside the public realm of oversight – I wish ASU itself would put more pressure on the Foundation to better itself. But when we consider the alternative to the Sky Song development (Sky Song is still a troubled project) a Super Wal-mart, I am glad we have the lesser of the two evils in South Scottsdale.

Sorry if I came off abrasive, I appreciate your outlook and more so I appreciate having a chance to engage with you in this dialog!

Best wishes,
Khamis