It’s not a secret that Arizona’s education system needs to be dealt with. Cuts have decimated both the K-12 and university education systems, and educators are essentially left to operate with pennies.
Last week, Gov. Jan Brewer released an education reform plan. Based on her recent dealings with the budget — cutting 280,000 people from the state Medicaid program and $170 million from the state universities — we weren’t expecting much.
The agenda she released labeled education as one of the four things that would set the state up for a bright future. Of course, we agree with her.
But the slash-and-burn budget balancing technique our governor and the state Legislature have been using leave us scratching our heads and wondering if they are really serious about building a strong education system.
Numbers aside, the policy agenda varies between abstract ideas and solutions that are already in place.
Brewer did say in the plan she released that raising tuition and cutting education was not the way to go about weathering the crisis we are in, but we find it hard to believe her. She has, after all, cut $400 million from the state university system’s budget since the start of the 2008 fiscal year.
In the more concrete aspect of the plan, Brewer insisted that the future of education lay online, and that universities should utilize it more. This idea sounds great, but it is nothing new. ASU currently offers more than 20 degrees fully online. This includes undergraduate and graduate programs. Making such a suggestion when we already utilize the Internet for a good chunk of our learning can lead us to wonder how much Brewer actually knows about the university system in Arizona.
Another aspect of the plan is a two-plus-two model. This model encourages students to do two years at a community college and then transfer to a state university for the final two years.
Again, Brewer brings another great solution to the table. Unfortunately, this one is already in play as well. The Phoenix metropolitan area has a wealth of community colleges that students are able to attend. Many of the students that attend these community colleges sign up fully intending to transfer to NAU, UA or ASU later.
Her agenda also brought up the idea of regional campuses — campuses that would be in different areas of the state and have lower tuition. But anyone at ASU knows this isn’t her idea and it isn’t new. The program, called Colleges@ASU, has been in the early planning stages since last spring, long before Brewer released her “game-changing” education proposal.
The governor missed a chance to be taken seriously by the citizens of Arizona. Her plan consists of airy, abstract ideas and solutions that are already in place. To help the students of Arizona, she needs to do more than just reinforce solutions that are already on the table.
