The same day last November when the Arizona Board of Regents voted to shut down the Arizona International College, they gave UA a wink, saying a northern satellite campus was on the way come rain or shine ÷ whether AIC was a player or not.

The regents gave UA permission to lease land at West Ina Road and North Shannon Road for a joint venture with Pima Community College dubbed ăUA North.ä Potential UA students from across southern Arizona could head to UA North, where they could go to Pima for the first two years and walk away with a degree from the UA after attending their junior and senior years.

Now UA administrators are shelving the branch campus indefinitely, though construction is already underway, because the Arizona State Legislature has not budgeted $500,000 yearly operating expenses into 2002-2003.

UA North was slotted to open for classes in 2003 to ease the pressure of some of the 5,000 to 6,000 students that planners expect by 2010 ÷ on top of the 35,747 students who were enrolled on the main UA campus last year.

Top UA administrators say they canât afford to finance the building next year, where they expect cuts of nearly $28 million to the UA budget, after two previous years of budget reductions.

UA President Peter Likins said in November that if the state were to pull funding for the building, the campus wouldnât open as planned.

So UA wonât use the 30,000 square-foot facility until August 2004 at the earliest, and Pima Community College will lease the space, Likins, Provost George Davis and senior vice president for business affairs Joel Valdez, wrote to the UA community in a June 5 memo.

The message about UA North is similar to so many of the other talks and memos that have come in the wake of recent budget cuts.

ăWe are disappointing many members of the Tucson community with this decision, and we will have many more disappointments to share in the difficult months that lie ahead,ä the administrators wrote.