Current students will be allowed to finish; all faculty contracts will be honored

SAUL LOEB/Arizona Daily Wildcat

Arizona International College senior Jennifer Corrigan awaits the decision by the Arizona Board of Regents on the future of her college yesterday during the ABOR meeting at the UMC Cancer Center. After a two-hour debate, during which AIC students and faculty voiced their support for the college, the regents voted 8-1 to eliminate the AIC by 2006.

The Arizona Board of Regents voted overwhelmingly yesterday to approve the closure of the Arizona International College.

The move ratified University of Arizona President Peter Likins' request to close the five-year-old college to help counter $13.9 million in state-mandated budget cuts. However, students currently enrolled in AIC programs will be allowed to finish, and all faculty contracts - some of which last until 2006 - will be honored completely.

The 8-1 vote to close the college followed about two hours of debate in which AIC students and faculty asked regents to implement an independent task force to evaluate the need for a liberal arts college in Arizona.

After a brief debate, regents also rejected by a wide margin a measure to appoint the task force.

Hank Amos, who spoke passionately about the value of a liberal arts education, was the lone regent who opposed AIC closure.

"If I had any school to go to, (AIC) is the school I (would) choose," Amos said.

After the meeting, Amos said he was surprised the regents were so quick to close the college, especially with about 55,000 more students expected to enroll in Arizona universities by 2015.

Amos was joined in opposition to the closure by a cavalcade of AIC supporters who spoke in protest of Likins' decision. When one AIC student asked for everyone in the room who supported AIC to stand up, about 50 people rose from their seats.

But Likins and Provost George Davis told the regents that keeping the college - which opened in 1996 - was not a fiscally possible decision, largely because AIC was never intended to be affiliated with the university.

The AIC - which currently enrolls 417 students - had an operating budget of about $2.2 million this year, so its closure is expected to play a significant role in reducing the effects of the state-mandated budget cuts on the rest of the university.

"We concluded that AIC could never become free-standing in the near future under present circumstances," Davis said, citing that only 26 students have graduated from AIC in its history and that barely half of AIC's entering freshman class from last year returned to the college this fall.

AIC supporters argued that the enrollment was projected to increase at a rate of about 100 students per year through at least 2003 and that the average cost per AIC student has dropped from more than $60,000 five years ago to about $5,400 today.

But Likins said that despite the projected increase in enrollment, AIC would not be able to become fiscally independent, a condition that UA and AIC officials agreed must be met by 2002.

"The trajectory on which AIC was established would not conceivably lead to · independence," Likins said.

Former regent John Munger, who helped spearhead the move to build AIC in the early 1990s, told the board that he agreed AIC was a noble venture but that its affiliation with UA prevented it from ever achieving its intended purpose - giving students a small-college, liberal arts education.

"This is not Peter Likins' problem," Munger said. "I don't think he can solve it. He doesn't have the money or the resources. But the state can solve the problem."

Likins and Davis agreed with Munger and said that asking for AIC's closure was a painful choice but one that had to be made in light of the current state budget crisis.

"The costs and risks are disproportionate to what can be reasonably expected to be absorbed," Davis said.

Davis said after the meeting that despite AIC's closure, students can still get a liberal arts education at UA by taking advantage of resources like the honors college and other departments that have a more interactive focus.

Still, AIC supporters said their college provides an educational opportunity that cannot be found anywhere else.

"The state of Arizona needs AIC," said Andrew Polito, a senior at AIC who said the college provided him the opportunity to study abroad in China and work at the consulate's office alongside an Ivy League student.

Polito characterized the regents' decision as "short-sighted" and said AIC could have worked in conjunction with other smaller Arizona institutions to educate the thousands of students expected to flood into state schools in coming years.