In the wake of Arizona's staggering deficit and its own $16.6 million shortfall, the UA has announced its intention to become a "research powerhouse," consolidating and streamlining programs while raising admissions standards and tuitions. While highly controversial, there can be little doubt that the recent swarm of "Focused Excellence" initiatives moves us a long way toward President Likins's goal of a leaner, meaner university.

Academic preeminence requires a lot more than cutting programs. If "Focused Excellence" is destined to be more than a positive spin on drastic budget cuts, administrators must move rapidly to improve conditions for the people who carry out the most research, now and in the future: the university's 7,000-plus graduate students. Instead, the pair of new proposals is making a bad situation worse.

Much has been made of the university's "brain drain" ÷ the increasing flow of top-flight faculty lured away from Arizona by more competitive financial incentives. But the university is slowly losing out in the competition to attract top graduate students as well. As the Arizona Daily Wildcat reported last semester, the UA recently fell from the 54th percentile to the 23rd percentile in net stipends for graduate teaching assistants compared to other major U.S. research universities. From the middle of the pack, UA has dropped to the bottom third. And uncompetitive stipends don't reveal the full extent of the problem.

Phil Leckman

At most universities, desirable graduate students receive a tuition waiver and a small stipend in exchange for taking on a teaching or research assistantship. At the UA, however, most of these waivers cover only out-of-state tuition, leaving full-time students to make up a minimum difference of $822 a semester ÷ more than 10 percent of a typical full-time assistant's salary. But graduate students don't work full-time. They're not allowed to. That means most graduate students employed by the university are tithing more than a fifth of their income back to their employer every semester.

Just last September, there were encouraging signs the UA was finally addressing this issue ÷ the UA Graduate College was preparing to redistribute up to $1 million to reduce in-state tuition for teaching assistants. In the wake of the state's budget crisis, however, any gains made by this policy have been swamped by a proposed tuition increase that could raise the cost of graduate education by 50 percent ÷ even for students with out-of-state waivers. Given the state's enormous economic difficulties, some kind of tuition increase is inevitable. But a second idea now being considered would make things even worse.

In an attempt to lessen the affects of the potential tuition increase, the administration is proposing to increase the minimum number of credits required to be considered a full-time graduate student from six to nine. Current students would not have to pay for the additional credits, so the administration views this added class as a sort of "freebie" to make up for the increased tuition burden. But having to shoulder another course will hardly appeal to students already struggling to balance a challenging graduate course-load with 20 to 30 hours of teaching or research a week. And incoming students would be required to pay for the additional units. Needless to say, that won't do much to help the UA attract new students.

In addition to teaching a sizeable chunk of the university's courses, graduate students run experiments, enter data, lead research teams, program computers ÷ in short, they are the cheap fuel that make university research possible. This is, in part, why an institution's ability to attract and keep top graduate students plays a key role in national rankings of top research universities. In a 2000 study from the University of Florida, for instance, two of the nine ranking criteria directly related to the quality of graduate students the schools produced.

The UA ranked 15th in that study ÷ and its top-20 scores in both graduate student-related measures made a substantial contribution to that ranking. But how long will those rankings endure? UA graduate students, like UA faculty, are already overworked and underpaid. Despite those obstacles, their hard work has helped the university build a national reputation in programs ranging from optics to archaeology. If the situation worsens, those programs ÷ and the university as a whole ÷ will suffer.

Even if tuition increases are inevitable, the UA must make every effort to meet the needs of its graduate student population. Otherwise, the university is starting down the road to excellence with an empty tank.