Arizona don’t need no book learnin’

It was probably not a good sign when the email from ASU President Michael Crow — subject line "Proposed budget cuts and the future of Arizona" — landed in my spam folder. Of course, this was not an email from Crow's private address, but a mass mailing to Arizona State University alumni and supporters. Still, not a good omen.

The Kookocracy is now in charge, from the governor's office right down to Arpaio's gulag lite. Whatever the budget situation, their antipathy to education, especially those "socialist professors," is well known. While Janet Napolitano was governor, their worst tendencies were constrained. Now the extreme reactionaries have total power and the excuse of a budget deficit. They want to slash $600 million from Arizona universities, singling out higher ed to take the biggest hit from state cutbacks.

Crow is not overstating the stakes when he says the cuts threaten to give Arizona a "Third World education and economic infrastructure." Yet despite an emotional backlash against the Regents, I wonder if the extremist juggernaut can be stopped. Even without the further cuts, the damage is deep — and couldn't come at a worse time.

Some context is important. The dominant economic interests at statehood — railroads, mining, ranching, farming — had little use for book learnin'. They wanted the state's manpower for their uses. Still, the progressive elements that helped write the state constitution mandated that college be funded and available for every Arizona young person. The feud between the two has never ceased, but the former always held sway. Today's moguls — far more dominant and concentrated that their forebears — are in real estate. With a handful of exceptions, especially Ira Fulton, they have the same disdain for higher education. With the rise of the ideological right, opponents of the universities found potent new allies and arguments.

The consequences have become more pronounced as Arizona has grown and the centrality of excellent universities to economic power has become undeniable. As Arizona rapidly went from a frontier state to one of the most populous in the West, funding for higher education lagged, decade after decade, the hole getting deeper and deeper. Sometimes a pivot point of progress seemed at hand. For example, in the 1980s the University of Arizona seemed poised to become
the next University of Texas — a onetime jock factory that vaulted to
world-class university. It didn't happen. Republicans slashed funding again and again. Those cuts were never restored, even as student populations kept soaring. The universities' portion of general fund revenue actually kept shrinking.

Meanwhile, the economy shifted to a new base of technology and innovation. It was no coincidence that the American cities with the best jobs, most innovative companies and breakthrough technologies were located near world-class research universities. They became magnets for talent from around the world, which in turn spawned companies and industries. These universities, often aided by endowments that Arizona institutions never had, beefed up their programs from the 1980s on. Arizona universities treaded water and backfilled against old cuts and floods of more students. The moonshine of "tax cuts" aways prevailed, even though Arizona had some of the lowest taxes in the nation. Some fine university programs existed, but they were always at risk, and always subsumed in huge, underfunded, often mediocre institutions.

NAU was renamed a university, but Arizona resisted creating new colleges as it grew. Ohio has, of course, giant Ohio State. It also has a constellation of more local colleges, some of which are quite good, such as Kent State University. It also has its excellent "public ivies" of Miami University and Ohio University. On a lesser scale, North Carolina has similar diversity. Arizona still has the same three institutions, although perhaps under different names, that were established in territorial days.

Against tremendous resistance, Lattie Coor as ASU president raised standards and improved programs. Then came another seeming pivot with the arrival of Michael Crow. The new ASU president promised a "new American university" and set out to find ways to fund the giant school despite the Legislature. He launched ambitious expansions, including a downtown campus; joined with the UofA for the downtown medical school; established the biodesign institute and pushed departments to find ways to monetize their activities. This last was distasteful to those of us who want a university strong in the humanities, divorced from constant salesmanship and its potential conflicts of interest. But given Crow's task, his strategy is understandable.

Crow, like a few good business leaders, tried to find "the key" that would let them find common ground with the right-wing ideologues that controlled the Legislature. It never really happened. Apart from their hatred of "socialist professors," they just don't think Arizona can afford much college. Their god "the free market" will handle everything. Talking to them is a reminder of why you can't teach opera to a pig: 1) It can't be done; 2) It annoys the pig. Unfortunately, these are the powerful governmental leaders elected again and again by the minority of Arizonans who go to the polls. Of course, there is also the cynical reality that the Real Estate Industrial Complex wants cheap workers and doesn't want the tax structure that would support a modern, populous and urbanized state (including higher ed).

The elite will send their children to Stanford or Harvard, never to return. This was brought home when I gave a talk to a senior class at elite Brophy Prep in Phoenix. I asked for a show of hands: How many of you are going to college out of state? Every hand went up. And this was at their height of both the real-estate boom — when Arizona could claim to have such a grand economy — and the most optimistic time of Crow's ascendancy.

As for everyone else, they will indeed see a state sinking more and more into Third World levels. The evidence is already unmistakable. And it doesn't matter if things seem pleasant in Gilbert and north Scottsdale — the Third World has such pleasant, walled-off compounds. If these cuts are made, Arizona's slide will become perhaps unstoppable. And all the tax cuts in the world can't fix it — if you have an uneducated workforce, underfunded universities, one-note-johnny economy and 1965 infrastructure. More than ever, the hope will be that the growth machine returns.

Were I Michael Crow or UofA President Robert Shelton, I'd have my resume out.

And for those who now say, "I feel so depressed!": GO OUT AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT  IT! The Kookocracy can be defeated, but only if more people get angry and involved. On the other hand, most of Arizona is so narcoticized by sun and endless driving that I wonder if any revolt can succeed. The best chance may be for the Kooks to have their way and run the state even further into the ground — then be thrown out.