When I saw this morning's headline in the Arizona Republic, "ASU's Dreams Dashed," I didn't realize it was just a sports story. Arizona State University was the prime example of a recent New York Times story headlined, "State Colleges Also Face Cutbacks in Ambitions." Reporting on the hundreds of layoffs and scores of closed programs, among other draconian austerity measures, the Times wrote:
raising questions about how many public research universities the
nation needs and whether universities like Arizona State, in their
drive to become prominent research institutions, have lost focus on
their public mission to provide solid undergraduate education for state
residents.
"Mr. Crow," of course, is Michael Crow, who arrived as ASU's president in 2002 promising "the new American university." When he was riding high, I talked to an eminent Arizonan, a huge supporter of higher ed, who had just spent some time with Crow. "He's brilliant…visionary," this person said. "And he's a con man." On my visit to Phoenix last month, a major civic leader said flatly: "I think Crow's house of cards will collapse soon."
I was always rooting for Crow because he made no small plans, and while he used the language of developers, he applied his vision and energy to an institution that was critical to Phoenix and Arizona's future. Faced with a Legislature that had actually been cutting higher ed spending as part of the general fund for years, Crow was going to raise money from business, from ASU's far-flung and largely apathetic alumni and through pioneer public-private partnerships. He was going to build a top research university and also educate one of the largest student bodies in America.
This was not all opportunism — and Phoenix could use a little opportunism for the greater good, rather than to, say, game the water laws to allow subdivisions where they should not be. Crow is a working-class kid who really believes in inclusion, in opening excellent higher education to people who might not have the resources to get there. Yet Crow is always a businessman-educator, and the demand to monetize as much as possible was always present (again, this is also an outgrowth of an anti-education Legislature and lack of an endowment). Much was accomplished in the early years, especially the Biodesign Institute (with lots of federal money) and beginning the downtown Phoenix campus (with lots of city money). Much more might have been achieved had the economy not collapsed, the political climate been less hostile, the business community more supportive, rivalries less poisonous. I think especially of how much better the city and state would have been positioned if the downtown biomedical campus could have met its "meds and eds" promise.
Yet it must also be said that something toxic grew around Crow's take-no-prisoners management style. It emerged more fully as times grew tight and low morale and fear now are widespread among faculty and staff, including former supporters. The tension between the demand to turn programs into "profit centers" was never reconciled with the fact that some of the most essential academic programs — those that create citizens who can think critically, not merely worker cogs — will never "pay for themselves." Most profoundly, ASU's sheer size finally wrecked the dream — among other things constitutionally forced to take in-state students whether the funding was there or not. And with the Kooks in charge, even preserving much of the progress of Crow's early years will be difficult.
The Kooks always said Crow's push for excellence was nuts — ASU should be there to provide a "good-enough" college education, that's it. Many of them are small-businessmen or real estate guys who are insecure around degree-waving types, who might want higher pay — and who needs a degree to be a developer? They never accepted the concept of how university research could be a major regional economic driver. (And it's not as if "the university," i.e. UofA, was lavishly funded, either). Crow always tried to find "the key" to reach the Kooks. The business school and other departments slavishly kow-towed to the Real Estate Industrial Complex. But to no avail. Who needs an educated workforce when you have "growth"? (A high-wage workforce "would put me out of business," as one businessman told me). And the "Goldwater" Institute can come up with some tortured stats to show Arizona already has plenty of college graduates.
Yet ASU's deeper problem is rooted in how Arizona's educational infrastructure never kept pace with population growth, much less with an eye to competing with an ever-rising bar of excellence (and, sure, ASU does have some excellent programs). Even when I was a kid, some Arizona leaders worried that ASU and the UofA were too big, and that ASU's monopoly on higher-ed in metro Phoenix was not healthy. And this was when the student population in Tempe was 30,000.
I can't think of another metro area of more than 3 million people (is it 4 million, now?), with only one real university. (Even Grand Canyon College was turned into an ersatz University of Phoenix.) To get a sense of the problem, consider that when Los Angeles reached the 1.5 million mark in population in the 1930s (which Phoenix hit in 2000), the area had the University of Southern California, UCLA, Cal Tech, Loyola Marymount and several smaller colleges. Metro Seattle now has three major universities. And I'm not even getting into eastern cities (Cincinnati, less populous than Mesa, with three universities in the city and five in the region). Or Ohio's admirable variety of universities, including two "public ivies." Even conservative North Carolina does better, including supporting one of the top public universities in the nation. China is building hundreds of universities and putting much of its stimulus in building research capability.
Yet Phoenix never attracted the civic stewards or organizations that could or would establish colleges, and it had the bad luck to grow into a major city after the great era of higher-education building. Arizona's bad luck was constant hostility to university funding — when it temporarily eased, the money merely backfilled years of neglect — and lack of leadership by the regents.
I was always in favor of breaking up ASU, with the west campus becoming its own university, and the "Polytechnic" campus either standing alone, or closing because the hoped-for population flood to that isolated part of the Salt River Valley might never materialize. Missions could be clarified. Competition would be healthy. (The UofA should be allowed to grow in downtown Phoenix, too.) But this would require a commitment to funding higher education. Otherwise, you just end up with three struggling universities in place of one.
Sad but undoubtedly a fair and reasonable characterization of the state of higher education in the “great” state of Arizona.
Michael Crow is an unapologetic bigot who has dashed the dreams of talented, good decent African Americans at ASU and for that I do not forgive him. Some of those people are my friends. One suffered from major depression. Crow’s firing, despite the unanimous recommedation of the committee on academic freedom and tenure that the prof. be reinstated, has shredded her emotionally. Other profesors he fired for no reason other than their race is inexcusable.
Crow’s bigotry is costing ASU a bundle of money. While Crow yaps about the legislature cutting education, Crow spends millions a year to defend ASU against discrimination lawsuits linked directly to him.
Crow carried his distate for minorities from columbia where he was vice provost. Crow engineered the longstanding case against prominent Latina Prof. Graciela Chichilnisky. see briefs filed by the AAUW in 7.08
Crow has hurt a lot of people and he doesn’t care one single bit.
Crow recently answered written, pre-submitted questions at a “town hall forum” taking place at ASU West.
One of the “community inserts” published with local area editions of the Arizona Republic (I believe it was the “Glendale Republic” insert) published a sample set of five or six questions and Crow’s responses to them.
I’ve just spend the last 45 minutes trying to find an online link to this at azcentral.com, at google.com, and at the News Bank database of Arizona Republic back issues, without success.
Fortunately, I did clip the page out, but at the moment it isn’t handy. I’ll try to post a follow-up with excerpts, but at the moment, let me just say that Crow not only failed to address the questions actually asked, but managed to sound a lot like a two-bit gangster pressing Glendale for protection money.
In the meantime, let me also note that Crow closed the ASU West newspaper after it criticized him, and it became publically known that under Crow’s direction the ASU email system was spying on local student critics, including the editor of that campus paper, who told me personally that he switched to a private email service because he couldn’t trust ASU spies not to capture and read his email and pass it onto Crow’s office.
Crow recently consolidated administrative power over the West campus, citing the motto of “one university” on many campuses. Even the campus computer system, which used to be a local area network running under Unix, is now under centralized control from Tempe — no doubt because it makes spying on and punishing his critics easier.
Then, having done so, he began to cut resources heavily, and even spoke of turning ASU West into an independent university to be called New College.
This only goes to show that Michael Crow has a cynical approach to rhetoric which changes from moment to moment according to convenience.
I’ll see about posting those excerpts soon. They’re amazing. Crow needs to spend part of his phenomenally large salary to hire public relations people who can stick a muzzle on his fat blowhole at a moment’s notice, and a leash to prevent him from lunging at passersby (such as the Mayor of Glendale).
OK, I’ve found the clipping. It appeared in The Glendale Republic (community insert of The Arizona Republic) March 7th, 2009, page 22. The piece gives “excerpts of answers to some questions posed to ASU President Michael Crow during a public forum Wednesday sponsored by The Arizona Republic and Westmarc”. This was advertised as a “town hall” forum and was held on the ASU West campus.
Question: Glendale Mayor Elaine Scruggs, among others, has brought up the issue of trust. They say they can’t trust you. How do you respond to that?
Crow: “Well, you know Mayor Scruggs, I’m not really sure what she would base that on. She and I have had a number of conversations about the university. The city of Mesa, we had a number of conversations with and they invested in the university. The city of Scottsdale, we had a number of discussions with and they invested in the university. The city of Phoenix, we had a number of conversations with and they invested in the university. The city of Tempe, obviously, has invested in the university. I’m not really sure why the city of Glendale has invested in other things, not the university. So, we probably haven’t had enough conversations to probably, in my mind, be concerned about her saying that because I don’t know what she would base that on.”
Town Hall? Sounds more like Tammany Hall. Nice institution youse got here. It would be a shame if anything was to happen to it. Your neighbors and me, we all had deese conversations, and dey bought insurance. You and me had conversations but you ain’t bought no insurance. I think maybe we need to have some more conversations. (Note also that ASU West, though bordering Glendale, is actually located in Phoenix.)
To put the question and answer in context, readers should be aware that Crow recently closed the ASU West business school, merging it with the Tempe program. Then he summarily cancelled all other ASU West graduate level programs, and finally threatened to close the campus entirely, until the local bourgeoisie (Glendale and west Phoenix small business owners) stepped in and made it clear that their economic prosperity was at stake and that if the university failed they would hold it against Crow.
Good for them. Crow respects only power, and in this society that doesn’t come from students, parents, or faculty, but only from organized, monied interests with connections to the “civic leadership”.
Crow ended up restoring some of the graduate programs. I’m just glad that somebody, anybody, was able to throw a monkey wrench into his plans to turn ASU West into an eviscerated sausage factory.
Other questions included “What changes are planned for this campus?” Crow didn’t answer, instead launching into a vague, meandering analogy about the state of the economy, apparently in the hope that by the time he finished, listeners would have forgotten the original question.
Crow was also asked why “grants, gifts, and other resources acquired by and dedicated to ASU West” were being “shifted to other units within ASU” and why campus funds, faculty, and staff in general were being cannibalized (sent to other campuses). Crow complained that the question was “antagonistic” and claimed that he didn’t know the details about a particular endowment, ignoring the rest of the question entirely.
In fact, nearly without exception, this was his strategy: long, irrelevant answers that obscured the original question rather than actually addressing it.
Speaking of Crow’s “world class vision” (a lot like Donald Trump’s if you ask me), the Arizona Republic recently published a story in its Business section about the massive solar energy production from five on-campus installations, providing 1.9 megawatts of electricity (by comparison, the solar power plant near Springerville has a capacity of 4.6 megawatts), with plans to expand ASU’s output to 10 megawatts.
The only problem is that ASU doesn’t own these installations, and pays a 16 to 20 percent premium over and above ordinary electricity prices for each kilowatt-hour it uses, to a privately owned, for-profit, Wisconsin (!) based company called Integrys.
https://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2009/04/01/20090401biz-asusolar0401.html
Now, when you consider ASU’s research acumen, including the design and operation of instrumentation for some of NASA’s Mars probes and robotic interplanetary spacecraft, this is simply RIDICULOUS. You would think that the research faculty that provides this kind of engineering qualifications could design a solar panel collection system for ASU and rope some graduate students into providing much of the (supervised) labor necessary to install and maintain it.
https://www.mars.asu.edu/ap/
But no, Crow is ready to pay an out of state company a 20 percent premium over and above standard electricity costs. World class leadership, indeed. Does Crow own stock in this company, or is he simply a feckless idiot?
Check out my website which advocates reforming the Arizona University System by transforming ASU West & Polytechnic campuses into independent “low-cost” and “medium-cost” state universities, respectively. Click on the link below for the details:
https://PSUandAzTech.blogspot.com
“I was always in favor of breaking up ASU, with the west campus becoming its own university, and the “Polytechnic” campus either standing alone, or closing because the hoped-for population flood to that isolated part of the Salt River Valley might never materialize. Missions could be clarified. Competition would be healthy. (The UofA should be allowed to grow in downtown Phoenix, too.) But this would require a commitment to funding higher education.”
For the most part, I think throwing money at a broken system is stupid, but actually changing the system and creating competition would be a wise investment.