The University of Arizona is refusing to release information regarding the $27 million worth of open academic jobs it is “permanently eliminating.”
The Arizona Board of Regents announced in early February that the university had found $27 million in savings by “permanently eliminating currently vacant positions in colleges” in a letter shared with Gov. Katie Hobbs.
The Arizona Daily Star first requested information about those cut positions, including what colleges and departments they were in and what jobs they were — support staff, adjunct, lecturer, tenure-track or tenure — on Feb. 13. The Star followed up on the request on Feb. 16, Feb. 26 and March 11.
In response to the most recent follow up, a spokeswoman for the university stated “we don’t have any further information to share at this time.”
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After a Faculty Senate meeting on March 11, Interim Provost Ronald Marx told the Star that, though ABOR wrote that the jobs were “permanently” eliminated, they were only “permanently in a sense” eliminated.
He added that in other budget years, the jobs could reappear.
Additionally, Marx stated that the UA was not going to share the information with the public because “some of the cuts are not from open positions.”
The positions being cut that are not open, he said, are positions where employees are retiring. Those retirements have not yet been publicly announced, he added.
“Basically, you’re not going to be able to get that data,” Marx said.
In response, the Star has submitted a formal records request to the university for the data.
Leila Hudson, the chair of the Faculty Senate, told the Star that she had also recently requested the information. She, too, was denied.
“I ask them on a regular basis for reliable numbers about the budget,” she said. “That’s been a major source of frustration. It’s been an unrelenting struggle to get accurate and precise data.”
The UA is a public institution, which means data should be readily available, Hudson noted.
“I’m worried about it,” she said. “It’s been a chronic source of tension. When we do get data, it often takes multiple requests to get it, and it’s often in forms that are confusing or difficult to interpret.”
Though financial oversight is not a responsibility of the Faculty Senate, Hudson believes that sometimes they need fiscal data to make programming decisions.
“We’re often asked to make decisions about programs or new units without understanding what the financial ramifications, history or context are for making those decisions,” she said. “That’s been extraordinarily frustrating.”