ASU and UA are up to their eyeballs in scandal. Where is the Board of Regents?

Four years ago, the University of Arizona was still reeling from a men’s basketball scandal that had boiled up into the national news and conversation.

Alarmed by new revelations, the Arizona Board of Regents issued a statement in October 2020 that, in the clearer light of today, must be read as a damning indictment of that body that oversees Arizona’s public universities.

“The board takes these matters seriously and, as the governing body for the University of Arizona, is committed to upholding the integrity of the university, including its athletic programs. The board maintains full confidence in President (Robert) Robbins’ leadership as the NCAA process continues and supports his decision to request review.” 

It remains a real question if the regents ever did take these matters seriously.

UA and ASU reputations are in tatters

Because four years later the Arizona university system is an inferno.

The reputations of state’s two major public universities — UA and Arizona State University — are scorched. The integrity of their leadership is under challenge and calls are rising for resignations.

UA President Robbins has announced he will step down at the end of his contract in 2026 or sooner if his replacement emerges.

This newspaper’s editorial board has called for his immediate firing.

He will leave the UA after his leadership team so badly mismanaged the university finances in a new and more wide-ranging scandal that they blew a $177 million hole in their budget and must now cut programs and staff to eventually balance the ledger.

In the same year the Regents said they were taking seriously the problems with UA basketball, the flames of another athletic scandal had begun licking at their feet.

Did the Regents know about ASU's scandal?

This new one engulfed ASU’s football program and culminated last Friday in a giant thud as the NCAA dropped its massive three-year investigation on the ASU administration.

The report showed that several ASU football coaches had engaged in recruiting violations during the pandemic and that the then-head coach, Herm Edwards, bears responsibility.

Further, the negotiated resolution acknowledged that the university had failed to monitor its football program, Arizona Republic writer Michelle Gardner reported.

ASU has now become the most penalized school in NCAA history, Republic journalist Jeremy Cluff reported.

When the football investigation was at full boil in July 2021, four assistant coaches either resigned or were fired.

But the university defended Edwards and kept him on the job. ASU would eventually fire him three games into his fifth season in 2022.

With the NCAA reporting that Edwards bears responsibility in the recruiting scandal, it’s raising questions why he got a 50% contract buy-out worth $4.4 million.

And it provokes yet another question. Where was the Board of Regents?

They were busy rewarding UA for a mess

In 2022, the Regents were busy encouraging UA President Robbins to complete a merger with an already infamous Ashford University, a for-profit online school that had “a history of fraudulent marketing practices that saddled students with debt and questionable degrees,” The Republic’s Hannah Dreyfus and Helen Rummel reported.

Anyone with access to Google could have read for themselves the 2011 New York Times coverage of appalled federal officials raking Ashford over the coals for its outrageous practices.

When Robbins finally closed the deal with Ashford, the Regents rewarded him with a $45,000 bonus.

The financial meltdown and Ashford merger have brought reputational damage to the UA and turned it into a morality tale for other universities considering partnerships with similar for-profit operations.

When Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, an ex-officio member of the Regents, looked across the damage wrought by the UA budget and acquisition scandal, she was furious.

“The University of Arizona's financial crisis is rooted in a lack of accountability, transparency & leadership,” she wrote. “We must take action to restore the public’s trust.”

That won’t simply require repairing the damage at the state’s major universities.

This is a system-wide breakdown that begins with the Regents, the board that was supposed to be their watchdog.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com. 

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona Board of Regents did little to stop ASU, UA scandals