Ask the Dean: Governors, stop neglecting universities - Ali Malekzadeh, Arizona Star

While you as a taxpayer poke your nose into the business of state universities, keep in mind that states once provided about 50 percent of the budgets for the universities, and now that figure is down in the teens. The state universities in Arizona had a budget cut of $191 million in 2009, and if the recent sales tax increase had not passed, the University of Arizona alone would have had to cut another 500 positions. The university system's share of the total state budget in Arizona was 9.5 percent in 2009, down from 19.1 percent in 1979. Meanwhile, tuition has increased by an average of 9 percent for three years at Arizona's public universities.