Challenges faced by the University of Arizona during COVID-19

Statement Paper

Yamne Callejas

CCHE 690 (1221-9356)

Spring 2022
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Challenges faced by the University of Arizona during COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an economic fallout causing a significant hardship

on the United States’ economy as tens of million of people lost their jobs during the early months

of the pandemic and unemployment remained high throughout 2021 (Center on Budget and

Policy Priorities, 2022). As the United States saw this economic crisis, the University of Arizona

(UArizona) was left to face a challenge from the beginning of the pandemic as they also

expected a loss in revenue through June 2021 It was anticipated that over the first 15 months

after the pandemic started, $250 million would be lost in revenues for UArizona as they had

already seen $58 million in losses by April 28, 2020 (Robbins, 2020). The UArizona 2021

annual budget report projected a $337.9 billion decreased over the 2020 fiscal year projections

(FY 2021 Annual Budget, 2020). The financial state of the institution was one of the major

challenges faced by UArizona however, there were three major issues faced by the institution

due to COVID-19 that contributed or were affected by this economic crisis. These included the

loss of admissions enrollmentr, furloughs for employees, and reduction in activities associated

with departmental sales and services (Robbins, 2020)

UArizona reallocated $131 million in a strategic plan funds to address forecasted declines

in enrollment and student credit hours by college. There was also a pause in enrollment

management strategic plan initiatives that would reduce the cost by $57.6 million (FY 2021

Annual Budget, 2020). UArizona not only faced the challenging of losing funding for enrollment

management initiatives but they also faced enrollment decreased efforts that resulted in less

revenue. In the Fall of 2020, the University of Arizona admitted 5,379 first-year full-time

undergraduate students, 98 international students, and 2,739 new undergraduate transfers (UAIR,

2020). This is compared to Fall 2019 where they had 6,036 first-year full-time undergraduate

students, 361 international students, and 2,487 new undergraduate transfers. (UAIR, 2019). One
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Challenges faced by the University of Arizona during COVID-19

of the biggest challenges the institution faced at the beginning of the pandemic was the

uncertainty of what enrollment would turn out to be and if this would reduce the revenue for the

institution and state funding. Specifically, if the out of state and international student enrollment

would decrease since students were advice to stay home or in their dorms. Centered on primary

statistics such as housing deposits, new undergraduate and graduate student enrollments were

projected to decrease 11% for in-state and 19% for out-of-state, equivalent to an $18.7 million

loss in revenue and international student losses 80% for new students and 30% for current

students, resulting in a $33.1 million loss in revenue (Robbins, 2020). Although we did see a

decline in 2020, we also witnessed that in Fall 2021 there was a small increase in enrollment

from 2020. UArizona admitted 6,013 first-year full-time undergraduate students, 154

international students, and 2,639 new undergraduate transfers (UAIR, 2021).

Nationally, this does seem like it is a trend as there was a “great interruption” where

enrolled students hit the pause button on their post-secondary education (Conley & Massa,

2022). According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, there was a total

undergraduate enrollment deteriorated of 6.6% from fall 2019 to fall 2021 nationwide,

demonstrating a loss of just over a million students. It seems like the pandemic is having higher

impact on the existing pre-COVID trends. The birth rates of in the State of Arizona have

declined 21.7% over the past decade (Hammond, 2019) which means that the enrollment or

college-going population such as high school seniors and transfer students will also decline.

COVID accelerated this process by allowing people to interrupt their education and possible

have people focus their attention elsewhere without returning to Higher Education. To be able to

sustain enrollment revenue the institution must find unique, innovative, and relevant ways to

maintain enrollment. Although these students might be dropping from higher education now,
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Challenges faced by the University of Arizona during COVID-19

programs must be created to stay relevant with societal needs and to serve as a public good.

Programs must be updated to attract adult learners and the non-traditional student. COVID was a

great example of how mindsets are changing where higher education at times is not as important.

UArizona imposed a pause on a hiring and on any merit salary increases a leadership

implemented immediate pay cuts on themselves (Leingang, 2020). The furlough plan was

announced on April 17th, about one month after UArizona implemented courses to be remote,

where all staff members would see a reduction in their income (KOLD, 2020). Staff members

with salaries between $44,500 and $44,999 were to lose 5.25 days of work and pay over a 12-

month period which was a cut of about 5%. Employees that had higher salaries also had higher

furlough days until reaching 20 days for people with full salaries of $203,500 or more which is

about a a 20% cut (Steller, 2022). The salary cuts ended on February 21, 2021 when it was

originally set to last through June 2021 (Gomez, 2020).

The challenge that has arisen from this, aside from cutting employees’ salaries, is the

uncertainty whether this was necessary and how employees have asked for the university to pay

them back for those months their salary was cut. Employees argue that they had worked more

during the pandemic months that being able to take furlough day was nearly impossible. The

point is that some of these employees were not able to take days off to match the salary decrease.

Another issue is that the other state universities, NAU and ASU, either did not implement

furlough or are now paying back employees the money lost to the furlough. Employees are now

trying to have UArizona pay back staff the $43.5 million that the university saved through

furloughs (Steller, 2022) however, this has yet to happen. The way the furlough days and salaries

cut were handle was unique to UArizona compared to the other state universities in Arizona and

around the country. Schools that were financial struggling before the pandemic were to face
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Challenges faced by the University of Arizona during COVID-19

more adjustments during COVID that forced institutions to accelerate drastic measures (Hess,

2020). Instead of analyzing the financial situation over time, UArizona decided to act right as the

pandemic started compared to ASU that evaluated and did not furlough their employees.

During the 2021 fiscal year budget, it was estimated that there would be a $73.6 million

decrease in secondary revenues predominantly due to anticipated reductions in on-campus

activities which impact Athletics, Residence Life, Student Union, and the Bookstores (FY 2021

Annual Budget, 2020). Athletics is a massive source of revenue for the University of Arizona,

especially through Football and Basketball. Without football, there was an estimating $60 to $65

million impact in revenue loss for the institution (Pedersen, 2020). The U.S. Department of

Education summary from the 2018-19 academic year, revealed football generated $43.3 million

in revenue which mainly came from media rights and UArizona Arizona collected more than $32

million from the Pac-12 after the 2018-19 season, which was their media funding (Pedersen,

2020). Tucson, Arizona, where UArizona is located, is a small market where College Athletics

plays a huge role in the city’s economy (Townsend, 2020). Tucson depends on bed tax and sales

tax money from incoming visitors which composes half of the budget for the city of Tucson

which also includes funding to support projects such as roads, police, parks, and other services

(Mingura, 2020).Other cancellations were announced due to COVID-19 which included the

following programs: School of Art, School of Dance, Fred Fox, School of Music, School of

Theatre, Film & Television, Arizona Arts in Schools, Centennial Hall, Center for Creative

Photography, Museum of Art, UA Presents, and the UA Festival of Books (Snyder , 2020).These

events also created great revenue for the City of Tucson.

The College of Medicine, the only public MD college in the state, also had to put their

onsite clinical activities (Sukumar et al., 2021). Although the budget for fiscal year 2021 was
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Challenges faced by the University of Arizona during COVID-19

reduce due to the expectation of these losses, this also created extreme challenges to the students

and the Tucson community. For example, medical students are required to do clinical and onsite

learning to be able to better grasp important information. During the pandemic, these styles of

learning were disrupted since students were not able to enter hospitals as the patient care space

was unavailable, very limited, and they had to adapt to online education. Due to severity of

COVID-19, students were marginalized from clinical experiences even if some were allowed to

be onsite (Goldenberg et al., 2020). This is unique to the University of Arizona since it already

has limited opportunities for their students and clerkship often are filled up. Having even more

restrictions created greater challenges. Currently, the second-year students, who entered Medical

School in Fall 2020, are also facing unique consequences to this online learning since they are

reaching the time to take their STEP 1 exam and are noticing they are not as prepared as they

should be. This is only one example of canceling activities not affected budgets but until this day

are seeing the effects it had on our student activities and on the students’ themselves.

The University of Arizona went through great losses during the COVID-19 pandemic

however, many actions were taken very early without much information besides what had

already been lost and speculations. Due to these assumptions, employees entered a furloughed

period that ended early and enrollment did not face a drastic change and 2 years after the

pandemic began, enrollment seems to be “back to normal”. The cancellation of events was a

necessary action plan to follow social distancing procedures. Being able to create budgets that

are not mainly dependent on enrollment and/or events will allow the university to create a plan

that would not put its community at risk.

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