by David Safier
- New, cheaper AZ colleges? A few ideas are being discussed by the AZ Board of Regents, like buying a community college, then making it into a four year institution, or creating a number of four year colleges around the state that don't emphasize the research component, which would bring costs down. Good ideas. They'll take time, however. I wonder if a few CCs could offer a limited number of four year degrees in critical areas in the interim. If it works out well, make the programs permanent.
- ASU's Barack Obama Scholars Fund. "Through a combination of federal, state, institutional, and private resources, ASU will cover the estimated direct costs" of students from families making $60,000 or less. If this includes new money that wasn't available before, the program is definitely a "lemons into lemonade" solution to the faux pas of refusing to give Obama an honorary degree (which you know had to be a bone thrown by the Regents to the neanderthals who control the university purse strings in the legislature. Like most of those bones, it didn't work out quite as well as they hoped.).