Universities

The State’s universities—Arizona State University (ASU), Northern Arizona University (NAU), and the University of Arizona (UA)—have established goals and appropriate strategies for improving student retention and graduation rates and can further enhance these efforts by more consistently evaluating their strategies and improving their strategic plans. The Arizona Board of Regents worked with the universities to establish student retention and graduation goals for each university to meet by 2025, and all three universities have developed multiple strategies that may help them achieve these goals by addressing common obstacles students face to staying in school and graduating in a timely manner. However, the universities’ evaluations of these strategies did not always address important evaluation components. Therefore, they should develop and implement university-wide guidance to more consistently evaluate their student retention and graduation strategies that aligns with program evaluation best practices. In addition, although the universities’ strategic plans include some best practice components, they should better align their strategic plans with their student retention and graduation goals and strategic-planning best practices.

Although the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) and the State’s universities—Arizona State University (ASU), Northern Arizona University (NAU), and the University of Arizona (UA)—have established some fee-setting processes that generally align with best practices that help to promote transparency and accountability, they should further enhance these processes. ABOR has statutory authority to set tuition and fees and has established policies and guidance that the universities must follow when setting fees. ASU, NAU, and UA have also developed some fee-setting policies and processes that are consistent with fee-setting standards and guidelines to guide their implementation of ABOR fee-setting policies and guidance and additional internal review and approval processes for establishing class fees that are $100 or less. However, ASU, NAU, and UA should further ensure that class fee revenues are used for approved purposes and address instances of noncompliance with existing fee-setting policies and procedures auditors identified. In addition, ABOR, ASU, NAU, and UA should enhance their fee-setting processes to further align them with fee-setting standards and guidelines.

The Legislature enacted statutes in 2013 requiring the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) and each community college district in Arizona to establish a pilot program (Programs) to waive tuition and mandatory fees (waiver) for current and former foster youth who meet certain eligibility requirements. Pursuant to statute, the Programs are scheduled to terminate on July 1, 2018. Although the Programs have helped some eligible current and former foster youth by providing waivers, data management needs improvement to assess the Programs’ effectiveness. In addition, changes to some requirements and additional supports, such as increasing the Programs’ age limit, may increase the Programs’ reach. Finally, the community college districts, and ABOR in collaboration with the universities, should improve the Programs’ implementation.

As part of its responsibility to prevent and detect fraud, Northern Arizona University (University) management took appropriate action by reporting a fraud allegation to both its police department and the Office of the Auditor General (Office). The university police department subsequently requested our Office to investigate the allegations of financial misconduct by Edwin Talley, former university postal services manager, and we determined that from July 1997 through January 2013, Mr. Talley used a fraud scheme to embezzle public monies totaling $354,902. The embezzled monies came from university revenues that consisted primarily of state appropriations and students’ tuition and fee payments, and should have been used to pay for services provided to university students. We have submitted our report to the Coconino County Attorney’s Office, which has taken criminal action against Mr. Talley resulting in his indictment on six felony counts.

During this 15½-year period, Mr. Talley may have violated state laws related to theft, misuse of public monies, fraudulent schemes, and money laundering when he caused the University to issue 245...