Quote:
Originally Posted by Eeyore
Why only 3? I mean Colorado has about the same population and I can think of 10 4 year universities/ colleges.
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The Arizona Board of Regents are a group of the most backwards, knuckle dragging, visionless, grudge holding buffoons to ever walk the Earth thats why.
For the majority of its history the ABOR has been controlled by people in Tucson and people with ties to the UA. All they want is whats best for the UA and the rest of the state can't die for all they care. They did everything in their power from preventing ASU from becoming a "U" and only allowed it to eventually happen by granting NAU "U" status as well. For years its been obvious that ASUs enrollment was spiraling way too high and would become an undesirable, untenable solution, but that didn't effect UA- so who cares? Further, it hurt ASU and Phoenix, so all the better. Tucson leaders, and ABOR, have little brother syndrome and seem to still be annoyed that Phoenix has the capitol, the better water infrastructure, more growth, et cetera. so they take it out by punishing the entire states higher education system.
The ASU-UA rivalry is one of the most bitter, and sadly petty in the country because of all of this.
EDIT: VV Thats certainly a factor, but even with ASU being in the biggest population center (metro Phx) its still not proximate to a lot of people in the Valley. The Valley is so big it needs a bunch of schools, not just one.
Think about it, the Valley has 4.3 million people and ONE traditional, four year, public university. ONE. Thats crazy. And its not like that gap has been filled by private schools, since Phoenix lacks a lot of high dollar philanthropist types we don't have anyone to found something like a Vanderbilt U, its all online colleges, technical schools and night schools that are mostly diploma mills that don't exactly produce high dollar workers or attract big companies to move here.