As executive director, Ms. Blessing works with the three state university presidents as a member of the Council of Presidents. She makes recommendations and develops systems to monitor compliance with the board’s policies and procedures.

Ms. Blessing started working for Arizona state government in 1981 when she joined the staff of the Auditor General’s Office and served there as deputy auditor general from 1985 to 1991. She served as director of the Arizona Department of Economic Security from 1992 to 1999 when she became executive director of the Board of Regents.

Ms. Blessing recently talked with Arizona Capitol Times about her service in state government and her plans.

Arizona Capitol Times: You came over to the Board of Regents from the Department of Economic Security in 1999?

Ms. Blessing: Yes, but you may not know I was here before I went to DES. This is my career path. I was here at the Board of Regents in the ‘80s. I had just come over, and I had just finished my doctorate. I wanted to be in higher education. I was borrowed from the Board of Regents to go to DES for six months. We even signed a contract that it would be temporary, and it turned into seven years. So, it was a detour, but one of most gratifying detours I’ve had in my career. It just was longer than I anticipated. But, you know welfare reform was coming into effect. DES needed a lot of stability and strong leadership, and we were able to put together a team that I think did some good work there.

But, I came back to the Board of Regents for my second tour of duty in 1999.

Since 1999, there have been a number of things that you have been involved with or overseeing, such as Changing Directions, a regents’ initiative to reform the university system, and tuition increases.

Now don’t say tuition hikes without saying increases in need-based financial aid. Because that’s the part I’m proud of.

How would you describe your tenure the second time around?

Exciting and exhilarating. You know we’ve had changes in the university presidents, too. That’s been very exciting. There has been strong board leadership. We’ve created more change, I think, in the past two years, in terms of policy and other substantive changes than the board created in the prior ten years. It was pretty dramatic. So, that was fun because in my career in public administration, which is over 30 years, I have this strong belief that when you are in public administration you’re not just there to manage and do a good job, but you really have an obligation to increase public value, or the public good, to make things better. So these last five years with the Board of Regents have really been gratifying in that regard.

I had such a wonderful experience at DES in those seven years, which is about twice as long at least as any other director was ever there. …And it was so gratifying that I worried that I wouldn’t find anything in Arizona that would be as fulfilling. So, I feel very lucky that I could come back to the Board of Regents and be part of something that was very fulfilling. As a matter of fact, I think of it as a continuum. At DES, it was helping people with basic needs. I’m talking about food, shelter and safety. The CPS kids. And helping families be more self-sufficient. In the hierarchy of needs, it was at the bottom. Whereas now I am at the other end of the continuum, helping people gain higher education to improve their quality of life and break that cycle of poverty. It’s kind of like working on the same values and about helping families but at different ends.

Now what about tuition and need-based financial aid?

Raising tuition wasn’t just about increasing revenue for the universities, which is important because you need to maintain quality. But it was about setting aside more money for need-based financial aid. I’ll give you some numbers. While tuition went up 40 per cent, need-based financial aid went up 140 per cent.

By the way, regents followed that up with over a 10 per cent increase just in March. But, in each case, they increased the amount of money from tuition that was set aside for need-based financial aid, which is very low in this state.

We have such a big, growing gap between the haves and have-nots in this state. We have a lot of citizens who can’t afford to go to our universities no matter what the tuition is. And, if you don’t provide any need-based financial aid, it’ll just increase that gap between the haves and have-nots.

We have far too many Arizona families in which nobody has yet gone to college. They don’t necessarily aspire to go to college because they think it’s hopeless because they can’t afford it and they can’t make it. That’s just something we’ve got to change.

The regents really did a wonderful job of setting aside a pool of money, but it isn’t enough. The increase in tuition produced about $22 million in new money for needy students, but the need is probably between $100 million and $150 million. So a lot of work needs to be done.

Most states are funding need-based financial aid in the tens of millions of dollars. State legislatures are either appropriating the money, or they are finding a dedicated revenue stream like a lottery. There are a variety of approaches. But, most states are setting aside tens of millions of dollars, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.

We’re on the very bottom rung — probably 46th in the country — even with that additional $22 million. It’s just a start. We really need the Legislature’s help and the private sector’s help to focus on this issue.

So while tuition has increased dramatically, I would be remiss if I let you walk out thinking it was just about tuition and increasing the revenue for the universities. It really is about improving access to education. A lot more work needs to be done. And that’s my current passion right now. You can see how it relates to my work at DES. It’s just, as I say, a different end to the continuum.

What about Changing Directions? [Changing Directions, launched by the Arizona Board of Regents in August 2002, is a reform plan aimed at improving the state’s three universities. The Regents, faced with cuts to university budgets and increasing enrollments, launched a review of university goals and management.]

Actually, the tuition component of need-based financial aid was the first piece of Changing Directions. It is about making sure the universities are strong and healthy. That means they need to focus on what they do best, and that means that the regents want to no longer treat them with a cookie-cutter approach under which everybody has to be the same.

So the regents allowed them to develop different policies and different approaches and insisted that they focus their missions differently. That is at the heart of Changing Directions.

The regents had been doing everything in lockstep. Everybody needed the same tuition. Everybody needed the same admission standards. Everybody had to follow the same rules. So, all three universities were chasing the same goals and aspirations. And, that meant that everybody was trying to be the same. So, they were all good, but not great.

There did seem to be a sense of competition among the universities. I hope we’re breaking that cycle. For one thing the focus is now: What is your individual mission? It should not look like any of the other two major universities in our state. And, who are your peers that you want to compete with? We are not competing within the state.

Let me give you the example of NAU. Northern Arizona University was chasing the same star as Arizona State University and the University of Arizona. NAU was pursuing the research and the recognition that goes with it. Well, NAU can never attain that
level. It can never be a world-class research university. To keep chasing that goal was counter productive.

Now, NAU is focusing on its finest achievement, which is undergraduate education. It is showcasing its small classrooms, faculty in the classroom with lots of contact and its residential environment. That’s a very different model, and frankly it’s a more cost-efficient model. If you can’t be a great research university, you shouldn’t try to be a mediocre one.

Regents, right now for example, are working on recommendations for different ways to fund the universities that recognize these different missions. So, for example on NAU, we’d like to recommend to the governor and the Legislature that NAU be funded for doing a good job at its undergraduate education mission. So they don’t need to grow [in enrollment] for their funding to grow.

ASU, for example, is a metropolitan university that is going through an enormous growth. For ASU to be funded for its enrollment growth makes sense, but not NAU. NAU needs to be rewarded for producing excellent bachelor’s degree and master’s degree students who have had smaller classrooms and more contact with faculty.

So now regents are now turning their attention to the funding approaches that will reward those distinct missions. When you provide the right incentives you can further improve in your areas of greatness. We’re hoping to see some pretty remarkable accomplishments.

NAU needs to look at different peers nationally, not chase ASU or UofA any longer.

Likewise, ASU and UofA have very different missions. They do have the research in common. Of course, UofA does have a big head start on the research. ASU is working very hard to increase its research capacity and also be that metropolitan university that serves the local citizens.

ASU has announced that it is setting up several campuses in the Phoenix area. Is that part of Changing Directions?

Yes. Michael Crow [Arizona State University president] can say it so much better than I can. It’s part of working to be world class and to figure out who your national peers are. And to determine what you need to do to be at the top of that list. Don’t chase the UofA. Let’s look at who your national peers are and act accordingly. Michael Crow is very insistent that you get embedded in the community and deal with the growth in Maricopa County, which is astronomical.

UofA has different problems. They are landlocked more than ASU. They can’t and shouldn’t continue to expand, expand, expand. They really want to focus on their top research skills and grow them. They are also now chasing a different star. Not growth. They need to be compensated for the growth they absorb, but they are looking to really raise their performance and outcome. More bachelors’ degrees, more PhDs, more fine research and more knowledge that is transferred to the private sector that creates wealth. It is time for them to be funded on those kinds of measures, not enrollment growth like ASU.

I think you’ll see the three universities continue to diverge.

It’s exciting being part of that. We have three university presidents who are all really smart, and they’re very much embracing this Changing Directions notion. That coupled with excellent leadership from the regents with people like Jack Jewett. Honestly, it was like the planets aligned, and we created together such dramatic change.

Things I never thought I’d see changed in my lifetime, like geographic boundaries, have been changed. Talk about competition. We had a board policy that said you had to stay in your geographic boundaries and don’t cross over. Well, we did away with them in an instant. This was something I thought our culture could never tolerate, but, basically, the regents said that in this environment this geographic boundary business does not make sense. If NAU can meet a need in Maricopa County and can fulfill a niche, they ought to be free to come do that. NAU has experts in distance learning. So they can serve the entire state, and they shouldn’t be constrained in any way.

So some of those turf battles around geographic boundaries are melting away, and you see that in regent behavior too. There is not a parochial attitude at all on this board. Many, many years ago, you might have regents looking after their most closely aligned university, but not this board. It rises above that parochial business and works for what’s good for the state as a whole. How do we serve Arizona citizens as whole? The regents are very good at that. Plus, we have presidents who have also risen above those kinds of territorial and parochial concerns, too.

The tuition increases were a huge change in culture too. In Arizona, we prided ourselves at being a low tuition system. We were 50th in the nation among our peers. 50th lowest tuition in the nation. Many regents were quite proud of that because they believed that that created access to education for Arizona citizens. But, it didn’t work that way. We knew from our Changing Directions work that we had poor affordability and poor accessibility even though our tuition was low. You have to ask yourself how can that be. The reason is tuition is only a small portion of the cost of attendance. It’s probably a fourth of the cost. It’s room and board, transportation, and books. If you’re a single parent, it’s childcare. And so tuition was such a small proportion. And since we had inadequate need-based financial aid, we were getting scores of Cs and Ds on accessibility on some of the nation report cards. We were going downhill getting Cs and Ds, and we had the lowest tuition.

That’s why the regents tackled tuition.

We had gone years with keeping tuition low — increases of 3 or 4 per cent a year. By the way, there were bitter divisions among regents over tuition votes in the past when it was just for 3 or 4 per cent. It was very divisive.

The vote for the 2001-2002 tuition was 6-5, which meant a very divided board. You don’t want to see that when you’re an executive director, especially on something that people get as passionate over. No regent felt good about that vote. Jack Jewett was coming in as president, and he said we’re not going to have this situation again. The very next year they increased tuition 40 per cent, and the vote was 9-0. It was unanimous for a 40 per cent increase — a $1,000 increase. And, we’ve had bitter fights over $100 before.

This time they rallied around need-based financial aid. They knew the universities needed the revenue. The university budgets were being cut; they were not able to maintain quality; they had a brain drain; and the brightest faculty members were fleeing to other states. The regents knew they had to help out. But, the reason they could agree on that kind of huge tuition hike — the biggest in our history — was because of coalescing around need-based financial aid. It was pretty wonderful to see.

You left DES before the beginning of the firestorm over Child Protective Services?

Oh heavens, no. You go back and read the newspaper articles. When I was the brand new director, there was a huge firestorm. We had three tragic deaths of children in foster care within about a month of my appointment. It was a terrible time. CPS was understaffed; the caseloads were huge; and we weren’t able to look at kids in foster care. But we made a lot of improvement. We got increases for CPS workers in those years.

Sometimes history repeats itself, and, at DES, these things just seem to recycle. The thing you’ve got to do is try to leave it better than you found it. We got increases for foster care families. My hat is off to Governor Napolitano for working on the same issues I had to — CPS, caseloads, workloads, fair salaries and foster care families and how they’re compensated. She’s
had to focus on that as well.

I had quite a firestorm. Especially when I was a brand new director, but I stayed around until we made some improvements. I brought in good people, and we made some improvements.

DES and higher education have a lot in common. They both have been traditionally underfunded and maybe underappreciated by many. And yet both of those entities can have a huge impact on the quality of life for Arizona citizens.

But, the work is not fully appreciated. Most of the social workers we hired at DES with master’s degrees for Child Protective Services at the time would go to work for about $24,000 a year. These are people with master’s degrees, and they have, in my opinion, the toughest job in state government. But, they do a very great job. There are those tragic cases everybody regrets — nobody more than the CPS workers. They’re the ones that are well educated, have a thankless job, work very hard and get nothing but criticism. It just isn’t right. That used to drive me crazy as DES director.

In addition to DES, I see you also worked with the auditor general. So you have been in some interesting places in state government.

I have. I have been really lucky. I’ve had some great jobs. As a CPA, I did performance evaluation work as well as financial audit work at the Auditor General’s Office. So, I got a chance to really see a lot about state government and county government before that. [Ms. Blessing worked for the San Bernardino County Auditor-Controller’s Office in California.] I guess that’s where I got a taste of you’ve got to keep making things better. You’re not here when you’re a public administrator to just tread water. You’d better be about improving results for citizens and adding value.

Plus, understanding your way around financial statements has always served me well. I think public administrators need a good dose of compassion or passion for what they are doing. But they also need to be good managers and good stewards of money. You need a balance.

What are you planning on doing after you retire?

In short run, I’m focusing on family. I’m going to help my dad move in with us. My husband and I are selling our home and my dad’s place. We’re going to buy a place with a guesthouse. That’s my short-term focus.

I’m lucky. I’m at that stage, with 30 years in government service, that I can take a break. I can look after moving my dad in and get things kind of settled. Then I plan to do something else. … I want to be able to do a variety of things.—