First, UNLV lost $25 million in state funding for a new medical school building. Now, the university’s $20 million advanced engineering building is on the chopping block as lawmakers try to close the state’s $1.2 billion budget deficit.
Meanwhile, UNR is moving ahead with plans to build a $33 million parking garage that will become part of a planned $100 million Gateway District project of academic buildings. And nobody seems to be clawing back any of that money.
Let that sink in: UNLV is being denied needed educational facilities while UNR parking facilities are untouched. That’s business as usual in Nevada, where the Northern Nevada power structure kicks UNLV to the curb every chance it gets to the benefit of UNR.
As a result:
• UNR is wrapping up construction of a $92 million engineering building, while students in UNLV’s robotics engineering program work out of a lab located on the side of a 99-Cent Only store on Flamingo Road. It’s well worth noting that the UNLV lab, despite its modest trappings, received international attention by developing a 3-D printed, robotic hand that a young girl, Hailey Dawson, used to throw out the first pitch at every Major League Baseball stadium.
• UNR opened a $35.5 million arts building last year. UNLV, despite being in the Entertainment Capital of the World and having a performing arts economy larger than New York City’s, has an arts building that opened during Ronald Reagan’s first term in office.
• UNR opened a $45 million student achievement center in 2016 and a $47.5 million fitness center the next year. UNLV has opened only one building of that scale in the past four years — the $59 million Hospitality Hall. Before that, you had to go all the way back to 2008 for UNLV’s last major building project, Greenspun Hall.
The bottom line is you can’t swing a dead cat at UNR without hitting a new or renovated building. Conversely, UNLV has to scratch and claw and hustle for everything it gets, with the medical school building being a prime example.
Planning for that building remains in progress only because community supporters founded a nonprofit development corporation that will fund it with private donations while still working to obtain state dollars. That approach, suggested by Brookings Mountain West, is modeled on development corporations that have built medical school facilities in other states. The local development corporation has enough funding in donations to keep moving forward, something that wouldn’t have happened if the group hadn’t formed. Donors had withdrawn funding from previous iterations of the project out of distrust of the Nevada Board of Regents and the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE), which oversee the state’s colleges in a way similar to how a school board and superintendent’s office manage a public school district.
Last week, on the opening day of the special legislative session, some Southern Nevada lawmakers took aim at the discrepancy while discussing cuts in the Capital Improvement Projects budget that included the UNLV engineering school.
In response to a question from one lawmaker, NSHE’s chief financial officer attributed the situation to UNLV being “unlucky,” suggesting it was merely a matter of bad timing of requests from the southern school.
But go to both campuses, and it’s glaringly obvious that this isn’t anything about luck. It’s about tilting resources toward UNR.
For that, the blame goes partly to northern lawmakers but also to a longstanding cabal of UNR supporters who control the Nevada Board of Regents and exert influence on NSHE. Those regents and NSHE have undercut UNLV at the Legislature, mismanaged UNLV’s leadership here to the tune of six presidents in the past 14 years, and otherwise kept the university from reaching its potential. The revolving door of UNLV presidents resulted in alienation of university donors, most recently when popular president Len Jessup was hounded out by the regents and NSHE in 2018 over trumped-up concerns. Jessup quickly was snatched up by Claremont Graduate University as its president.
The inequities between UNR and UNLV are patently unfair, and are detrimental to the entire state. Las Vegas, the state’s economic engine, is sending our wealth up north while our university is being starved. UNLV, which reached elite Carnegie R-1 status last year as a research institution, deserves facilities that are equal to or better than those at UNR. State investments in the university would make Las Vegas an even greater attraction for businesses looking for sites for expansion or relocation, as those businesses want places that can provide them with highly educated graduates and serve the educational needs of their existing workforces. In addition, beefing up UNLV’s facilities would power research that would also attract businesses.
In a state that has once again been punished because of its overreliance on tourism, putting money into the UNLV campus would help diversify the state economy and lessen the impact of future downturns.
If lawmakers must cut funding for higher education this year, they should direct the hit at UNR for a change, or at least cut UNR at an equal level. If that can’t be done for some reason, it’s critical to restore funding for UNLV’s medical school building and engineering school as soon as the economy begins to turn around.
“Once again, UNLV is taking the brunt of the budget crisis,” state Sen. Chris Brooks said during Wednesday’s budget presentation. “And so while there is really no choice in this hard time, it is incredibly important that we recognize this, and understand that when there is a recovery, we will be coming back and asking to complete these projects.”
Believe it. Southern Nevada isn’t about to let UNR keep getting gift-wrapped buildings while UNLV gets crumbs.