State budget writers want to take a closer look at university spending, questioning why the schools can't take a funding cut when they have more money today than they did three years ago.

House Appropriations Chairman John Kavanagh noted that the three-university system has $595 million more in revenue now than it did before the economic downturn began.

Gov. Jan Brewer has proposed a $170 million cut to the universities for fiscal 2012, an amount that, if enacted, would amount to a 37 percent reduction in state support to the schools from the past thee years.

Filed Under : Higher Education