NAU-Yavapai, a new lower-cost baccalaureate model developed by Northern Arizona University and Yavapai College, received a very public nod from Gov. Jan Brewer at the annual meeting of the American Council on Education this week in Phoenix.
At the ACE luncheon on March 8, Brewer told the group of her request to the Arizona Board of Regents to develop alternative higher-education models that are “affordable, predictable and sustainable.”
Brewer described her visit last month to NAU-Yavapai, which will admit its first cohort of students in fall 2010 and plans to set tuition at about 35 percent less than the NAU Flagstaff campus.
“As I sat with all of the community leaders and listened to the story of how that campus came to be, I was struck by the determination they had to stay focused on what was best for students,” Brewer said.
“That truly is a model we can follow with pride and confidence,” she noted.
NAU-Yavapai is planning degree programs in community development and sustainability, entrepreneurship and service industry management, with classes running 12 months a year. As a result of its limited and focused programming, tuition will be less than that of the research university model in Flagstaff