Editorial: Future of UNM West campus due a debate

Was the University of New Mexico too ambitious in building a new campus in Rio Rancho? Were taxpayers too ambitious in devoting a revenue stream to it? Will the City of Vision grow into UNM West?

Those are questions that deserve a hard look.

Currently, the UNM West campus is underutilized. Granted, when plans for the $13.5 million branch campus were announced in 2007, it was prior to the Great Recession and Rio Rancho was a much-celebrated growing community. City leaders were effusive in their belief the city would someday eclipse Santa Fe, Las Cruces and Albuquerque.

After the recession hit, UNM briefly delayed plans so it could test the economic headwinds and altered course on financing for a new Sandoval County hospital but surged ahead with plans for the campus.

The UNM West campus offers only upper division classes, and only one degree — university studies — can be completed there. The thinking was that students would take their lower division classes at Central New Mexico Community College’s new branch in Rio Rancho’s downtown area near the UNM West site and at CNM’s West Side campus near the Sandoval-Bernalillo county line.

But students have been slow to make the drive from the West Side and other parts of Albuquerque — and apparently even from other parts of Rio Rancho — to the campus in the still-remote downtown area of the city. UNM West enrollment has grown from 393 students in spring 2010 to about 600 now.

UNM President Bob Frank, who inherited UNM West, supports the campus. So does Rio Rancho Mayor Tom Swisstack, who wants it to offer more courses and become more involved with the city. But more courses cost money and don’t make economic sense without students.

Meanwhile, a challenge to campus funding has arisen.

In 2008, UNM convinced voters to approve a quarter-cent gross-receipts tax for the campus. Now one Rio Rancho city councilor, Chuck Wilkins, wants to take away half of that revenue and repurpose it, with voter approval, for the city’s police department.

A couple of other councilors are open to considering the change. That’s no surprise, given the city’s financial stress, shortage of police officers and rising crime rates.

With all that brewing, the university needs to make a case on whether UNM West is viable and, if so, figure out how to increase enrollment and make it more essential to the community.

It would be better to make a case for the campus before it finds itself being forced to.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.