♪ Music Playing ♪ coming up next on "Arizona Horizon", a conversation with long-time political consultant David Axelrod.

Also tonight, the troubled history of the U of A acquisition of a for-profit on line university.

And how researchers work to create a safer bike lane with elementary schools in North central Phoenix, those stories and more next on "Arizona Horizon."

>> This hour of local news is made possible by the contributions offed friends of PBS.

Members of your PBS station, thank you.

>> Good he can and welcome to "Arizona Horizon", I am Ted Simons.

The queen creek chief of police is now saying that investigators know why 16-year-old Preston Lord was fatality beaten in an attack by the so-called Gilbert goons last fall.

Arizona republic reports that the police chief says that investigators know who was involved in the attack and that the motive and the suspects were figured out, quote, within a week or two.

The police chief also told the republic that charges against seven people, some adults, some juveniles were referred to the county attorney's office in late December, but as yet, no one has been arrested or charged in that case.

A massive cell phone outage history Arizona and other areas of county just after midnight more than 70,000 AT&T users were affected with Chris he had, verizon and t-mobile report being sporadic outages some public service were impacted including calls for emergency responders no word on what cause the outages AT&T says its service has been restored, rear rise and unt-mobile say they are back to normal now.

Economic note existing home sales were higher than expected last month.

They climbed 3% from the previous month, prices increased too as home buyers took advantage of easy mortgage rates.

But that return to the market might not last mortgage rates of bumping back up of late and getting closer to 7%.

And an unmanned lunar lander touched down on the moon.

Moments ago.

At spacecraft was developed eye NASA and the Houston company intuitive machines the goal was to land near the south pole of the moon and set the stage for future lunar missions.

>> It's going to be a scout for us because next year we are going to the moon with humans and about two years from now we will land on the moon.

First time in over a half century.

>> NASA targeted the south pole in honest to look for ice and water in the crevasses of rocks that never see sunlight.

And, again, just moments ago NASA announced that, quote, our equipment is on the surface of the moon.

David Axelrod is the former senior adviser to President Obama and analyst to CNN currently.

He's head lying a local series on democracy at work and joined us earlier today to offer his perspective on the state of politics in America.

David Axelrod good to have you here, pleasure to be here.

>> For you joining us.

I have a lot of questions for you.

And a lot of big questions, none bigger than that.

Considering everything going right now, the political landscape especially, do you see democracy in America in peril?

>> Teddy think democracy all the world is being challenge end.

And we should remind ourselves that democracy was never a gift.

Democracy was a project.

And we were warned right from the beginning by the founders of this country, that it would require constant vigilance to make democracy work and now our democracy is being tested and our institutions are being tested.

And ultimately it will be up to the American people to insist that this experiment goes forward.

>> And, again, you lack back at world war, two the greatest generation world warm one.

>> Yes.

>> The all the things where the country got together, even to beat the depression the country got together to get things done.

Are we still capable of doing that in this country?

>> That's a really good question.

You know, the greatest generation profited and we as a country profited from the fact that regardless of where they came from or what their political views were, they fought side by side to protect freedom and save the world from fascism and I think that that cooperation flowed into our politics as well.

Look, I think the problem we have today is that we have become a social media society.

We have algorithms that tell social media platforms, the thing that will keep us online and their great insight is the thing that keeps us on line is anger, is outrage, is a grieve, are conspiracy theories, and they don't care whether you are right or left or they just find that and they shove us into these silos in which our views are always affirmed but not always informed.

Everybody outside the silo is menacing, is alien, an enemy and destroys the social fabric and destroying our politics.

>> Is there any way to get out of those silos?

>> Well, I think that that requires some awareness and effort on the part of people, first of all.

And, you know, I think we have to be aware of what is happening to us that we are essentially being programmed by our social media sites, by our choices in cable TV to go to the places where our prejudices are entertained in politics.

And it's very, very dangerous.

I mean, I -- you know, can we overcome it?

I think we can.

I have to believe we can.

But do I know the path exactly?

No.

And am I certain?

No.

>> I ask the questions because we can't even agree on a pandemic, we have a world wide health pandemic and we can't agree how to fight it.

We can't grow whether or not Vladimir Putin is doing the right or wrong thing in Russia and whether or not we should -- >> Yeah.

>> Those were basic things that should have been relatively clear.

>> Should have been.

>> They are not.

>> Yeah.

>> Can they become more clear?

>> Well, you know, that -- mine, again, I think the answer is can they?

Yes.

Will they?

We'll see.

I think most of the country, most of the country understands that Vladimir Putin is a tyrant.

Understands that Alexi Navalny was a hero.

And that what happened to him was an unbelievable outrage.

And that the Putin's invasion of Ukraine was not genius as president trump suggested, but was -- was villany.

I think most of the country understands that but there are cleve edges, social media and politicians who mimic it, have found, you know, people after 20 years of war.

Were tired of sending all of this money overseas for what they consider military adventures and it's clouded people's feelings about supporting Ukraine when we have all these needs here.

And it's fodder for demagogies to exploit.

>> Yeah.

Speaking of Navalny, apparently he read your book and enjoyed your book.

>> I was so moved when I learned that.

I had no idea.

And this Kerry Kennedy, one of the Kennedy family released a letter this weekend, past weekend in which he noted that he had read my book and the Kennedys were inspirations to me.

And he recalled some of that, the passages in that book.

Yeah.

I mean, I am -- I don't have anything to say other than that I am overwhelmed by the idea that a man that great would have taken time to read my book.

>> As far as politics are concerned, handicap what is going to happen in November?

What do you think this far out?

>> I think you are going to have a race between Donald trump and Joe Biden.

I think that's pretty clear right now.

Unless there is some unpredictable events.

But they would have to be events outside of politics that would take one of them or both of them off the playing field.

But they are well on their way to being the nominees of their parties.

So we'll have a rematch and I think it will be very close.

I don't think it can be anything but that because we are so polarized as a country.

And how it turns out, stay tuned.

I don't have a prediction on that.

>> So nothing parachutes in, no convention fights, no last-minute turnover -- >> I think that's fantasy.

I think even if trump is convicted, I am not sure that the convention in Milwaukee will turn away from him.

And there are party rules that define delegates.

It's very, very clear Donald trump is in control of the Republican party.

And as for the Democrats, I have said from the beginning, that if Joe Biden wants to be the nominee, he will be the nominee.

There is loyalty to him and at this point I think people are more focused on the task of defeating trump than they are of unseating Biden.

I don't think that's the major discussion within the Democratic party.

>> Last question, before you go, congress, will there be a change in leadership either way, to either house?

>> I think the Republicans in congress in the house are doing their best to see to it that there will be a change because they are so inept.

But I also think that redistricting in New York and a few other places favors Democrats and I would -- what I would predict is that Democrats will take the house.

And I think that Democrats will have a hard time holding on to the senate because they have more seats at play than Republicans.

And three of them are in states that Donald trump carried in 2020.

And it's very, very hard to overcome that.

So they may, you know, the two remaining senator Manchin has left.

Test never Montana and sherrick brown in Ohio are master officials, great public owe fish fist anyone can resist the tide they can, but it will be difficult.

>> Stay tuned in deed.

David Axelrod.

Good to have you here.

>> Pleasure to be here, thank you.

♪ Music Playing ♪ ♪ Music Playing ♪ >> Join for us a night of great musical nostalgia.

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♪ Music Playing ♪ >> Saturday night at 7:00 on Arizona PBS.

>> Among the university of Arizona's many financial concerns is the acquisition of a for-profit online school that was designed to be a guaranteed revenue source while increasing the university's student diversity.

But financial and ethical concerns were reportedly evident from the start, along with efforts to cover up those concerns.

Joining us now is Dave wells, research director of the grand canyon institute, which studied the online school before it was purchased by the U of A.

Good to see you here.

>> Good to be here.

>> Let's talk about it.

It was called Ashford university.

What was Ashford?

And what is it now, the U of A global campus, what is this thing?

>> Originally a women's I think Catholic college in Iowa that was purchased and rebranded as I think Ashford eventually.

And it's a for-profit with the idea that they one time they had enrollments of 80,000 students.

But they are what we call a predatory element here in the institution in sense that they took advantage of student, they defrauded student by basically saying well, you can get a degree here and it will enable to you to get this kind of a job, but the students ended up eager dropping out or got the degree and couldn't get that job.

So it's a really problematic institution.

>> So, okay, if that's what it was, why did the U of A buy it?

Why did the U of A decide to re-brand it?

>> It's sort of perplexing they saw things like ASU online and I believe ASU online is a revenue center for ASU and they thought that they could do the same thing with orb Ford.

But the problem with Ashford was already facing charges in California.

Potentially losing their accreditation, losing their access to veterans administration funding.

All kinds of things due to their practices.

And so it's perplex to go me what irrelevant they wipe that away and thought they could put a new brand on it.

And everything would be like nice.

>> Arizona Republican investigation found that there was bait I've cover up here and there was a bit of trying to keep aspects of this whole deal secret.

What was that all about?

>> Yeah, it's not like this was like a super secret thing.

We did a report that we provided to the regions in November -- renal regents in November and made public in 2020.

And this is all public information that we were able to gather, you know, suggested that there were systematic problems.

It's evident that administrators were going to do a RP campaign.

And gloss over this and thought they could somehow get wine out I've rock or something like that.

>> Well, yeah.

And how much of a factor now is this in the nearly $200 million shortfall that we are seeing down there at the U of A?

>> It may not be a key factor with it, but it does show some ethical challenges within the university.

Because I mean, because like you mentioned their goal is still to make money off of this and to the -- which we questioned whether they would make money off of it back then, but the other thing is, they only have other faculty, 6% of them are full time.

And so every full-time faculty there are 15 part-time faculty, almost all classes taught by part-time faculty they are kept separate from U of A and it's a very at least before they purchased it, all the evidence it was a low quality education.

>> I was going say what kind of education can you get from those kind of dynamics?

>> The university -- the Arizona republic investigation found they looked at -- they had access to the general education classes and said, yeah, it's all like homework and discussion boards.

And only like 10% tests.

You know, if you are a teacher, assessment is how you evaluate whether or not student are learning anything.

And certainly they were not doing that.

And they were prey on the ground low income, largely well, and people of color.

As their student.

>> What happens when the student can't payback the loan, can't stay in school, something happens to the loans?

>> They have a huge default rate.

We found it was three times the rate of ASU.

And it's continued to be a really high default rate based off of information that goes back to 2020.

We don't have data since the action certainly.

It's very high.

And and the Biden administration had to forgive $73 million of loans because the student were defrauded.

They were convicted of defrauding student in California and owed $21 million as a consequence of it.

>> U of A now says it's had a positive financial impact.

The school has on the university and it's on track to turn a profit.

Of at 32 or $3 million, not much but profit by 2025.

Does that ring true to you?

>> It's possible.

We said that they needed to invest in it.

Because only 1 dollar out of every $5 was going to pay the faculty who were teaching the classes.

And that's way below what is the norm.

At U of A it's over 40% of the dollars go to pay for instruction.

And we were arguing that they needed to get up to 30 and hopefully up to 35%.

If you are pulling it to make profits you are not investing in that.

And there is still keeping that faculty separate from the U of A.

And trying to keep all the numbers separate because if you put them together, it makes U of A look like a horrible institution Ask when U of A says they are opening it and the future potential looks bright as opposed to where it came from, you say?

>> I don't believe them.

I mean, ideally, this would go way and they'll put it into their own online entity which has seven or 8,000 students originally when they acquired it had 35,000 student now it's done to 23,000 student and that could be because they be being more ethical in how they are recruiting student but it could be because there is a lot more competition in the online area and they just -- this is not really the value that they think they thought they had.

>> Last point you mention third degree and revved to it earlier, there is competition.

Universities are getting into this business.

>> Yeah.

Originally it was for for-profit.

We have had predatory institutions that include the University of Phoenix here local had and some would argue grand canyon university also.

But now aSU was a public institute involved early.

But now they are building a brand and it's much more competitive and U of A should have realized that in 2020 because it was already happening, that's why Ashford was not doing so well.

And I just don't understand why they couldn't see the tea leafs bet.

>> Interesting, Dave wells, grand canyon institute, thank you for joining us.

>> Glad to be here.

♪ Music Playing ♪ ♪ Music Playing ♪ ♪ Music Playing ♪ >> I am tonight on the news hour a small but significant sign of progress in the Gaza ceasefire negotiations.

That's coming up at 6:00 on Arizona PBS.

♪ Music Playing ♪ >> A team of ASU student used surveys and onside data to get the city of Phoenix to create protected bike lanes near elementary schools in an area of North central Phoenix to learn more we welcome Allison poulos from ASU's college of leg solutions welcome to "Arizona Horizon."

>> Thank you.

>> You bet.

This was on Osbourne road exactly where?

>> Yes, a stretch of Osbourne road between 11th avenue and 19th avenue.

>> What was going on there?

Why did the city of Phoenix get involved and basically say, help?

>> This particular stretch of road is significant because within this short stretch there are three elementary schools that are Located right off the major road.

The school district major building is actually Located right there.

And so there is a high prevalence of kids of, of families, people right around that stretch of road.

And there was also a really high concern about traffic, speeds, accidents, crashes, and safety over all.

>> And so, again, between like 11th and 19th avenue here, so you get out there, you do the research, what kind of research was done some what were you looking for?

What did you expect to find?

What did you find?

>> So this had been going on for a few years.

But when we got involved through ASU, this was part of a safe routes too today school program a national program, it's been federally funded in the United States for the past 20 years.

Since 2005.

And it's basically a process, so it starts with the convening of a coalition and this is a group of people with a shared interest in pro moding safety to walking, biking and rolling and so the city of Phoenix was involved in this coalition, our team from ASU was involved in the coalition and we had members of the cool sites, community members, we had parents, all working together.

>> And so working together and gathering research, I mean, what kind of -- how do you gather research on something like this?

>> Yeah, so the process goes we start a coalition.

>> Yes.

>> Work together to then go to the next step, which is a needs assessment.

And so that's where our team at ASU came in to Tray to support this effort.

So we gathered data, by conducting audits around the school sites being all the major roads that people would use to travel to and from school and looked for things that could facilitate walking and biking safely and things that were a problem.

And so on those audits we found a number of issues existed related to the amount of traffic, speed of traffic, conditions of the sidewalks.

But in addition to that, we surveyed parents at the three schools.

And we found that not only did we see issues with safety, but parents were really concerned.

The vast majority of parents at all of these schools were in 80% said that they were not comfortable with their kids walking, biking to school because of the conditions on Osbourne.

>> So the research goes I don't know the anecdotal then.

>> Uh-huh.

>> Yeah.

Is and so you get all of this.

Did you -- when you are observing and taking the numbers and doing this, that and the other doing it at different times of the day?

>> Yeah, so we worked with the city of Phoenix so great that they came in and trained our students to systematically gather data and so we purposefully were positioned in major intersections.

Counting cars, pedestrians, bicyclists, and number -- >> Number of crosswalks even maybe?

>> Oh, yes.

we looked for all sorts of standardized things that would either enable someone to walk safely or not.

Crosswalks, the presence of crossing guards.

Because that's important.

Especially.

Right on the way to school and after school.

Crossing signals, Ask how do you convince drivers and the city and convince people in the neighborhood, hey, we are going to take -- did you take away a full lane?

>> So there were two lanes in either direction at one point and Osbourne and NBA this stretch was reduced to one lane in either direction.

Bicycle lanes that were protected were added so, yeah, one lane was removed.

>> How did that go over?

>> Initially there was honest to there was a project to do that a few years ago and it was stopped because the community wasn't all in.

But through the second attempt and a concerted effort through this great coalition, the great people with the city of Phoenix the great people with the school district, our team at ASU, we were able to provide a little more data, get more reach and another thing that happened was a lot of these projects are more successful if they can be paired with existing renovations that are set to happen.

And so that's why it's so important to get people from the cities on board with these coalitions.

So that we can pair up projects like the bike lane renovation, with a resurfacing or repaving of the street that's supposed to happen like was said to happen.

>> Very smart, done deal, everyone happy?

>> Well, we are going back to evaluate the perceptions of the folks around that area, in the fall.

But so far, everyone is pretty pleased, we had a big community bike ride, put together by the coalition, and it was tons of fun.

>> Must be rewarding to know you shaped a community?

>> It is rewarding work.

>> That must be because look at the bike lane, that's what we do that's our work.

>> Yeah, I know.

>> Current on that work.

>> Yeah.

>> Sal Allison poulos ASU college of health solutions thank you so much.

>> Thanks.

>> Before we go eighth programming note tonight's episode of "check please Arizona" includes Arizona PBS staff picks, yours truly, along with Horizonte host catherine Anaya and Cronkite sports director Paola boivin recommended out favorite rest hadn't rants to chef and host mark Tarbell what did you start with?

>> A burrata.

They have the price fix meal.

A small plate, large brought and play what we did.

You can order Allah are card but we like the price fix because get he feel and wine pairings with it as well.

>> OOH.

>> Yes.

We had the great wine and the bread with that is so good it's so beautiful.

For the entree I had the smoke duck and the smoke duck you have to see it, to believe it.

It's like a combination of modern Art and a crime scene.

[ Laughter ] >> Because it's got beat sauce.

>> There you go.

The episode airs tonight at 7:00.

Right here on Arizona PBS.

That's it for now.

I am Ted same your Honor, thank you so much for joining us, you have a great evening.

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