Education group hires consulting firm for proposed college
Hopes to conduct more surveys

The Havasu Foundation for Higher Education, a local group working to form a four-year university in Lake Havasu City, has hired Chicago-based Huron Consulting Group to help it complete its business plan and conduct a new round of market surveys.

Foundation President Ralph Tapscott said an official at Arizona State University recommended the firm. Huron consulted ASU on its 5,000-student downtown Phoenix Campus, which was completed recently.

“They add credibility to what we’re trying to do internally,” Tapscott said.

HFHE Treasurer and Executive Director Bill Ullery said the foundation was dissatisfied with the scope of a market study performed earlier this year by Lipman Hearne and funded by Northern Arizona University, a potential partner in a local university.

“They focused on the areas that have no significant impact on Lake Havasu’s economy — the boaters, the tourists, the home-buyers,” Ullery said. “We simply need to finish the research.”

A second survey would focus in on the region’s four high schools, western Maricopa County, southern Nevada and those portions of five Southern California counties that contribute most to the local economy. All are markets the Lipman Hearne study missed, Ullery said.

The economy could make the idea of a university in Lake Havasu City more attractive to its potential markets, according to Ullery.

“The turn-down of the economy has caused students and parents to rethink their decisions on university attendance, and those people are choosing colleges closer to home,” he said.

Huron Consulting Group’s first job will be to analyze the foundation’s draft business plan and assist it in developing a final version that can be present to the public.

“My guess is we’ll have additional work to do,” Ullery said.

Tapscott said the foundation would probably be ready to begin its new market study by the end of January.

“We anticipate surveying literally thousands of people. That could take use 60-plus days,” he said.

It could take another month or more for volunteers to tabulate the results and incorporate the data into the foundation’s business plan, Tapscott said.

In the meantime, local architecture firm Associated Architects is producing renderings of a proposed university campus “typical of a 500-student, full-time equivalent setting with easy access to the lake, marina and beaches,” Ullery said.

Plans are for the drawings to be presented at the foundation’s annual meeting in January and later displayed at city hall, he said.

“It’s pretty early for us to be doing that, but conceptually we’re pretty close. We’re starting small — high quality. We know that works,” Ullery said.

According to the foundation’s calculations, a local university could get under way with an initial freshman class of just 156 students.

You may contact the reporter at dparker@havasunews.com.