In 1990, the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) began exploring the establishment of a liberal arts institution, in part due to anticipated growth in student numbers in the state.
Fernández returned to his tenured position at the University of Arizona after a year of poor results, and was replaced at AIC by Paul Rosenblatt.
Details from the 2000-2001 Academic Catalog show sixteen faculty members teaching the following degree concentrations Arizona International College, UA Catalog: Students began with "On Becoming a Fully Educated Person" Other core classes were "Critical Writing and Communication", "Introduction to Global Perspectives", "Statistical Techniques for Problems of the Modern World", "Human Consciousness and the Formation of World Views", and a Symposium.
[3] According to the Catalog, "AIC prepares students for rich personal, professional, and civic lives in an increasingly complex and integrated world.
The College accomplishes this mission in good part through a curriculum designed to ensure the development of a global perspective through an interdisciplinary study of the Liberal Arts and the improvement of specific skills and competencies.
Plans to eventually co-locate AIC with a branch of Pima Community College, in northern Tucson, were mooted but never came to fruition.
[5] A program of cuts called "Focused Excellence" was the pretext, along with the claim that too many AIC students tended to transfer to UofA to complete their degrees after their sophomore year.
"[7] With hindsight, it appears AIC was established with the aim of offering liberal arts education without adequate recognition of the costs - intensive teaching, small classes, and internships were expensive to operate.
Tal said "It would, however, be a case of weeping crocodile tears were I to lament AIC's passing too loudly: at root, the college made promises to students and faculty that were impossible to fulfill.
The bottom line is that one can't provide a quality liberal arts education to students on the cheap, even by grossly exploiting the college's faculty.