<p>University of Arizona officials are giving poor reviews to a public-television documentary set, in part, on the Tucson campus, saying it offers an incomplete and unflattering picture of the university. </p>
<p>“We thought a portrait of the University of Arizona was going to be painted, and instead, we just got a caricature,” Paul G. Allvin, a university spokesman, said of the program, Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk, which was shown on Thursday night on some PBS stations across the country. </p>
<p>“We are concerned that people are going to watch it and be left with an impression of a university that doesn’t actually exist.” </p>
<p>Arizona officials complained that the documentary focused on disgruntled professors, large lecture classes, and disengaged students who skated through classes with minimal effort. In reality, they say, the average class size at the university is 29 students. Forty percent of faculty members attended training last year to become better teachers, Mr. Allvin said. </p>
<p>University officials now say they regret being one of those that participated in the project. “There’s more damage done to the University of Arizona than benefit derived,” Peter Likins, the university’s president, told the Arizona Daily Star, a Tucson newspaper. </p>
<p>But John Merrow, executive producer of the program, says it was “more than fair” to the university, adding that the best teacher he met was Tom Fleming, a lecturer in astronomy at Arizona. </p>
<p>And, Mr. Merrow says, the documentary is not just about the University of Arizona, but about the state of American higher education. He said he fears that the higher-education system in the United States is declining while other countries are accelerating their investments. </p>
<p>“We’re in the position to be eaten for lunch,” Mr. Merrow said. “I think this is urgent.” </p>
<p>The documentary, shot over the course of two years, is set on four college campuses: the University of Arizona, a large research university; Amherst College, a private liberal-arts college; Western Kentucky University, a regional public university; and the Community College of Denver, an urban two-year institution. </p>
<p>Bob Skipper, a spokesman for Western Kentucky, said on Thursday that officials at the 18,000-student college were “anxious” to see the documentary after viewing a trailer and reading reviews. “The tone of what we’ve seen so far is not so flattering, and we’re hoping the rest of the show is more balanced,” he said. </p>
<p>In Denver, faculty and staff members were planning to gather at a sports bar on Thursday night to watch the program. Christine Johnson, the college’s president, said it is important that community colleges be included in the debate over the future of higher education. </p>
<p>“Community colleges don’t have prestige, and I think they’re too often overlooked as a quality choice,” Ms. Johnson said. </p>
<p>A spokesman for Amherst College, Paul Statt, said officials at the private college in Massachusetts were glad to participate in the documentary because the problems facing higher education need to be featured. But Mr. Statt questioned whether complex issues like affordability and access can be fully tackled in a single television program. </p>
<p>“I’m not sure if it’s possible in two hours to connect all the dots of the problems facing higher education,” he said. </p>
<p>In conjunction with the documentary, a companion book – featuring essays by 16 commentators and edited by Mr. Merrow and Richard H. Hersh, a former president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Trinity College (Conn.) – is being published. </p>
<p>Additional information can be found on the program’s</p>