Shrinking SOU

Back in July, the New York Times contained an article entitled "Off the Beaten Track," which gave a write-up on 25 lesser-known universities which provide a quality education.  Here's how the author came up with the list, followed by how it described Southern Oregon University.

The following colleges, compiled with help from a dozen higher education experts and counselors, stress undergraduate teaching, have established or rising scholarship, even if they come up short on standardized test scores, and are alternatives to the usual suspects. They’re not a good fit for everyone, and represent just a small sample of America’s riches.

...

SOUTHERN OREGON UNIVERSITY Ashland

Undergraduates: 4,438

Acceptance rate: 85 percent

The Tony Award-winning Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland was started in 1935 by a teacher at this public university. The campus and festival are retain strong ties. Students in the theater arts program serve internships with the festival; festival staff members assist in student productions, and guest artists lecture. “The university has an exceptional English and liberal arts curriculum best known for Shakespeare,” says David Longanecker, executive director of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. Students can minor in Shakespeare studies, which bridges academic study and performance. The summer program in teacher theater training draws educators from around the country. Ashland is hundreds of miles from a big city, but the festival and university seem to thrive thanks to mountainous surroundings that attract tourists and faculty.

One of the things that jumps out of that write-up is that it's pretty easy to get into SOU.  And despite this, students aren't flocking there...which is a part of the reason for the school's financial problems.  Last Monday, the school president started the process of declaring a budget crisis.   

The comment period, which ends Dec. 15, is required by the university's union contract with professors before any employment cuts are made. Soon after the start of winter term Jan. 8, she will decide whether to declare "a condition requiring reduction or elimination of a program" that would prompt an intense planning period to outline cuts.

The declaration would enable the president to terminate contracts with tenured or tenure-track professors, said Jay Kenton, vice chancellor for finance and administration with the Oregon University System.

...

Between 1999 and 2006, expenses grew 30 percent, with significant increases in employee benefits and utility costs, she said. During that period, revenues increased only 23 percent and state support actually decreased 6 percent, making the school more reliant on tuition from students.

While the number of students this fall was up slightly, the full-time equivalent, a measure based on the number of credits they are earning and the one used to distribute state revenue, was down. That number has decreased steadily for several years and is down 615 from fall 1999, (SOU President) Cullinan reported.

PERS, health insurance, and energy...but not wages.  The salaries of professors in our state university system are amongst the very lowest in the nation, and SOU is below average in Oregon.  According to the Oregon University System 2004 Fact Book (it's published every two years), the average salary for an SOU professor was $57,800, associate professor $49,700, assistant professor $40,800, and instructor $33,900 (previous blog here).  For the 2004-05 school year, Jackson County's K-12 teachers earned an average of $51,665, the second highest in the state...and Oregon's average K-12 wage is a bit above the national average. 

Back in the 1987-89 budget, the Oregon University System received 12.2 percent of the state's general fund.  In 2003-05, that was down to 6.1 percent (haven't found the stat for the current budget).  At SOU, tuition and fees have risen faster than inflation, but haven't kept up with the bills.  Note though that the average tuition at public 4-year universities across the nation has gone up 35 percent in the last 5 years...Oregonians certainly aren't alone in lamenting the rapidly-rising cost of a college education.  The average cost of in-state tuition and fees at Oregon's state universities for the 2005-06 school year was $5,360, which is below the national average for in-state tuition of $5,836.  Our non-resident average cost was also slightly below the national average.

What are students getting for their (or whomever's) money here in Oregon?  Well, the following provides a gloomy hint.  Earlier this year, Kiplinger rated 100 of the nation's public universities (including just one from Oregon) on academic quality, cost, and financial aid...and overall the University of Oregon was dead last.  Other overall ratings are less unkind, but our universities tend to fare better when rated on what they're near rather than what they offer.

"As we face this reality, we have concluded that SOU can no longer hope to correct fiscal problems just through higher enrollment," she said. "We must adjust our expenses."

She noted that SOU took temporary budget reductions such as cuts in travel spending, energy savings and vacant positions left unfilled in the last fiscal year, and continued those this year. Still, it spent nearly $1.6 million from its reserve account last year and will spend nearly $960,000 in reserves this year.

By July 2007, SOU's reserves will drop to about 3.3 percent of its revenue, below the 5 percent minimum the state higher education board's policy requires, Kenton and Cullinan both said. At its current spending levels, SOU will deplete its reserves in fiscal 2008, Cullinan said.

Cullinan will make her recommendations in January.  From a Medford Mail Tribune editorial...

That recommendation will coincide with the first few weeks of the 2007 Legislature. You would be hard-pressed to find a legislator who didn't promise better funding for higher education, including community colleges, during the just-completed campaign. This time around, with an improved economy producing more revenue for the state, the politicians need to quit talking and start producing results.

We hope, too, that SOU and higher education officials can tread water until they get a clear message from the Legislature about funding. It is much harder, and more expensive, to put a program back on track once it's shut down. News of program closures also would add to the difficulty of increasing enrollments.

If cuts must be made, they should be focused, rather than across the board. The school, like the entire university system, cannot sustain excellence in any of its programs if they all continue to be slowly whittled away. It's better to let some smaller programs go dark than to cast a deepening shadow over the entire school.

Agreed.  Not much can improve significantly until the university is put on a more sound financial footing, be that at its current size or smaller.  The K-12 system directly impacts more people, so those schools will obviously get more attention during the next legislative session.  However, the budgetary issues facing our university system are more severe.

Comments

[ron ledbury]

An October 24 Ninth Circuit opinion

robertson_0435898.pdf

might yield clues as to the ultimate winner in this poker game of "is there or is there not liability?" Like a bluff.

I posted a comment here where I try to at least present the boundaries of the present discussion.

Don't forget though, in reading my critique of the live case on PERS, now in Multnomah County, that there is a difference between one group of tier-one folks who were actual parties in the OSPOA case and those who were not and therefore rely exclusively upon the legislative provision that creates tier-one and tier-two (hiring date of December 31, 1995, was the cut off for tier-one). The legislative creation of the tiers was an exercise of "remedial" power so as to accommodate perceived (but not litigated as a class action) liability. Now that the presumed liability upon which the split was made has now been definitively proven to be unfounded the legislative distinction for pay for all future work must be stripped of the multi-tier fiasco, at least going forward. It is not optional.

The implementation of principals that conform to the Equal Privileges and Immunities clause (as I often like to point out) is supposed to prevent runaway special interest politics, no matter the hackles from the special interest hecklers to genuine public interest. It is like the meeting of anti-matter and matter, the two paradigms are not supposed exist in the same time and place.

[ron ledbury]

It seems that my link should have been to here.

[RoguePundit]

Ron, presuming that there either isn't an appeal or that it's unsuccessful, is the undoing of the tiers in some way automatic (or at least should it be), or will it take lawsuits to force action?

[ron ledbury]

No law is self enforcing.

I elaborate in an update to the link above . . . at length.