Cut the state universities loose
Russell Sadler
It was probably an act of frustration.
State Rep. Bill Ackerman, D-Eugene, sponsored a bill prohibiting the state’s colleges and universities from increasing tuition and fees.
Ackerman calls his bill a “shot across the bow” to express his dissatisfaction with “confiscatory tuition and fees” at Oregon’s state-run colleges and universities.
Oregon Republicans pranced in their suburban precincts for the last 15 years reciting their mantra of “no new taxes.” Those are code words. The Republicans really mean no new income taxes. But during the last 15 years that Oregon Republicans controlled the state’s purse strings, they have not seen a fee increase they didn’t like. Over the last 15 years the state’s coffers swelled by billions of dollars -- nearly all from fee increases -- notably college tuition and fees.
When I came to Oregon 40 years ago to attend the University of Oregon, the tuition of $225 per term represented about 25 percent of the undergraduate per-student cost of that education. The other 75 percent came from taxpayers. The idea was to keep tuition low to create the most opportunity for the most students, then recapture the money from the income taxes of those students who enjoyed the better-than-average income that often comes with college degrees.
It was a winning philosophy that underpinned the growth of the Oregon workforce and the prosperity the state enjoyed after World War II. It came to an end during the 1980s recession. Various interest groups used the recession-induced financial crisis to quietly change the state’s entire philosophy of post-high school education.
The low-tuition philosophy was replaced by a philosophy of “high tuition, high aid,” promoted by the state’s private colleges and universities, along with conservatives who wanted to find a way to shift the burden supporting state colleges and universities from taxpayers and stick it students and their families.
In practice the “high aid” never materialized or took the form of loans. During the 1990s, the average student at Oregon’s public universities graduated between $18,000 - $23,000 in debt. Today’s state university tuition and fees represent about 75 percent of the cost of the average undergraduate education. Taxpayers only put up about 25 percent of the cost. Shifting the cost of post-high school education from all taxpayer to students and miring them in debt is dangerous ground as we try to persuade today’s college and university graduates to continue underwriting an older generation’s Social Security benefits.
Since the 1980s, the Oregon Legislature has been a poor steward of Oregon’s educational patrimony. Built by taxpayers over generations, the state’s colleges and universities are a priceless asset.
Over the last 15 years, the Legislature that controls the state’s purse strings has cut that asset loose to drift on its own. It can no longer drift. Someone must have a hand on the rudder. Absent a last-minute legislative injection of financial support that is unlikely, the centralized control of the state’s universities under the State Board of Higher Education has become dysfunctional and actually threatens Oregon’s public higher education.
It appears Oregon Republicans simply want to shift the burden of higher education onto students and their parents. The best response the Democrats can muster is a ban on raising fees and tuition, which forces either salary cuts or layoffs leaving fewer classes for fewer students. If this is the best that august body can do, it has no business managing higher education.
The alternative is to cut the state universities loose, each to be governed by its own board of directors, to find its own way in the “marketplace.” The University of Oregon, Oregon State University and Southern Oregon University would prosper. Although late coming to the game, they are quite successful at getting gifts and grants to build endowments for operating and capital costs. These institutions are older and have a large alumni base of successful people who are nearing the end of their lives and willing to give some of the fruits of their success to their alma mater.
The survival of Western and Eastern Oregon universities and Oregon Institute of Technology is more problematic. Historically smaller, teacher-training institutions and a polytechnic college, these schools probably cannot survive without public funds.
The Legislature lacks the commitment to support these important educational institutions. It is unthinkable to continue allowing them to slide into mediocrity. Mediocre educational institutions are not worth the tuition money of their students and certainly not worth tax dollars.
If the Legislature is concerned about lower tuition for Oregon residents, it will have to open the public wallet to provide it. But lawmakers have been unwilling to do that for the last 15 years. They have forfeited their role as custodians of this public trust. It is time lawmakers relinquished that responsibility to others.
 |
More Recent Posts | |
Albert Kaufman |
|
Guest Column |
|
Kari Chisholm |
|
Kari Chisholm |
Final pre-census estimate: Oregon's getting a sixth congressional seat |
Albert Kaufman |
Polluted by Money - How corporate cash corrupted one of the greenest states in America |
Guest Column |
|
Albert Kaufman |
Our Democrat Representatives in Action - What's on your wish list? |
Kari Chisholm |
|
Guest Column |
|
Kari Chisholm |
|
connect with blueoregon
Apr 10, '05
I may be an "out in the woods" rural Democrat, but it just seems to me you don't solve a problem by creating a new one.
Apr 10, '05
Having spent some time in Boston I was exposed to a community that does get by without the government running higher education and it is possible to do so. With some 60, or 70 private institution of higher education in the greater Boston vicinity the area has developed a national reputation for innovation in higher education. Northeastern University has the most comprehensive work/study program in the country and the recent addition of the F.W. Olin Institution, a private, tuition free school specializing in engineering and related fields next door to Babson has greatly expanded the diversity. May I suggest that Oregon needs to give the Oregon Lottery, or whatever the hell it is called, to the Oregon Universities and let them figure out what to do with those funds thus spinning both off from the state. If I recall Harvard was first supported by a lottery. Why not the same,or similar thing here? M.W.
Apr 11, '05
Since costs are an issue, why doesn't the Oregon Legislature sponser a bill which will reduce income by making illegal immigrants pay instate tuition, vice out of state tuition. Oops, the Democrats on that State Senate already appoved that. Oh well, I guess a state sales tax would solve this problem.
12:38 p.m.
Apr 11, '05
There's not a university in the OUS that gets more than 20% of its funding from the state. PSU gets 14-16% from taxpayers. A good chunk comes from tuition and fees, but the biggest chunk comes from corporate and individual sources. Sports income, scholarships, corporate donations. You'll find that there is a pretty strong corporate influence over what's taught in our universities today. Since amenities for teachers depend on corporate donations, the attitude in my opinion is slowing turning to 'please the corporations' instead of 'let's give these kids a well-rounded education'.
Apr 11, '05
I dunno. I was able to get a much better education in my four years at OSU (mid-80's) than I did in the first 12 years. So it has kind of broken my heart to see these erosions. And I don't know how anyone affords it ... or kind of why they try.
There is a real question as to whether a college education anymore will pay back either the degree holder or the states that fund them, in the USA.
I am curious, though, are Oregonians actually spending less on education? Or is it that so much more goes to those first 12 years?
(Wonderful to find Mr. Sadler here. Reason enough to check in.)
6:34 p.m.
Apr 11, '05
Thank you for the compliment Sally.
The answer to yoru question is yes -- on a per capita basis -- Oregon is actually spending less on K through Graduate school than it did 20 years ago,
As a percentage of the population, there are fewer Oregonjians in public universities than there were 15 years ago.
And the vast majority of undergraduate students graduate $18,000 to $23,000 inh debt.
Tax reform is a shift not a gift and you don't better with less. You do less with less. The consequences are catching up to us in the economic statistaics. Oregonians are dramatically underemployed.
And these are the young people we are asking to keep paying out Social Secuiry benefits.
Apr 11, '05
Russell: "Oregonians are dramatically underemployed."
Personal experience leads me to believe that this is correct.
But wouldn't that imply that Oregon has a well-educated (and/or skilled) work force in need of jobs suitable for their skill levels, and those jobs don't exist here?
So, why are Oregonians so woefully underemployed? Why aren't there more jobs locally for this talented, well-educated work force that we have? Doesn't the current situation sort of undercut the theory that if we attract talented, well-educated people to our state, jobs will follow? If all it took was a talent pool to draw from, we should be crawling with businesses eager to hire those underemployed workers. So I suspect there must be something else keeping those jobs away...
Anyhow, I think Sally's on to something there... it used to be (back in the golden days?) that a college education was a ticket to dramatically higher earning potential. That certainly doesn't seem to be the case today. I wonder if the ol' forces of supply and demand might be at work there? When a larger percentage of people are college-educated, the relative economic value of an individual college-educated person is reduced, right?
So assuming (and I may be wrong) that a college degree no longer carries the economic prestige and earning power that it once might have, does it make economic sense for anyone (state, business, or private citizens) to invest more in higher ed?
Hey, I don't have the answers... I'm just askin' the questions here... <nobr>;-)</nobr>
Apr 11, '05
The whole world is shifting. When I heard Hoover Institution Fellow Paul Craig Roberts (before, I believe, he became a nearly full-time critic of the Bush Administration on every conceivable front) on C-SPAN a year or two back say he didn't know what to tell his very own college kids to major in, that he had no idea what was a safe or lucrative educational investment, I figured we'd hit fundamentally different times.
But I can't but agree with Mr. Sadler that there is a sacred trust here, to hold these universities to something other than a decline into ever-more mediocrity. Even when I was there in the 80's, fundraising had become Job No. 1 of the OSU President.
And on the public relations or awareness front, they remain almost invisible and unheard compared to k-12. A whiff of a whisper vs. a constant loud whine.
I'd defer to Mr. Sadler's judgment, whether the idea is to force freedom or force the debate.
Apr 12, '05
Sally -- I agree, nice to see Russell again.
I remember 20 years ago when I worked for the Chancellor of Higher Education. One day, we held a joint State Board of Ed, State Higher Ed Board meeting. The Chancellor presented some of the similar, well-thought out comments made now by Mr. Sadler. At that point, School Supt. Norma Paulus got up and said, "Mr. Chancellor, I don't know anything about education, but I do know politics. As long as there is one dollar left in the state coffers, I get it. You simply don't have the political constituency. Almost every family in Oregon sends their kids to my school. At best, only 30% of high school graduates get into yours. Taxpayers will alway support my schools before supporting the minority of students who go to college."
I am not sure, but I don't recall that we ever had another joint boards meeting.
Greg
Apr 12, '05
Sounds like Norma in her later years of public service!
Regardless of all the stuff which has been said (quite rightly) about Neil Goldschmidt in recent months, there is a reason he became governor. It was a close election, perhaps decided by people who looked at that campaign and said "Sorry Norma, not this time" because of remarks like the one Greg quoted.
Apr 12, '05
Thanks for the comments, Greg. You would have been working for the Chancellor, then, when I was attending OSU. Your Norma Paulus anecdote sure sums it up. The paucity of interest in the topic here adds credence.
I have watched tuition more than triple in the intervening 20 years. I've run the numbers and have known I could not do now what I was able to squeak and eke out then.
As a student, I thought sports dollars were spectacularly hoggish and silly. Anymore I could be convinced they keep the alum dollars rolling in.
I remember hearing peeps now & then from the Faculty Senate that salaries were too low, comparatively. On the outside I never hear a word. From k-12 I never hear a second of silence.
As I think about it, if Mr. Sadler is serious, I would be doubly so. This shrieking-for-dollars from taxpayers is just too exhausting, to even listen to.
(By the way, in Southern Oregon, where I'm from, Mr. Sadler's daily OPB radio commentary was not to be missed in my family. He was a craftsman of those like Charles Kuralt was of a video roadpiece.)