The University of Oregon, like every university in the US of A is struggling with their budget. Times are tough. Cuts must be made. Or, if not cuts, revenue must be raised. UO President Dave Frohnmayer is proposing to raise tuition for the Spring term. Delicious. I share with Dave not only a powerhouse name, but a firm belief that when times are tough you should immediately turn to the poorest and most vulnerable amongst you and exploit the hell out of them. They have no other options, right?
Okay, so here are three ideas for raising revenue/cutting costs at the UO that have nothing to do with raising costs for students or cutting pay for teachers (which the UO can't do without really risking its AAU credentials, which I understand are dicey at best).
1. The athletic department is self-funded. They got lots of dough. Cabbage. Green. What it takes to get along. In fact, I believe they have a $200 million "Legacy Fund" that I am sure is being prudently invested and is generating more do-re-mi. Now, I know that the UO and the athletic department are separate entities and that anyone from the academic side of the school who mentions the athletic department at all is just a whiner who should put down the microscope long enough to figure out a way to earn the UO some bread, but bear with me.
When times were not so good for athletics at the UO (see 1969-1995), the athletic department was subsidized by the academic side of things. It was kept alive because being affiliated with the Pac 10 was better than not being affiliated and probably just through inertia. Believe me, not many people were paying attention to Duck football in the 1980s (certainly not Phil "I've attended every home football game since the Ducks went to the Rose Bowl" Knight). So turn-about being fair play, I don't think it is silly to suggest that the athletic department subsidize the academic side of things during tough times. If only because the NCAA is so particular about their semi-pro sports franchises being affiliated with an institution of higher learning.
Which, of course, brings us back to that Legacy Fund. I know we can't touch it. From what I've read, the UO keeps a stable of lawyers on hand whose sole job it is to draw up binding agreements to make sure that the academic side of the fence can't get its grubby mitts on a single dime of athletics money. Fortunately, we don't need actual Legacy Fund dollars. We just need to charge the athletics department a fee for the use of the name "University of Oregon." I suggest that fee be equivalent to 2% of whatever happens to be in the Legacy Fund. This will not bankrupt or harm the Legacy Fund one bit and bring an immediate $4 million to the academic side of the university.
2. I am going to acknowledge right up front that I don't know a lot about Emeritus faculty at the UO. It is quite possible that they (very silently) keep this university running. I do know that the UO pays Emeritus faculty $1.7 million a year to work 21.0 FTE. According to my calculations, that's $81,000 a year per. That's some hefty money. I have no idea if unilaterally cutting Emeritus off is a good idea or even feasible. I'm just saying that there's some savings to be had.
3. This may be crazy, but what if the administration and athletics coaches (there I go again) take a pay cut? Or maybe the top 10% of earners at the UO? What if the president of the University forwent his salary for the year? There's $400K or so right there.
Okay, so I know I am just talking crazy. None of these ideas are even mildly feasible as people who have power at the UO would be affected. Instead, let's raise tuition for the kids. Not only do they not have a voice at the UO, but I am sure they will be reminded that it's just more loans, so they shouldn't really care.
....
While I am here, let me acknowledge that Frohnmayer is not really the bad guy in this situation. The bad guys are in Salem. They continually cut funding for higher ed, which forces colleges and universities to raise tuition, the tuition paying parents predictably howl, and the legislature goes all "populist" and prevents colleges and universities from raising tuition. I am sure there is a goodly amount of waste on your average college campus, but the institution really does need money to pay people to educate students. It really does need to administer the programs. It really does need secretaries, janitors, and tech guys. No one is getting rich here (well, a couple of people are, but that may be beside the point). The UO needs to pay its bills. While I would not turn to the students for more money as my first, second, or third option, I understand the (continual) frustration about money at the UO.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
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4 comments:
BOOM! Dave is back!
Tuition increases suck, but one has to face economic reality. The notion that this is "turn[ing] to the poorest and most vulnerable...and exploiting" them is ridiculous. Nobody needs to go to the U of O in order to survive. And if students are required to pay tuition, that will sometimes mean increases.
Personally, I wish the government entirely subsidized university education. But that would require tradeoffs and other efforts that people with an uneconomical "gimme" attitude are not likely to be able to stomach.
It would mean insisting on higher standards in elementary and high school and the end of social promotion. That way a diploma would mean something once achieved, and not everybody would need a college degree. It would also mean that a far smaller proportion of the population could attend university. The only reason that sounds like a disaster is that now we've been conned into believing everybody really needs a college education, and having believed it, we've made it a requirement. And since a diploma is little more than a baby sitting certificate, what can employers depend on to gauge their prospective hires' ability?
If the above sounds fanciful, it may be here and now, but this is in fact the way my father got his degree at a great European university (i.e., not some redbrick, but an institution founded in the 15th century). He didn't pay a penny for tuition, though he did need a job on the side.
Looking to the athletic department is also uneconomical. Athletic departments are very competitive organizations from a business perspective as well as on the playing field. Their budgets correlate to returns. Cut the budget and you're killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Big state college athletic departments bring in tremendous revenue to their academic institutions, so it is by no means only a matter of the powerful being affected. That kind of argument is juvenile.
Idler,
Thanks for the comment, despite the dig at the end.
A couple of things. I wasn't looking for way to solve the higher education crisis here. I have ideas, but they probably are as horrifying to you as you suppose yours are to me. (As someone who has taught freshmen in college, I have no problem with notion that we need to raise standards in elementary and high schools. Unfortunately, we get what we pay for and we don't pay for a lot.)
I would agree with you we live in a world where it is possible to say that everyone needs a college degree, but not necessarily a college education. This does seem very wrong.
I actually don't think it wold be a "disaster" if we lived in a world where a lot less people attended (the ideal) college. Unfortunately, until "everyone" went to college, it was mostly reserved for the privileged few, whether that privilege was money, race, or gender. As long as were conducting fantasies about K-12 education becoming a rigorous education model, let's go ahead and fantasize about our colleges and universities will suddenly become models of merit-based admissions. If you think that exists now, check out your average graduate school.
Now, I have been known to take a drink or two, but never as early as I wrote that post (okay, maybe while tailgating), but thought I was pretty clear that I was not advocating cutting anything in the athletic budget at all. Rather, I was suggesting a fee or tax of 2% of the athletic department's "Legacy Fund." I believe that a prudently invested Legacy Fund will be generating more than a two percent return each year, so we're not even cutting into it, although it will grow more slowly.
I would like to take just a moment to dispute the assertion that athletic departments are run like businesses. It's kind of a silly assertion. You have two sports that make money, football and men's basketball. They support the rest of the athletics programs that exist because...well, because a lot of people really bought into notions of muscular Christianity around the turn of the century and athletics were seen as a positive in and of themselves. Anyway, if you owned a business where you had two products that made a ton of money, but every year you turned around and plowed that money back into products that were bound to lose money every year, you would not win business person of the year.
Also, if the athletics department is a business, it was a failing business for many, many years. A failing business that turned to academics for support. Academics supported and nurtured and now needs a return favor. I should hope that the response isn't "too effing bad."
Ball's in your court, so to speak.
If athletics are valued for what they are in themselves, then the money making sports are doing the university a service by supporting those that don't make money. There's nothing wrong with that trade off. If that is unbusiness-like, then it's unbusiness-like in the right direction. One could decide to cut those programs. But why? The fact remains that these departments pull in tremendous amounts of cash.
In the case of any given athletic department, you might be able to skim a little more, but at some point you need to stop or you are going to undermine the competitiveness of the department. In any case, the lions share of tuition will still need to come from students.
On the topic of who goes to school, in my dad's day the proportion of the population that went to university was only about 10 percent. My father was the member of a privileged few, but it was an elite based on talent and hard work.
Of course, the wealthy could afford to send their children to universities without so much bother. But why shouldn't they be able to, if they're paying for it?
I think the notion that "you get what you pay for" is erroneous. Schools in various parts of Europe and the United States have churned out scholars with far smaller budgets in the past. It's not a matter of money as much as it's a matter of culture, of discipline and respect for both the material and the teachers. If kids don't come prepared to learn... well, you an lead a horse to water.
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