In responsione: OSU and state support for higher education

After I wrote about Oregon’s abandonment of higher education, focusing on the situation at the University of Oregon, Steve Clark, Vice President for University Relations at OSU, responded to me with some informative comments.

Steve Clark, Oregon State University

Steve Clark, Oregon State University

Mr. Clark agreed to let me share them:

Like you, at Oregon State, we worry about the cost of higher education for Oregonians. I would like to share with you a number of steps we have taken to minimize the impacts of this change in state funding, but we do realize that there is more work to do in this regard. And while our efforts are many and have had a positive impact, we continue to urge Oregon legislators to restore higher education funding at least to levels provided in 2007.

Weatherford Hall at Oregon State University

Here is some information that I hope aids you and shows how Oregon State remains a public university for Oregonians.

I realize that while your column largely shared statistics about the University of Oregon, your point was that all of Oregon’s public universities are public in name only.

While OSU’s out-of-state and international enrollment has grown over the past decade, OSU’s undergraduate enrollment is still 74% made up of Oregonians. That percentage has declined over the past decade, but we have pledged to not let it fall below 66%. That’s our land grant mission.

Meanwhile, we have launched OSU Open Campus to bring educational programs directly to Oregon communities in partnership with local school districts, ESDs and community colleges. And we have dual degree partnerships with all of our Oregon’s 17 community colleges … so students can simultaneously enroll at OSU and the community college near their home and then transfer after a year or two of community college to attend Oregon State without losing credits. In some cases – such as in an agricultural sciences program with Klamath Community College – a student can graduate in four years without ever having to come to Corvallis, but instead take community college courses for two years or so and then complete their degree taking OSU on-line distance learning classes.

We do recognize tuition and fees are expensive. OSU’s in-state tuition and fees are $9,123 per year compared to the $9,918 you pointed out about UO. Still that is a lot more than students paid 7 to 10 years ago. Out-of-state tuition at OSU is $26,295 per year compared with $30,888 at UO.

With such a heavy tuition load in mind, we launched many years ago our Bridge to Success program. It enables 2,600 to 3,000 Oregonians per year to attend OSU without paying any tuition and fees. The program combines Oregon Opportunity Grants, federal Pell funds and university funds. And then there is our OSU Foundation philanthropy – The Campaign for OSU has raised more than $183 million for student scholarships.

Yes, there is a significant issue with how the state funds higher education in Oregon and we are working with the legislature to change that. Time will tell about such efforts. Meanwhile, as Oregon’s statewide university, we will not abandon Oregonians. And we will work hard to moderate costs, bring higher education to many Oregon communities, and grow funding for financial aid for students.

Steve Clark

Oregon’s abandonment of higher education: it’s criminal

The Oregon Legislature should be declared a crime scene.

Oregon’s state universities are increasingly that in name only. Because of the Legislature’s calculated callousness or pure indifference in funding Oregon universities, young people across the state are facing soaring college loan debts and diminished opportunities for higher education.

The state is also sabotaging its goal of ensuring that 40 percent of all adult Oregonians have a bachelor’s degree or higher by 2025 and undermining the rationale for the state having a say in the operations of what are still called public universities.

SONY DSC

Governor John Kitzhaber says he deserves to be re-elected because he froze tuition at Oregon colleges.

Sure, for one year.

In June, the state Board of Higher Education approved a tuition freeze for in-state undergraduates for the 2014-2015 academic year.

But that was after steadily escalating tuition rates for in-state undergraduates, particularly after voters approved Measure 5 in 1990 and K-12 school funding shifted to the state, with a devastating impact on state support for higher education that has continued to today.

Over the past 15 years, tuition and fees at the University of Oregon, for example, leaped from $3810 for the 1999-2000 academic year to $9918 for the 2014-2015 academic year.

In other words, since the 1999-2000 academic year, tuition and fees for in-state undergraduates have increased 160 percent. You can’t duck the fact that this
substantially outpaced the 42.8 percent rate of inflation.

During that same period, the state’s share of the University of Oregon’s annual operating budget has been in steady retreat from 17.1 percent in 1999-2000 to 5.5 percent in 2013-2014. Extrapolating this trend, state investment will reach zero by 2022.

Coincident with the loss of state support has been an increase in out-of-state students. In the 2013-2014 academic year, non-residents, undergraduate and graduate, reached 46.5 percent of total enrollment.

The University cloaks the leap in out-of-state students as a well-intentioned effort to ensure diversity, but it’s really all about money. In 2014-2015, for example, while in-state students are paying $9918 in tuition and fees, out-of-state students are paying $30,888.

It could be argued that out-of-state students aren’t displacing in-state students, given that the number of undergraduate in-state students has increased about 20 percent since 1999-2000. The number of out-of-state students, however, mushroomed by 250 percent during the same period.

What that means is that the university is likely drawing fewer students from low-income Oregon families and competing more aggressively for students who can afford a more expensive education. In addition, as the state’s population has increased, it’s getting tougher for in-state students to get in.

Had the state not cut university funding so severely, it could have or kept tuition and fees down or accommodated more in-state students.

The pullback in state funding raises the question of why the state continues to impose its will on the universities in so many ways. “The defunding of public higher education by the states inevitably inaugurates a new conversation about who controls them and whose interests are to be served,” says Thomas Mortenson, senior scholar at The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education.

Indeed.

 

Originally published in the Hillsboro Argus, Oct. 28, 2013