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VPFA Moffitt gave Dean Moffitt $4M for law scholarships?

Last updated on 03/09/2015

11/28/2014 update: As reported below, the UO law school has been in a ranking slide ever since Michael Moffitt was appointed dean. US News had it in a three-way tie for 100th last year – an epsilon above a third-tier meltdown. After Rob Illig’s $1M email rant killed plans to game the rankings by getting law faculty to help pay for non-profit jobs for graduates (employment outcomes weigh heavily in the USNEWS and other rankings, and many schools do this) Dean Moffitt wanted to offer applicants with decent LSAT’s free or reduced tuition (also a common strategy, as LSAT scores and GPA also count in the rankings.)

This is, of course, an expensive game. Rumor has it that VPFA Jamie Moffitt agreed to commit $4M in general funds – mostly undergrad tuition money – to prop up the law school with these scholarships. Presumably this is going to be a recurring cost, and is part of the reason for the cutbacks in CAS, and the tight budget for settling the GTF strike.

3/10/2014: UO law drops to #100. Will they repudiate falling US News rankings?

Update: PDF of Dean Moffitt’s letter to the alumni about this here.

3/10/2014 update: UO Law School drops another 6 points in the rankings this year. Down from #77 in 2009 to a three-way tie for #100 in 2014.

The ABA earlier reported that UO Law enrollment this year dropped 18%, from 147 to just 120, compared to an 8% average decline for US law schools. The bright spot would be UO’s environmental law program, ranked #5.

In other news, the UO MBA program dropped from #91 to #96.

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10/30/2013: Football not paying off for Law school

Now with the UO law prof April email on repudiating the rankings, and a response from the author. Page down.

The Duck athletic department likes to justify their subsidies by claiming that football success helps UO academics, in part by attracting more student applicants and allowing greater admissions selectivity. The UO law school has bought into this idea with enthusiasm, even switching from a rather professional looking approach to admissions in 2009, to using “Go Ducks” as their admissions URL: http://law.uoregon.edu/goducks/:

Gosh, you’d certainly think that slogan would attract top law students. But here are the Duck Football BCS ranking and the UO Law school’s US News ranking, plotted as changes from their 2009 starting values of 17 and 77 respectively.

I’m no econometrician, but that doesn’t look like a positive correlation. Of course admissions selectivity is only part of the US News Law school ranking scheme. Anyone know where to get the raw LSAT data – or know why the BCS is more transparent than the UO law school?

Here’s the subsidy data. GF supplement means General Fund supplement – mostly undergrad tuition money. As you can see CAS and a few other colleges subsidize the others. These historical cross-payments were supposed to gradually fade away, but that now seems unlikely. The tax rate on the GF, to pay for our JH administrators and their various legitimate expenses and boondoggles, is also increasing.

http://brp.uoregon.edu/sites/brp/files/brp/budget_model/FY14%20OBM%20Budget%20Report.pdf:

 

10/31 Update: Here’s an email sent to all law school faculty and students by a UO law prof, after April’s US News rank came out. It was forwarded to me by an anonymous law school person in response to the above. I’ve removed the author’s name, because the letter is so amazingly problematic – for example, “Gamesmanship is not an option; trust me, I’ve asked.”

Under Brad Shelton’s budget model, the law school currently gets about $2M in net subsidies from UO’s general fund (see below). If enrollment cuts continue, the law school will lose another $4M or so in tuition revenue annually, and CAS will bear the brunt of the cost – hence the 3% cuts to CAS department budgets that Coltrane has proposed?

Here’s a modest proposal: finance the law school with a tax on the Duck athletic department instead!

Date: Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 4:50 PM

Subject: OPEN LETTER Re: Rankings

To: [email protected]

Hello students!

As many of you know, the U.S. News rankings came out last month and Oregon was 94. This is a drop from last year (82). At the town hall meeting today, several students asked about the rankings and what we can do about them.

I have an idea that I didn’t have time to share at the meeting: we can, as a community, repudiate the rankings. This is just one idea and I’m sure there are others, but let me share my own thoughts (and to be clear, these are my thoughts and not necessarily those of other faculty or the administration):

1. OUR RANKING IS NOT USEFUL/BENEFICIAL TO US. One possible weak benefit of the rankings that they identify areas of improvement (employment rates, bar passage, faculty-to-student ratios, etc.). But we already know about these; we don’t need US News to tell us. And as we learned at the meeting, the administration is taking a number of steps to work on some of the key areas reflected in the US News data.

2. OUR RANKING IS COSTLY TO US. Rankings create labels that, because numbers are involved, are vivid and may have various adverse impacts (in order of greatest impact) on prospective students, current students and faculty, alumni, and employers. Rankings divide law students into “tiers” of “elite” and “non-elite” that tend to instantiate the existing rankings and reproduce long-standing hierarchies. Rankings may make you feel less confident and proud of your law degree and of the institution. Rankings may make someone else feel less impressed with your degree or the institution. Finally, supplying data to US News creates work that could be better spent elsewhere, particularly considering that the rankings themselves are based on problematic assumptions and algorithms (see #3).

3. MOVING UPWARD, FOR OREGON LAW, WILL BE DIFFICULT. As many critics have noted, moving up the US News typically requires (1) gamesmanship; and (2) money. Gamesmanship is not an option; trust me, I’ve asked. The administrators around here are too honest to do the kinds of things that might reap short-term benefits, like overstating faculty numbers or fudging employment stats. Money is also pretty tight. Our tuition is lower than many of our comparator schools; our state support is very, very low; and many of our alumni work for non-profit public interest concerns, so large donations are unusual. It’s unlikely, then, that we can make any big moves upward.

4. MOVING DOWNWARD COULD BE A REALITY. No one knows the future, but given our ranking now and the fact that US News uses employment numbers from two years ago, we should be considering the possibility that we could go down.

5. EVERYONE RECOGNIZES THAT THE RANKING SYSTEM IS FLAWED. Malcolm Gladwell says so. The American Association of Law Schools says so. Many different commentators, professors, and administrators have said so. As our Dean said today, the US News rankings system tends to punish schools that spend their money wisely and well. And you yourself know this system is flawed. I don’t feel like 94. Do you feel like 94? As one of my students said today, how is it possible that Oregon has three top-ten programs yet is barely in the top 100?

6. SOME HAVE TRIED TO GET OUT. Occasionally you’ll hear about a school that issues a strong critique of US News, or calls for a boycott, or tries some other resistance strategy. Sometimes these schools get harshly criticized as poor losers or spoil sports or whatever. The boycott hasn’t caught on, probably because it creates a prisoner’s dilemma that encourages some schools to think they’ll do better because others are boycotting. So although many schools criticize the rankings, they can’t let go of them or stop trying to succeed with respect to them.

7. WHAT CAN WE DO? I have an idea: LET’S REPUDIATE THE RANKINGS. If we think the rankings are bogus and harmful, we should not participate in them. This doesn’t mean we stop working on our employment stats and bar passage and all those things — we should do those things anyway. But let’s not allow US News to dictate to us what we are and who we are. We can aggressively repudiate US News — “take a hike!” — or peacefully repudiate US News — “namaste.” But let’s opt out of this ridiculous system that creates labels and work and cost for such little benefit.

8. WHAT WOULD THIS LOOK LIKE? Repudiation can’t originate with the administration. It must come from the grass roots. So if our Oregon law students want to repudiate the US News rankings, then they should petition the administration to do so. I imagine that would include the following steps:

* Statement/website about our principled position re: the rankings

* Refusal to send information to US News

* T-shirts

Note that US News will rank us even if we don’t supply them with information, so one likely immediate result will be that we drop precipitously in the rankings. (Ask yourself whether this is worse than hovering around 100.) Messaging will help, as will affirmative commitment to the kinds of things we believe are important here at Oregon. For prospective students, for example, explaining why we do it this way and pressing them to “think for yourself” and emphasizing Oregon’s free-thinking independent streak might work. We’re lucky to be the state’s flagship university’s law school. This repudiation strategy would be much harder for, say, Lewis & Clark.

9. WHAT ABOUT LOOKING LIKE A POOR LOSER? “Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy” (Slacker). If we have developed a principled position around our repudiation, being called a “poor loser” shouldn’t have much traction. Remember that it is crazy that we are all participating in this mass rankings economy, even though many recognize that the system is unreliable and flawed.

10. WHAT ABOUT OUR RANKED PROGRAMS? If we repudiate the rankings, I am sure this part will feel like a loss. The question for our community is whether that loss is bearable given the possible upside.

I myself have come to a point where I refuse to recognize being “ranked” by a magazine. If you are interested in discussing this more, or in working on such an effort, please let me know. And if you really think this is the wrong idea, that is totally OK. I just wanted to share some thoughts about one possible way we might respond, as a community, to this situation.

Thanks very much!

10/31/13: The author of the email above has asked me to add this response. They asked me to use their name, but at my suggestion I’m keeping it anonymous:

UO Matters —

I was surprised to see my open letter to law students on the blog (and curious about the sender) but not upset.  What I wrote to the students in April is actually what I think.  I believe that the UO News rankings for law schools (maybe for all schools) is methodologically flawed and overly vivid.  The stories of gamesmanship and manipulating certain reporting categories are legendary; that’s what I was talking about when I said that I asked about gamesmanship, because in terms of an option for the community (faculty + student) those kinds of administrative moves didn’t seem to be something we could rely on as a strategy for improving our rankings.  (Why was that a problematic statement?  Is there something I’m missing?)  I want to think about more proactive community options, because for me and many of our students, the experience of getting ranked year after year, lower and lower, is demoralizing.

This is not to say that UO Law doesn’t have things to work on.  And it’s also not to say that my idea of repudiation is the right one.  (I was a little embarrassed to see that “I don’t feel like 94” comment pulled out.  It’s hard to express appropriate levels of emotion or attempts at rallying cries in emails.  Oh well.)  I’m open to any conversation with anyone who is interested — I would actually love to have those conversations, so if you want to tell me why repudiation is stupid or ill-advised (because, say, it shields the administration) or what thoughts you have about dealing with rankings effectively, please do!

Along those lines, a quick comment re: one of the comments:  I’m not sure why a grassroots effort along these lines exposes the students to risk.  What risk?  Our students have a lot of expressive power that they don’t use, I think because they have a generalized risk avoidance that is often present in lawyers and certainly exacerbated by the economy, etc.  But here I’m not sure why repudiating the rankings is risky for them.

Thanks to Bill and UO Matters for keeping these conversations going — Anonymous

69 Comments

  1. Anonymous 10/30/2013

    Sad graph, but the US News law ranking is mostly based on employment success for grads, and peer reputation among deans, law profs, and judges. Reputation is usually pretty sticky. Why is UO’s falling so rapidly?

  2. Anonymous 10/30/2013

    Dog says

    well yes, but when do we get our GOAT bonus so our morale can improve so that
    we can collectively help our ranking to soar

  3. Anonymous 10/30/2013

    “Go Ducks?” Yea, let’s not even pretend that we’re about academics anymore. Let Lewis and Clark and Willamette take the creme of the crop, as we differentiate away from the crowded field of academically focussed law schools and pick up a nike fan club. We’ve all heard the law school’s recent line about moving toward sports law, etc. When we do, here “We can’t compete, so we’re switching leagues hoping that people can’t distinguish between our football rank and out law school rank.”

    The problem? People can.

    • Anonymous 10/30/2013

      And those who can’t are the exact type who can’t find jobs when they graduate.

  4. Anonymous 10/30/2013

    Wait, there’s more. They are pushing Oregon’s quality of life! Eugene’s bicycle friendliness. These are the lead attributes for how we market the law school? Does it also say “Eat Your Enemies” in the Law School’s lunch room?

  5. Anonymous 10/30/2013

    Past time for Moffitt to move on to a new “business school case study”.

  6. Anonymous 10/30/2013

    The trend is worse than you report. In 2006 UO law was #69.

    • Anonymous 11/02/2013

      In the mid-2000s it was even higher, maybe even in the Top 50 briefly. Things like failed searches, searches with strange outcomes, mass faculty departures, inability to raise money, lack of popularity with alumni, etc., could (if true) help explain such a decline.

  7. Anonymous 10/30/2013

    I went to the law school website, and didn’t find “Go Ducks!” Am I missing something?

    It seems to me that the athletic program uses “Go Ducks!” and is succeeding wildly.

    Whereas one of the academic programs — law — doesn’t use “Go Ducks!” and seems to be flailing.

    Perhaps the entire “academic side” should start using “Go Ducks!” That would surely impress, e.g., the AAU!

    Or better yet, why not just refer to ourselves as “Nike University”? That would really get a lot of attention!

    Go Ducks! Nike University!

    • UO Matters 10/31/2013

      FYI, here at the University of Nike our cheer is “Go Goats”, while our official motto is “Id Omnes Fumavimus”, and tuition is capped at $666 per credit, for eternity.

      I went back to the UO Law school page, and added a better screen capture. I wonder how much the web designers charged for this?

    • Anonymous 10/31/2013

      Next order of business is to come up with a fight song. And actually, you could go with “go goats” or maybe … “Give ’em Hell!”!

  8. Anonymous 10/30/2013

    Seriously, does anyone know why UO Law had such a steep drop?

    • Anonymous 10/31/2013

      ^ I don’t know what you’re talking about–the law school supports the UO, not the other way around.

    • Anonymous 10/31/2013

      You’re not serious. The subsidy is not as large as that of the music school or athletic department, but it is subsidized. (Amazing that we subsidize the athletic department, really. Seems so wrong.)

    • UO Matters 10/31/2013

      Thanks for raising these questions. I’ve added the BRP data on subsidies to the post.

    • Anonymous 10/31/2013

      Thank you UOM. There are so many misinformed people on this campus, it’s no wonder we’re in the spot we’re in. “I am serious” was so adamant, too. Reminds me of the lip you get when trying to set the record straight an the subsidies to athletics.

    • Anonymous 10/31/2013

      No, you’re the one who is misinformed. The OBM spreadsheet Harbaugh posted doesn’t show any cross-subsidies, which exist in every department in every university. Harbaugh has known the actual numbers for years, but his interest in reporting the complete truth often conflicts with his desire for controversy generation and self-aggrandizement.

    • Anonymous 10/31/2013

      Ignore this troll

    • Anonymous 10/31/2013

      Oh look, someone who resorts to ad-hominems to maintain a belief despite evidence to the contrary. I bet you’re a fantastic academic.

  9. Anonymous 10/31/2013

    I think I have figure out the plunge in UO Law ranking — get ready for this — it was losing Dave from the full-time faculty!

    • Anonymous 10/31/2013

      I don’t really get the joke? Was that a dig against Dave? Dave actually did resuscitate the law school in the early 90s.

  10. Anonymous 10/31/2013

    Here is my favorite part of the idiotic email, just posted:

    “Repudiation can’t originate with the administration. It must come from the grass roots. So if our Oregon law students want to repudiate the US News rankings, then they should petition the administration to do so. I imagine that would include the following steps….”

    Let the students take all the risk! Demand of us that we do what we are proposing, so that we don’t have to take responsibility!

    My department is ranked in the bottom half of all PhD programs. I repudiate that!

    • Anonymous 10/31/2013

      I’m not saying what the author proposes is a good idea, and I’m not even sure the author still thinks it is, but there is definitely a kernel of truth to what he/she is arguing. The logic: the USNews rankings matters massively to two groups: (1) prospective law students, because it’s a proxy for potential career/employment success; and (2) legal employers, because it’s a proxy for GPA/LSAT of the student body which, combined with the class rank within the school itself, gives employers an idea of how good any particular student might be. However, it’s not a great proxy for either group because the ranking formula considers other factors that don’t really matter to anyone (e.g. the “scholarly reputation” of the faculty). And furthermore, all law schools are forced to care about and throw money at improving those other factors. (That’s one reason why law professors spend much of their time writing law review articles that no one ever reads.) So, what the email author proposes is that UO Law ignore the factors in the ranking formula and just focus on and publicize the things that matter to students and employers–job placement, bar passage, GPA/LSAT, etc.

      The problem with the idea, as I see it, is that people are lazy, and they (especially prospective students, less so legal employers) will just continue using the rankings and not bother really checking how UO Law stacks up against other schools on the things that actually matter to them. We’ll thus just drop in the rankings and have much worse–rather than better–success at attracting good students. The *actual* solution is for USNews to focus more on meaningful metrics in compiling its rankings, but I’m not sure where pressure for that change is going to come from.

      So, in sum, while what the author recommends is probably very unwise, it’s not stupid–at all. It’s actually the very type of fresh thinking that we (as a country) need in reforming legal education.

    • Anonymous 10/31/2013

      “Fresh thinking” for legal reform = “it’s not me or us, it’s THEM. We suck and are ranked 94th because, because, because … it’s THEM!”

  11. Anonymous 10/31/2013

    Oh my. “And you yourself know this system is flawed. I don’t feel like 94. Do you feel like 94?” Did Gottfredson write this?

  12. Anonymous 10/31/2013

    Dog on Budgets

    I have taken the FY 14 Revenue Budgets as listed above and have divided that by the total number
    of undergrad degrees awarded by that school for the year FY13. I offer no interpretation – just the results.

    AAA: 27M/385 = 70K (round numbers)
    CAS: 182M/2853 = 64K
    ED = 19M/147 = 129K
    CHC = 4.2M/~100 = 42K
    Journalism = 20M/454 = 44K
    Business = 36M/643 = 56K
    Music = 9M/55 = 164K

    • Old Grey Mare 10/31/2013

      Don’t forget that CAS also provides gen. ed. for all those students across the schools.

    • thedude 10/31/2013

      Can we get instate/outstate breakdowns by each department.

    • Anonymous 03/11/2014

      CHC does not award degrees

  13. thedude 10/31/2013

    I love that they say they are too honest to engage in gamesmenship. And that they don’t have enough money because their alumni work for public interest groups (meaning their unemployed or poor). I’m sure this is convincing to the students!!

    BTW, perhaps Night is investing in football to diversity his good name. Given that football performance and law school performance appear perfectly negatively correlated, this was a great move on his end.

    On the other hand, perhaps we could tie buildings to academic performance. If the law school doesn’t shape up, they can have PLC. Many in my department wouldn’t give Uncle Phil crap about child labor either!!!

  14. Anonymous 10/31/2013

    Public records request on all law school emails with the words “US News Ranking”

  15. Anonymous 10/31/2013

    Let’s get this thread straight, for those who haven’t paid full attention:

    1) You (UOMatters) claimed that the UO Law subsidizes the central campus;

    2) In support of that claim, you posted an OBM spreadsheet showing a UO Law tax of five million, and a GF subsidy of two million—in other words, numbers showing the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you originally claimed;

    3) After realizing that, you deleted the first part of your post directly making the subsidy claim;

    4) After that, you still tried to insinuate that your claim COULD be true by arguing that IF UO Law enrollment goes down in the future, then the central campus will “bear the brunt” of the decrease. You made this claim notwithstanding the fact that (a) You don’t have UO Laws’ projected 2015 revenue and thus CAN’T predict whether the GF subsidy will outweigh the tax in the future; (b) the revenue decrease you made up out of thin air—$4 million—wouldn’t even be enough to make that happen; and (c) you haven’t accounted for the fact that an enrollment decrease would also necessitate a GF subsidy decrease. Which leads me to ask….

    How the HELL are you employed at the U of O? In one post, you plainly demonstrated a total lack of common sense, honestly, and facility with basic economics—the ONE THING you’re supposedly good at. You, UOMatters, are a disgrace to this university.

    • Anonymous 10/31/2013

      I repudiate everything you said! Ha!

    • Anonymous 10/31/2013

      * Meant to say that UOM claimed originally that central campus subsidizes UO Law

    • Anonymous 10/31/2013

      Dog Says

      In the current model of initial revenue (based on SCHs) – Tax +/- return (GF supplement) subsidies
      are indirect. I believe the correct way to currently interpret this is that any thing in the GF supplement
      column which is positive would represent some kind of subsidy in terms of extra money compared
      to SCH revenue. This in fact, serves as a correction of the “Tax” and the whole thing makes little
      sense to me.

      • Vlad 03/11/2014

        Dog barks up the right tree again. All colleges pay the same percentage tax. Taxes are irrelevant for relative comparisons. Throw dog another bone.

    • Anonymous 10/31/2013

      Anyone who disagrees with UOMatters is a troll, yes, we are a 3rd rate Univ

  16. Anonymous 10/31/2013

    Repudiation is probably a good idea just for institutional purposes. The biggest ‘meat’ in the USNWR ranking equation sandwich is admitted class LSAT/GPA average, and law school admissions numbers (and volume) is dropping across the board. UO Law has already struggled to maintain their very modest admissions standards in recent years, and the standards were surprisingly lax at the height of law school application mania (2006-2009). Without seriously slashing the class size, the numbers will continue to dive, student quality will erode further, and that will sink the one remaining type of currency the law school still has: reputation. Most lawyers in Oregon know that UO turns out decently capable students who are prepared to work. This won’t be true if the rankings and student quality continue to rocket toward the bricks. It’s already very easy to get into UO Law. If it gets easier as a matter of necessity, there will be long term repercussions, particularly for younger alumni.

    And – and I would like to stress that this is not just dogpiling on Moffitt for no reason – the Dean did informally suggest increasing class size several times in the last two years. I don’t know what his strategy is at this point, but he doesn’t seem like he has a strong vision for the school’s future aside from staying the course and continuing to diversify the curriculum into quasi-legal educational tracks.

  17. Anonymous 10/31/2013

    First, we should ask Malcolm Gladwell what to do.

    Second, word on the streets is that the current budget model is over. Going back to the old days of most $ going to central and then allocated to units.

    • Anonymous 10/31/2013

      Any rumor of Brad Shelton going, too? Even just a little one?

    • Anonymous 10/31/2013

      Sure, I’ll start that rumor here. Maybe it’ll come true. Just remember, no administrator ever leaves here. They just become someone’s “Special Assistant” or “Associate Dean” of some nonsense.

  18. Anonymous 10/31/2013

    I love the precedent this sets. We can look forward to repudiating the AAU in a few years.

  19. thedude 10/31/2013

    My idea. Randomize bragging about academics vs. athletics on webpages, and see what generates more click-throughs.

    I actually would love to write a paper about this.

  20. Margie Paris 10/31/2013

    The explanation of the GF supplement isn’t accurate. Rather than something that supplements the law school or is supposed to decrease over time, the GF supplement is a steady-state “hold harmless” provision. To back up a bit, UO Law (like other American law schools) has its own admissions, registrar, student affairs, and career services offices. As a result, law students pay higher tuition. Before the new budget model was implemented, the law school retained all of the differential between law tuition and undergrad tuition, so that it could pay for these additional services. But under the new budget model, a chunk of that differential tuition had to be turned over to the university. The “hold harmless” provision was created, in part, to account for that chunk. And because their tuition is higher, law students effectively pay far more in “taxes” to the UO than other students – for university-wide services (admissions, registrar, student affairs, career services, etc.) that they don’t use.

    • Anonymous 11/01/2013

      So, the subsidy should disappear in time, if the law school can get its act together. If they can’t Just like the athletic department, the rest of campus with insure their losses.

      I think there should be an accounting of resourced supporting the law school, especially in light of the administration’s “the well is dry” and such and the law faculty being outside the union.

    • UO Matters 11/01/2013

      The original Shelton/Bean RCM model was based on Harvard’s “every boat on it’s own bottom” tradition. These GFS transfers were and anomaly to be phased out, I forget the schedule.

      CAS loved this, but the colleges receiving the subsidies – law and music, mostly – freaked. Understandably. The compromise was to keep them constant in nominal dollars, and count on inflation and growth to dilute their importance.

      But in the case of the law school, the subsidy has actually increased about 10% over the past 2 years. This decision was, like everything else at UO, made in secret and without any coherent plan.

      But the real issue here is the tax rate. Brad completely botched this. The intention was to create a transparent budgeting system that would allow everyone to understand what JH was taking, and why. But Brad left out important things like science start ups, traditionally funded centrally from Rich Linton’s ICC slush fund. Rich over-promised, Brad was clueless.

      And then JH started wanting more and more for pet projects like Bend, Portland, Police, Jock Box, etc. Brad kept raising the tax. There are rumors he did more than that – taking money off the top for JH. Margie is right about all that – at these levels the tax is a black-box ripoff for Law, and for CAS, and most of the rest of UO.

      So now the RCM model will probably be abandoned, in favor of more central control. And less transparency.

      Is the Senate going to step up to the plate and fill the gap on budget priorities and transparency? No one has heard a word from the Senate Budget Committee. Gottfredson is preparing a new strategic plan, and the Senate hasn’t heard boo.

      Fortunately we’ve got a faculty union now, to do what the Senate has failed to do.

      • bernie's bookie 03/11/2014

        The senate budget committee, in the brief interval when it was really functioning, seemed to be focused on faculty salaries/compensation. That was probably for the best in the days of the “White Paper” around 1999-2000. Word is that later on, whenever the question of budget functioning and priorities came up, apart from faculty salaries, there was great reluctance on the part of most of the faculty members to take this on — too much desire not to rock the boat with John Moseley, and later with Frances Dyke. What they’ve been doing lately, who knows? Do they even file annual reports any more?

    • Anonymous 11/01/2013

      Dog Says

      the GFS is simply a kludge designed to compensate for tax and it represents flow back to units (positive or negative). Call it a subsidy, call it a hold harmless correction return – it doesn’t really matter. It is a bad model as implemented by the UO and has caused further erosion in the limited
      trust issues that may have existed.

  21. okaytimefor 03/10/2014

    Ok, time for a cluster hire!!!

  22. I blame the Union 03/10/2014

    Wait, the law school’s not in the union.

  23. crocodile tiers 03/11/2014

    so much for “tier 2”

    • Anonymous 03/11/2014

      Technically still within the definition of “Tier 2.” Colloquially T1: USWNR 1-50, T2: USWNR 51-100, T3: USWNR 101-150, T4: USWNR Unranked(151+).

      Jus’ sayin’.

  24. Uncle Bernie's little brother 03/11/2014

    Obviously, the data in the graph show that the Ducks’ football success is the direct cause of the decline of the law school ranking.

    • correlation smorellation 03/11/2014

      Moffitt was hired in 2011, right? Down from 80 to 100 in just 3 years.

      • Uncle Bernie's little brother 03/12/2014

        So, I take it you’re suggesting that Moffitt is the direct cause of the Ducks’ football success, which is the direct cause of the decline of the Law School ranking?

        Or perhaps the Ducks’ football success was the direct cause both of the Law School decline and the hiring of Moffitt?

        Oh, I give up, cause and effect is too much!

  25. Anon 03/11/2014

    Perhaps the ABA review will endorse some of the law school’s expensive proposals to improve, and CAS will foot the bill. After all, isn’t that the main function of ABA accreditation?

  26. Anonymous 03/11/2014

    Just read Moffitt’s letter to alumni. I think I heard a little sniffle in there.
    Just suck it up, dude. At least you have a good football team over there.

  27. outsider 03/11/2014

    Imagine what the UO could do if we stopped cannibalizing each other. Stopped throwing the shit over the walls at other departments and focused on how we could be a better, more collaborative university. But then, we can’t have that, can we? What red meat would be left for UO Matters?

    • uomatters Post author | 03/11/2014

      Actually, I think that was the original intent of the new budget model. But it worked too well, and didn’t leave enough money for our bloated central administration to play with.

  28. Uncle Bernie's Accountant 03/13/2014

    Interesting comparisons. E.g., Univ of Nebraska’s law school was
    ranked #54 and its instate tuition & fees are less than half of UO’s tuition & fees. Almost double the ranking and less than half the
    cost. Then there’s the Univ of Georgia ranked #29 with 40%
    lower tuition and fees than UO. BYU ranked #36 with 25% lower
    cost. UO Law looks to be under performing and over priced…
    But hey, I’m just Uncle Bernie’s Accountant…

  29. Anonymous 04/06/2014

    The problem, as one person noted, is that Employment is down — UO ranks nearly last among law schools. Why? Partially because Career Services has a backward way of assessing employment: if they can’t CONFIRM that you are employed, they assume you are not. I’ve been involved with 4 other law schools and none of them did it this way.
    I don’t know about you, but I have come to assume that almost all mail from the universities I attended is asking for money — so I don’t open them. I hope they don’t assume I’m unemployed because of this! Another irony, first-year associates are much too busy to reply to these enquiries.
    If they continue this method UO will continue falling: employment stats will get no better, the overall reputation will suffer, fewer students will apply, etc. etc.
    Do what everyone else does: if you can’t reach them, assume they are employed.

  30. What, Me Conflicted? 12/05/2014

    Of course! Competent Moffitt (CM) lends Incompetent Moffitt (IM) millions from the general fund to save what’s left of IM’s career. Wow… a conflict of interest this large and ugly could only be hatched by two “experts” on conflict.

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