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University fund-raising hits record despite winning athletics program

Last updated on 07/26/2015

7/26/2015: University fund-raising hits record despite winning athletics program

That would be the University of Oregon, of course. The Register-Guard has the story here. Next year maybe UO Strategic Communicator Tobin Klinger will get his press release out before OSU does.

7/17/2015: University fund-raising hits record despite mediocre athletics program

That would be Oregon State University, of course. The Register-Guard has the story here. Then there’s OHSU, which just brought in $1B for research, with no athletics program at all. While the UO administration is still arguing that we need to spend more on our big-time athletics program to get donors interested in UO’s academic side, OSU has been putting its money into research:

7 Comments

  1. honest Uncle Bernie 07/17/2015

    “While the UO administration is still arguing that we need to spend more on our big-time athletics program to get donors interested in UO’s academic side, OSU has been putting its money into research”

    I don’t follow the athletic controversies that much, but who is saying anything like this? “We” are spending more of whose money on athletics? CAS money? Phil Knight’s? That of other donors?

    And which of “its” money is OSU “putting into research”? You mean federal grant money? Well, the solution for UO is to try to raise more federal money — or perhaps interest private donors more.

    I agree that there is some reason to think that OSU has pulled more even with UO academically, or even pulled ahead in important ways. But constantly harping on athletics seems to me mostly irrelevant. If Phil and the boys never gave another dime to the Ducks, how would that help UO academics and research?

    Maybe there are other reasons UO seems to be floundering? I’ll leave it to every individual’s perfervid imagination what these might be.

    • awesome0 07/17/2015

      Id argue the bigger issue is the law school sucking away millions of dollars from CAS.

      • honest Uncle Bernie 07/18/2015

        I agree that from what I hear, that is true — CAS (and other units) rescuing the law school — and that may well be a bigger financial issue than any financial impact of athletics, positive or negative, on CAS finances.

        We may mostly agree — but let me just say — on the other hand, in relation to above — in the big long-term scheme of things, the constant animosity and tension around athletics-academics relations is probably a bigger harm to UO, in my opinion. Especially with the involvement of some of the big donors in the picture. To put it bluntly, constantly keeping such people pissed off is probably not a great way to motivate them to give money to academics (and the arts at UO, I believe I saw recently that the Knights had given $50K to the music school, bless their hearts if true).

  2. Anon 07/20/2015

    This post provides a textbook example of the problem with this blog — a blog that sometime sheds useful light on things going on at UO, but that often resorts to cherry picked facts to put the university in as negative a light as possible. Anyone reading the first paragraph of this post would conclude that UO is largely driven by the desire to enrich athletics while our wonderful neighbor to the north mostly cares about research. There’s no hint that OSU’s subsidies to athletics greatly exceed those at UO, no hint that one of OSU’s fundraising priorities for next year will be upgrading its stadium, no hint that OSU’s new football coach was drawn to the university because he wouldn’t have to put up with the academic standards Wisconsin required, etc. And I write this as someone who is concerned about the university’s academic profile and the imbalance (until recently?) in fundraising priorities.

    The point is that when posts are driven by what seems to be an attempt to make UO look as bad as possible, and fail to acknowledge at least the more obvious nuances that might help people understand what is going on, then others looking at the blog who do not have the time to look into the details come away with an incredibly distorted sense of the campus (to put it mildly). Faculty feel bad about their place of work, alums get discouraged, potential donors question why they should give money to a university that’s in decline, and many in the wider world just shake their heads and wonder what happened to the place. I know, I know — mistakes have been made and UO failings on the communication side have opened to the door to a blog of this sort, but I am more than a little concerned that the failure to address these matters in thoughtful, constructive, minimally nuanced ways works to our detriment.

    • that effing Canis again 07/20/2015

      This blog is not a textbook. Nothing in any blog is ever correct or fair. That’s the definition of a BLOG and everyone’s contributions merely increases the entropy of the BLOG-verse.

    • Sports Fan 07/20/2015

      That sounds like a post for OSUMatters.com.

    • Oryx 07/26/2015

      Anon’s point is excellent, and the context about OSU is valuable. The most likely way to provide the community with balanced information, though, is exactly this, having commenters correct UOM. The comments are widely read, and UOM isn’t likely to change his style. Maybe it’s not ideal, but it will work.

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