7/14/2011: Alan Pittman of the Eugene Weekly analyzes the NCAA report we extracted from the athletic department last week: THIRD OF UO IS SPORTSJust how big is sports at the UO? A third of the value of all the buildings at the UO are sports related and a fifth of…
UO Matters
7/13/2011: It’s a state case in Illinois, but very relevant to the similar effort to unionize UO faculty and adjuncts. Last I heard they were preparing for a card-check election, this fall, and < 0.5FTE adjuncts will have the same vote as full time profs. From Scott Jasik at Insidehighered.com.
7/13/2011: That’s the Governor of California, Jerry Brown. From Insidehighered.com. Now why can’t we get Governor Kitzhaber’s new Higher Education Finance Board to start cutting some of Chancellor Dr. Pernsteiner’s perks? Even just his free meals and maid service?
7/12/2011: From the NY Times: The law he signed not only banned the university and the higher education board from taking any action to discontinue the name, it also said the state attorney general should consider filing a federal antitrust claim against the N.C.A.A. if the organization penalized the university.…
7/13/2011 update: I’ve written UO Public Records Officer Liz Denecke asking her to forward *all* the agreements, and I copied Dennis Galvan and John Manotti. Still no reply. Maybe it makes sense for UO to cut deals with corrupt politicians (as with Pernsteiner for example) but not in secret. 7/12/2011:…
7/12/2011: From the Texas Tribune. Motivated by the debate about measuring faculty productivity. Hamermesh is a labor economist at UT, Riley is the author of “The Faulty Lounges“. The clip is mostly about tenure. “The Hammer”, as he occasionally tries to get his colleagues to nickname him, has no hesitancy…
7/11/2011: Bob Wolfe and Barry Kast have the best Laffer curve argument ever. I’d use this in class – if I were an economics professor.
7/11/2011: Richard Kahlenberg has a good roundup of recent events, at the Chronicle, followed by this interpretation: Historically, the “diversity rationale” for affirmative action was an important strategic advance for supporters of the policy. The original “remedial rationale”—that racial preferences were necessary to correct for a history of egregious discrimination—suffered…
7/10/2011: Presumably Ms Funk has an innocent explanation, which may or may not be revealed when they put out their 2010-2011 annual report. Or maybe they blew all the donor money on their salaries, the Duck Athletic Fund, Bellotti’s payoff, and their new palace next to Matt Court. (click…
7/10/2011: From Dennis Thompson in the Statesman Journal: (My interpretations, not his.) A) Unions squashed it: “The reality is there will be no significant PERS reform as long as public-employee unions have such extreme power in the Oregon Capitol,” said Rep. Dennis Richardson, R-Central Point, one of the strongest voices…
7/9/2011: John Canzano (left) tries to explain why it’s OK for Oregon to pay Chip Kelly $3.5 million, but not OK for Oregon to pay Willie Lyles $25,000. I’m no psychologist, but I think they call the micro-expression of the guy on the right “WTF?”
7/9/2011: It didn’t take long for the UO administration to decide that Melinda Grier would be the scapegoat for Frohnmayer’s failure to get a written contract for Mike Bellotti. And she was an excellent choice, in so many ways. But now Ms Grier is gone and the search for someone…
7/9/2011: Not the legal costs of the NCAA investigations – Randy Geller is still refusing to disclose that info to the faculty. But they will pay for rerouting the utilities for the new Football museum and complex. From Greg Bolt in the RG: The $227 million Knight Arena has put…
7/8/2011: This is hilarious – from Ken Goe in the Oregonian. For years the UO Foundation has been little more than a money laundering operation for the Duck Athletic Fund. And all of a sudden the Chairman of the Board of Trustees is “concerned”? … So, trustees were caught flat-footed…
7/8/2011: From Bill Graves in the Oregonian. Yes, Lariviere showed for the OUS meeting – video here. The OUS docket for the meeting is here. 9% cut in state support for UO. Graves doesn’t mention what will happen to OUS Chancellor Dr. Pernsteiner’s croissant budget or maid service. I’ve got…