UO Matters

I’m not sure what % of faculty are voting members of the faculty union, but it would be hard to describe this as anything other than a resounding rejection of President Scholz’s efforts to get faculty to accept his real wage cuts:

That would of course be to the salaries of the Duck coaches. Thanks to Raghu for the notice. Given that the faculty will be voting on a strike soon, you might think this is unfortunate timing for the administration. Actually it’s intentional – Scholz wants to destroy the faculty’s morale before the vote, and what better was to do it than by ostenstatiusly making it rain for his millionaire sporting friends?

Live at 10:30 at https://www.youtube.com/live/NNaDY6JgE1k

• • Current total compensation for UO faculty averages 98.3% of AAU public peers, despite the fact that almost all those peers are larger, better resourced and more highly ranked.
  • Our recent and proposed annual salary increases are in line with, or slightly above, AAU public peers. The average AAU annual faculty salary increase this year was 3.38%. The UO is offering 4.0%. By contrast, UA’s requested salary increase – 8.5% in the first year and 8% each of the next two years – is more than double this amount.
  • Over the last ten years, faculty salaries have increased faster than the rate of net tuition (2.9% average annual growth). It is important to note that net tuition is our primary source of funding for salaries; increases beyond the rate of tuition are not sustainable in the long term.
  • Faculty and administrators have received the same total salary increases over the last ten years. While starting salaries for individual hires of both faculty and administrators are often influenced by market rates, annual percent salary increases have been the same for both groups over the last several years.
  • Annual proposed increases in our offer to United Academics match those recently provided to Officers of Administration (OAs) in a similar multi-year package. Fairness across the different employee groups at the UO is important: faculty and OAs represent a majority of our community and both are essential.
  • The university is currently projecting a $2.3 million deficit for this year in the Education & General fund budget, due to out-of-state enrollment coming in below target, as well as rising compensation costs.

• • A one-time payment of $1,700 (prorated) for all active bargaining unit faculty members upon ratification.*
  • A 4% increase to base salary for all active bargaining unit TTF, Career, Pro Tem, Visiting, and Retired faculty upon ratification.*
  • A 3% merit increase pool for TTF and Career faculty effective January 1, 2026.
  • A 3% merit increase pool for TTF and Career faculty effective January 1, 2027.
  • A 13.5% increase to salary floors effective July 1, 2025, establishing a $50k Career instructor floor.
  • An increase to the first post-tenure/continuous employment review for meeting expectations from 4% to 8%.
  • A new 8% floor rank differential for Career faculty to offset compression from increased salary floors.
  • Additional increases for Limited Duration faculty (excluding Postdoctoral Scholars) of 2% in both 2026 and 2027.

Meanwhile:

For strike updates check the faculty union page here.

The Daily Emerald has been doing a great job covering campus matters this year – e.g. this story on the SOJC Dean’s travel expenditures, and other investigations here.

For President Scholz’s take on UO’s finances check https://strengtheninguo.uoregon.edu/

Some evidence of Scholz’s reluctance to admit how much of UO’s money he blew on this is below the break – and hell no I didn’t pay GC Kevin Reed and VP for Communication and Marketing Carol Keese $1373.54.

The history of Treetops is a fascinating one – see these earlier posts for details. About 5 years ago UO finally bought out the heirs and established clear title. Pres Schill never got around to deciding what to do with it, but Pres Scholz is going to do the right thing: Sell it to the highest bidder and use the proceeds for faculty raises  more raises for his senior administrators. Here’s the Zillow Ad:

For reasons I should probably not put in writing Zillow thinks that I own Treetops, so they let me see how much interest there is – pretty much!

Don’t worry Kevin, I’m not going to try and get a HELOC on it.

From the Nov 2023 and Nov 2024 salary reports. The faculty were eligible for a 3% merit pool for Jan 1 2024 raises. I’m no longer an economist, but I seem to remember they call this “revealed preference” as in Scholz has revealed he loves his admins and doesn’t give a shit about the faculty:*

* For an interesting application of the theory of revealed preference to altruism see “Giving According to GARP: An Experimental Test of the Consistency of Preferences for Altruism” by Andreoni and Miller (2002), written while Andreoni and Scholz were both profs at UW-Madison and I was a grad student. I helped run the experiment.

What’s happened to salaries since President Scholz took charge in July 2023 and the Nov 2024 salary data that was just posted (late of course) at https://ir.uoregon.edu/employees/salary-reports ?

In Jan 2023 faculty had just got a 2% across-the-board raise, and were eligible for a 3% merit pool in Jan 2024. Let’s compound and include an allowance for promotion raises and round it up to 7% over two years.

Of course things were a little different for the friends of President Scholz. Here are the Nov 2022 and Nov 2024 salaries for Jamie and Michael Moffitt:

Jamie Moffit got a 15% raise to $501,010, her husband got 12% to $317,520, plus a $25K Knight chair. He’s listed as Law faculty but from what I can tell really teaches undergrads in the Honors College with no research expectations.

This was on top of 8% and 7% raises the previous year when regular faculty got 5%. And of course Jamie Moffit has a second job at Summit Bank – thanks to UO Foundation President Paul Weinhold, who’s their Chairman of the Board on the side. No info on what he pays her, it’s not a public corporation.

Feel free to dig through the UO salary reports to find other examples of President Scholz’s generosity. Pro tip: search for “EEO CATEGORY Senior Administrators” or “EEO CATEGORY Executive Admins”.

Or if he does he’s not saying it to RG reporter Miranda Cyr, whose report on the lack of progress on salary in mediation is here. In fact he didn’t even talk to her; our philosopher-provost has spokespeople to do that for him. A snippet:

… yada yada.

The University of Oregon Administration has been bringing student conduct charges against students involved in protesting Gaza. Its actions have raised––and continue to raise––serious questions about the violation of due process and respect for students. I am an emeritus professor of the University of Oregon who left in 2010 for…

As for me, I’m shocked to think that our elected representatives’ prior would be that anyone would tell them the truth in this sort of hearing. And as former UO Senate President, I can confirm that Mike’s smirk was an obvious tell that only a chump – or someone playing with someone else’s money – would ignore:

Full story here.

Despite years of opposition from the UO Senate and Faculty Union over costs, refusal to share documents and plans, and constant ridicule from at least one real philosopher, soon after his hiring President Scholz signed on with a consulting company to take charge of tracking faculty for tenure and promotion.…

I admire our cat Mowgli’s insouciant disrespect for the law of trespass:  

That would of course be Oregon State, with an informative email and detailed list below. Here at UO, our Government Relations Office hasn’t even updated its blog since August.