Dear Colleagues: We have a difficult message to share with you today about the financial outlook for our institution. Over the last several months, the university’s budget has been adversely affected by several factors, including sweeping changes to federal research funding, limited state support, and shortfalls in non-resident enrollment projections.…
UO Matters
At the Wayne Morse Center, “with invited faculty from Stanford.” OMG. From Stanford. How embarrassing. Of course to quote Senator Morse speaking about the campus protests against Vietnam, which really did “create disruptions and threaten health and safety”:
“I don’t think you have any idea of the power that you exercise on issues before the Congress. My plea is we’ve got to think of the future…your future, and we’ve got to come to grips with the issues that are going to confront your generation.”
But that was then. Now? President Scholz wants Provost Long to earn his paycheck by putting his name to this email from UO’s lawyers and PR flacks, and apparently Long needs the money:
Response to Student Worker Union Disruptions
Dear UO employees,
The University of Oregon firmly supports free expression, peaceful protest, and legal strike activities. These are essential rights protected by the First Amendment and core to our identity as a public institution of higher education. But those rights do not extend to behaviors that intimidate others, obstruct essential operations, or create conditions of physical threat or other harm to those in our community.
Over the past several days, protest activities organized by the University of Oregon Student Workers union (UOSW) have disrupted three important university events, two of which were private: the first hosted by the Division of Equity and Inclusion and the Office of Human Resources about employee engagement, the second, by Admissions designed to deliver college preparation resources to high school students, including those from underrepresented backgrounds, and the third, a Conversation on Democracy’s Future, sponsored by the School of Global Studies and Languages and Department of Political Science–as well as the Global Studies Institute and the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics–with invited faculty from Stanford and members of the public.
During these disruptions, protesters created a threat to health and safety by exceeding fire marshal occupancy limits, blocking exits and intimidating participants, which included invited guests and minors. Protestors also used amplified sound indoors and at volumes that not only violated the sound policy but also intimidated and caused physical pain to some attendees, including those with hearing devices.
In addition — and notably — protesters have interfered with the delivery of food and essential medication, affecting fellow students who depend on these deliveries. This includes interrupting and preventing a planned distribution of produce to food-insecure students.
These disruptions violate university policy, community norms, health and safety codes, and, potentially, applicable law. They are neither protected speech nor part of lawful protected work stoppage action. Actions taken by these protesters also threaten the integrity, safety, and inclusivity of our campus. They are especially troubling when they target programs aimed at supporting our most vulnerable and historically underserved communities.
The university is actively reviewing these incidents and will take all appropriate action, including possible legal and disciplinary action.
Our commitment to free speech is unwavering, but so is our responsibility to maintain a secure, respectful, and welcoming campus for all. These actions cross a line between peaceful protest and actions that infringe upon the rights and safety of others.
The university continues to come to the bargaining table in good faith. The most recent bargaining updates and FAQs can be found on the HR website.
Sincerely,
Christopher P. Long
Provost and Senior Vice President
Mark Schmelz
Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer
UO General Counsel Kevin Reed in 2019:
… Indeed, the Faculty Club has earned a reputation on campus as being an exclusionary group, dominated by white men. Exactly the sort of “good ole boys club” I think the Senate would want to distance itself from. …
This was received with well deserved ridicule – see the comments here, e.g.:
Wait, could this possibly be the SAME Kevin Reed whose SUV (parked in a privileged spot at the heart of campus) is ostentatiously plastered with “old-boy” Harvard and UVA stickers?
I wonder if poor Kevin actually objects to clubs, or if he’s just ticked off that there’s a club to which his extraordinary privilege doesn’t gain him entry?
Sour grapes anyone?
But now UO’s Student Workers have shut it down – not because they think pretending to be woke will help them, but simply because they want more money:
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The Emerald has more on the strike here.
And this despite all the money he let his VP for marketing Carol Keese spend trying to game it:
Q: Are university of oregon administrators overpaid?
Claude: Based on my research, here’s what I found about University of Oregon administrator salaries: …
In summary, while the data doesn’t definitively answer whether UO administrators are “overpaid,” it does show that administrator salaries at UO are nearly at parity with peer institutions (99.4% of AAU averages), while faculty salaries rank at the bottom of comparable universities. This suggests a significant prioritization of administrative compensation over faculty compensation at the University of Oregon.
They want to apply the Chatham House Rule, which would prevent a PI from telling their grant officer, say, “but I just followed the advice I got from my university’s general counsel.”
Sort of reminds me of this classic.
Now he’s offering 12.75%, and a $2000 goat. It turns out he was kidding about only giving merit too – now it’s 9.75% ATB and 3% merit. What a funny guy.
Here’s hoping the union members vote to take this offer and then get to work helping Jamie Moffitt find out where all the GF money that used to go to faculty pay has been disappearing to.
In exchange the union agreed to end the TRP program for TTF. The university believes this is an expensive program because their simplistic analysis does not consider the secondary effects of ending it – faculty will simply delay retirement for a year or two instead of working 3-5 years part time. Ending TRP will hurt the shrinking number of TTF in PERS most, because they won’t get the 6% raise that pumped up their lifetime annuity payments. I don’t think that will actually save UO much, because if I understand the formula that determines how much UO pays into PERS it’s based on salaries, not annuity payments. So UO will subsidize the many other state agencies that have programs like TRP, while screwing over our own faculty. Whoops.
If you *were* thinking about the TRP you’ll have until the end of 2025 to sign up and get the 6% raise, then you have up to 3 years until you start teaching part time. And be sure to get your teaching/service commitments from your dean in writing and ask the union to check it over for you. They sure helped me!
UAUO email below the break:
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
The data:
The yada-yada from today’s admin email:
Colleagues,
As we enter the cooling-off period in our negotiations with United Academics, we are writing to share the details of our offer, and the context that has informed our thinking throughout this process.
We value our faculty.
They are the heart of our university and vital to our ability to fulfill our mission as a public university to teach, conduct research, and develop new and applied knowledge to benefit society. We also recognize the desire and the need for a fair contract that invests in our faculty and sustains the long-term viability of our university community.
An offer in line with peers and colleagues.
At the same time, we must also be responsible stewards of the university’s financial resources. Our offer will put significant financial pressure on our already strained budget and is informed by benchmarking from across higher education. Some salient points:
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- 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.
Our offer to United Academics:
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- 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.
The need for fiscal stewardship
Like universities across the nation, the University of Oregon faces significant economic headwinds. These include declining high-school aged population, competition from other colleges and universities, cost pressures from the federal government and state policy, and under-investment in higher education at the state level.
We, along with our colleagues at the AAU, APLU, and Big Ten Academic Alliance, continue to assess the potential impact of a number of federal actions and executive orders. This includes a potential cap on indirect funding from grants, reimbursements that cover a portion of universities’ facilities and administrative costs. If this or similar actions move forward, universities across the country stand to lose billions in funding. Many of our AAU peers, as well as universities across the country, have already issued financial austerity measures in anticipation of the potential loss of revenue.
In a period of uncertainty, we need to steward our resources wisely, balancing the needs of faculty, staff, students, and our many constituents, and continuing to ensure the financial stability of our university.
A fair and responsible offer.
The strength and stability of the University’s future depends on the decisions we make in the next few years. We support the right of our faculty to organize and to negotiate for increases as part of the next contract. However, those increases can only be made within the university’s financial means and cannot come at the expense of other employee groups at the UO, or at the expense of the students we are here to serve. We believe our offer is both fair and responsible and we urge United Academics to accept this offer and create a strong and stable future for our students, faculty, and university community.
Sincerely,
Christopher P. Long
Provost and Senior Vice President
Provost and Senior Vice President
Mark Schmelz
Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer
Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer
Find more information on the financial challenges facing UO, the need for fiscal stewardship, and our discussions with UA.
* If ratification takes place on or before the 15th of a month, the increase will be applied back to the 1st of the ratification month, if ratification takes place after the 15th of a month, the increase will be applied the 1st of the month following ratification.
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:*
| Role | Nov 2023 | Nov 2024 | raise |
| President | $725,000 | $747,000 | 3.03% |
| Provost | $489,250 | $561,600 | 14.79% |
| CFO | $465,000 | $501,010 | 7.74% |
| CAS Dean | $381,100 | $408,235 | 7.12% |
| COD Dean | $278,512 | $298,342 | 7.12% |
| LCB Dean | $427,450 | $531,440 | 24.33% |
| SOMD Dean | $289,224 | $300,793 | 4.00% |
| SOJC Dean | $310,648 | $332,766 | 7.12% |
| COE Dean | $345,000 | $369,564 | 7.12% |
| VP E&I | $319,300 | $344,027 | 7.74% |
| Sr Vice Prov for Acad Affairs | $283,317 | $306,800 | 8.29% |
| VP Advancement | $550,000 | $572,000 | 4.00% |
| Grad School Dean | $214,240 | $231,723 | 8.16% |
| Vice Provost International | $283,317 | $303,490 | 7.12% |
| VP Student Life | $267,800 | $321,360 | 20.00% |
| CHC Dean | $242,907 | $270,400 | 11.32% |
| Libraries Dean | $235,664 | $265,200 | 12.53% |
| General Counsel | $396,279 | $424,494 | 7.12% |
| VP Research | $381,100 | $408,235 | 7.12% |
| CIO | $339,900 | $379,701 | 11.71% |
| Totals | $7,225,008 | $7,878,180 | |
| Averages | $361,250 | $393,909 | 9.37% |
* 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.