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Union Discussion

For discussions regarding the proposed faculty/instructor/administrator union. Our previous union posts are here. The union organizing committee site is here.

282 Comments

  1. Anonymous 12/02/2009

    Can someone comment on the survey methodology? I’m a NTT faculty, and never had an opportunity to complete a survey.

  2. UOMatters 12/02/2009

    I only surveyed tenure track faculty. I am working on a follow up for Instructors. Any particular questions you would like to see?

  3. Anonymous 12/03/2009

    question for the NTT survey –
    If a union that included NTT faculty were to be formed, do you think that combining NTT and TT faculty into a single union would be better or worse than having a union of only NTT faculty?

  4. Anonymous 12/03/2009

    Dog says

    I more strongly favor a NTT Union
    than a TT Union

    TT people usually just abuse themselves or feel abused by the entire world – neither are adequate grounds for a Union – that’s just what we need around here – yet another faculty bitch forum.

    However, I have seen a few cases of NTT abuse by TT/Departments and I think a Union of NTT might better clarify their overall mission and purpose on campus and might produce better departmental behavior. One of the big issues is this – do NTT personnel have departmental voting rights? This varies all over campus.

  5. Anonymous 12/15/2009

    Today’s Chronicle article relates an obvious truth: adjunct discontent creates opportunities for organizing. But I wonder whether unions actually solve the issues about which NTT faculty are concerned. There’s an interesting web site worth seeing: http://www.adjunctnation.com/blogs/part-time-thoughts/?cat=19

    I wonder if a union would simply be another source of NTT discontent.

  6. Anonymous 12/31/2009

    Kudos on getting the parking contract with the inimitable Dave F! And then the memo from Herb Horner (who of course is just doing what he’s told, I know how he really feels about the parking situation) — it is beyond belief.

    And they wonder why there’s support for a union! I’m strongly opposed myself. Maybe I should reconsider? No, UO may be hopeless, but there’s no sense jumping into the muck just out of spite. Retirement is coming soon enough!

  7. Anonymous 01/04/2010

    Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!

  8. Anonymous 01/19/2010

    UAUO seems to be basing much of their appeal to faculty on the fact that UO faculty salaries fall below comparator institutions. That led me to wonder if our union-represented colleagues at other institutions are faring better. Apparently not. The PSU-AAUP blog decries the fact that those faculty also are at the bottom of their list of comparator institutions – and they pay union dues. Not a very compelling argument in favor of unionization. See: http://www.psuaaup.net/blog/2009/04/how-is-psu-faculty-doing.html

  9. Anonymous 01/19/2010

    This statement appeared on the PSU-AAUP Labor Blog (http://www.psuaaup.net/blog/labels/bargaining.html): “There is no doubt that it would be advantageous for the Oregon University System, which controls negotiations with PSU faculty, to do what it can — in a union-busting sort of way — to make certain that UO and OSU faculty are perceived to suffer less than PSU faculty, especially since organizing efforts are currently being made on those campuses.” Seems like a strong argument against unionization…

  10. Anonymous 01/20/2010

    Faculty at Western and Eastern, both represented by AFT, have very competitive salaries, even though Eastern has had serious financial problems. Keep in mind that OUS and the UO administration might play nice at UO and OSU for a while to hold off the union, but will go back to business as usual when they feel there isn’t the threat of unionization. Our salaries may improve once or twice under the Provost’s plan, but will there be a sustained effort to keep our salaries competitive? I don’t think so. Seems to be a good argument for unionization.

  11. Anonymous 01/20/2010

    I know a few faculty at both Eastern and Western, and they’d take issue with the assertion that salaries there are “very competitive” (to say nothing of their annoyance with having to pay AFT dues). As long as UO administration “plays nice,” I see no need to join the ranks of the dues-paying. If things go back to “business as usual,” then considering alternatives might make sense.

  12. Anonymous 01/20/2010

    The individual making the claim that faculty salaries at WOU and EOU are very competitive needs to review the union’s web site. Posted there is a Register Guard article from 6/15/09 that contains this statement: “Western Oregon University, Southern Oregon University and Eastern Oregon University are 11th, 12th and 13th, respectively, in their group of 13 comparable universities.” Apparently, AFT representation has not helped those faculty any more than AAUP representation has helped faculty at PSU.

  13. SocSci 01/21/2010

    What does the previous commenter mean by “continue to play nice”? So far I can’t see any evidence Lariviere has done anything, nice or not. Bean is a bit more efficient than Linda Brady, but that’s not exactly worth praising. Seriously – what specific things are you thinking of?

  14. Anonymous 01/21/2010

    The person arguing that salaries are “very competitive” at EOU and WOU also initiated use of “play nice.” Perhaps he/she can explain the meaning.

  15. Anonymous 01/21/2010

    Finally, a billboard on Franklin with a message other than GO DUCKS. I know you are burned out on sports but the arena no bid contract story today in the Emerald today is quite compelling.

  16. Anonymous 01/25/2010

    Dog Barks about Privatization (a word that dogs have trouble spelling)

    It ain’t gonna happen here at the UO unless the UO jettisons all of the sciences (which it should as so few undergraduates get degrees in the so called STEM fields) and commits itself to having a 7-8 thousand student body, oriented towards traditional liberal arts and then charges them Bennington like tuition.

    In addition, if the UO actually did this, they would be taking an enormous step backwards in terms of what a modern day University should look like in terms of curriculum and programs (not that our current trajectory – wait, we don’t even have a trajectory so nevermind).

    So, bark, bark, bark, privatization is a ludicrous idea at our current state of student enrollment.

  17. Anonymous 02/06/2010

    On 1/25 I received an email from the University Senate President and Faculty Advisory Council Chair inviting me to attend “a non-partisan, informational town hall meeting” on 2/5. The email was a lie (what then should we conclude about its authors?). The first speaker (who was not mentioned in the email but is described on the union web site as “Gordon Sayre (Professor of English, United Academics),” presented reasons he feels faculty at UO should unionize. Non-partisan? D. Park and L. King then acknowledged that they are required to be “neutral” and recited facts related to union organizing and bargaining. Finally, M. Tedesco, who probably could sell hand warmers in Hades, then concluded by claiming that unionization would result in higher salaries, better benefits, job protection, and anything else our little hearts desire. Again, non-partisan? Later, when an attendee asked, “Is anyone going to discuss the possible disadvantages of unions?” Mr. Tedesco yelled “NO!” This from the same mouth that only moments before had said faculty and staff at UO need a better voice. The dishonesty of the leadership of our Senate and Faculty Advisory Committee is disturbing. But beyond that – the union wants us to trust them enough to commit to pay them whatever they decide to charge us, to live with whatever contract terms they negotiate for us, and to rely on them to be our exclusive legal representative. Do duplicitous events like this suggest such trust is warranted?

  18. Anonymous 03/09/2010

    Your 2/8 post regarding the 2/5 meeting misstates the objection I expressed in my post of 2/6. The absence of an anti-union speaker did not concern me; Professor Tublitz announcing this meeting as “non-partisan” did and still does. Sorry if I was unclear in my post, although I’d think my calling him a liar would have made the point. Also, you note that the highest paid AAUP employee made $132,793.00 last year, making it inappropriate for Mr. Park to comment on union officials’ salaries. Did you only read the financial report posted for AAUP and miss the one for AFT? That report shows that last year the retiring AFT president was paid $177,640.00 plus $21,007.00 in post-retirement fees and was given the title to his company car, a 2007 Lincoln, while the incoming president was paid $208,056.00. The year before, the president was paid $390,783.00. Teachers’ dues funded all of that. Lastly, I agree: there are too many administrators who make too much money and, in some cases, are too inept. But would bringing in a union fix any of that? Their salaries would not be negotiated; ours would. Can the union show us just one instance of administrator salaries being lowered as a result of unionization or contract bargaining for faculty? It’s an issue intended to make us angry so that we stop thinking and drink the union cool-aid.

  19. uomatters 03/10/2010

    I didn’t check the AFT site. The AFT is a huge organization – how many members do they have? Half a million? These salaries hardly seem out of line.

    But your point about what the union can do about overpaid, incompetent UO administrators is exactly on target. Unions don’t have a reputation for dealing with this. It would be good to hear some stories from the unionized research universities about whether they have done anything to reduce administrative bloat. I’m not holding my breath though.

  20. Anonymous 03/12/2010

    I’m sick of any union trying to round up all of the NTTF, TTF, OAs and ORs all into one group in a “wall-to-wall” blanket. OAs, like myself hardly have the same concerns as NTTF and TTFs. Be that as it may, I see unions as a detriment to society as a whole. Reasons:
    1. Unions reward the lazy employee. Pay should be based on merit. Period.
    2. Unions want to make you feel that you’re getting screwed by management. Remember, your employer hired you to do a job. Be thankful for that job. If you don’t like your job, find another!
    3. Unions extort (that’s right, extort) money from you monthly in the form of “union dues” or “fair share” fees. I don’t need ANYONE to protect nor represent me for anything. I take responsibility for my own actions. These monies go to lobby political groups that I wouldn’t let my dog be around.
    4. Trying to get rid of “dead-wood” or otherwise unproductive employee should be the sole responsibility of the employer. If you’re not holding up your end of the job, your employer should have the right to terminate you.
    5. Unions foster bitterness between management and union employees.
    6. Our state is monetarily broke. Where is the money going to come from to fund these expected raises and benefits promised by unions? Turnips don’t bleed money.
    7. If you’re whining because your pay is low, look in the mirror. Ask yourself, “Am I doing my best every day?” Chances are your pay reflects your attitude.
    8. Unions have outlived their use. We have federal and state laws currently on the books regarding number of hours worked, overtime, holidays etc.
    9. Unions fund primarily election campaign of Democrats. Hello?! Some of us have different political views.
    10. Where’s the fairness when unions try to indoctrinate “everyone” regardless if there are many who want nothing to do with unions.
    11. Unions life blood is money. You can expect dues to rise. Are you willing to succumb to extortion?

  21. Anonymous 03/14/2010

    Dog response to previous 11 Point list from OA-Anonymous.

    I am not in favor of the Union at least partially for some of the reasons enumerated on that list. But mostly I am not in favor of the Union because its reactionary in Nature and is not a proactive tactic of improving things around here.

    I would like to response to these notions, however:

    Pay should be based on merit. – Only when merit is evaluated in a proper and fair manner. That does not happen in my department.

    Trying to get rid of “dead-wood” or otherwise unproductive employee should be the sole responsibility of the employer. –> have you ever tried to fire a classified staff person here?

    If you’re whining because your pay is low, look in the mirror. Ask yourself, “Am I doing my best every day? –> boy is there a lot of cultural baggage associated with what is essentially an accusation. Yes, I try to do my best in my job performance at the UO but no one cares about that or properly evaluates what “best” means. OA-anonymous seems to be under the impression that if one does indeed do their best then that gets noticed and rewarded at the UO. NO IT DOESN’T.

    I do agree with the central premise that you can’t lump all disgruntled UO employees into the same Union bin, which is what is being attempted here.

  22. Anonymous 03/14/2010

    Concerning out administrations growth in salaries and numbers. Really what’s going on is the people on the top of the ladder want to make a lot of money and if they’re going to make a lot of money, they have got to pay the people under them a lot of money and make it impossible for them to speak up about the “behind closed doors” dealings.
    Then this same administration defends themselves to the rest of campus on their outrageous salary expansion on their expanded portfolio and responsibilities (which they created). I don’t know what the legal definition is for “Using the power of your office for personal gain” but it looks like its happening here. I mean….DF creating a position for himself that no one in past history has held???? Come on!!!

  23. Anonymous 03/17/2010

    The posting states “Since that statement he and Bean have piled on a lot of new administrative hiring, while faculty pay is frozen. Why? Some people think it’s because Brad Shelton’s long-delayed budget model will reduce administrative growth, and they are trying to grandfather in everything they can first.”

    Correct. The administrative changes have been going on now for 5 years plus. I don’t think they thought that anyone would figure out what they were doing so quickly and they would be able to complete their plan without conflict. It didn’t happen that way so now they are in a rush to complete their plan before it all crashes in on them..ie…becoming a corporation…that is why DF is lobbying in Salem to make it lawful for Universities to be corporations. (Begs the question…is making the changes into a corporation styled administration legal right now? Hummm I think not or DF wouldn’t be lobbying for it. Remember the comment “it makes doing business easier” that DF blurted out in a heated discussion during that last Spring Senate meeting?

    Remember please: faculty pay may be frozen but those people in classified positions that get paid thousands less that you are being forced into taking furlough days. Everyone is paying for what the administration has done and is still doing.

  24. Anonymous 03/20/2010

    What in the hell was Pres. Laderriere thinking when he honored this blatant payoff to Bellotti after 9 tumultuous months as AD?!? How can it be legal for the university to pay out 2.3 million in the form of a golden parachute to Bellotti on the basis of a verbal agreement with Dave (“The University is my personal treasure chest”) Frohnmayer? The university has become something far worse than a corporation–it is a plutonomy for upper administrators to become as rich as possible no matter what impact it has on the rest of the university.

  25. Anonymous 03/21/2010

    I’m really confused. Did Bellotti quit voluntarily or was he fired? If the former, why the golden parachute? If the latter, where is the contract? Was this contract publicly available beforehand?

    With the Athletic Department apparently having financial difficulties, and a real possibility of trouble servicing its debt when the new Arena bond payments start very soon, this kind of dealing with athletic management personnel must not be allowed to continue in the future.

    It’s not just an ethical/public relations issue for the University, it’s becoming a financial issue as well.

  26. Anonymous 03/22/2010

    Dog says

    Belotti was not fired and had essentially signed his deal with ESPN around mid February. Overall, tho, I do think the whole situation is strange, having been only on the job for 8 months and having the possibility to oversee the most expensive college basketball infrastructure in the country. I have a strong suspicion that there has been financial mismanagement in athletics that Belotti is just bailing from.

    How About Dave F for our new AD? (

  27. Anonymous 03/23/2010

    Bellotti was fired no doubt – there’s no golden parachute for one who simply chooses to follow his bliss. I imagine the knife in his back has the same prints as the one that brought down Moos. Another feather in their cap as they try to claw their way into the AD chair. Too bad Uncle Phil isn’t paying the credit card for their “shopping trip” these last 3 years.

  28. Anonymous 03/24/2010

    I’ve heard from someone in the loop that the verbal agreement was between Dave F and Bellotti – I don’t know why Lariviere is covering for those buffoons (maybe he needs their cooperation to get to the bottom of things). I also heard that no Bellotti wasn’t fired, but Lariviere was happy to have him leave.

  29. Anonymous 03/24/2010

    My guess is as poor as anyone’s. Here goes. Dave F made some kind of agreement, verbal for who knows what reasons. Larivierre realizes that UO is looking like a stinking piece of dead meat right now, and decided he had to get rid of Bellotti, or at least wanted to. But there was some kind of agreement, and he didn’t want Bellotti going to the press and the coursts with who-knows-what. So, he “honors” the “agreement”. For some reason, he takes the fall for Dave F on this verbal agreement thing.

    Bolt is talking about the payout being financed by the Knight “legacy” fund. Which means the athletic department is low on money. With the bond payments for the new Arena starting soon, they better hope ticket sales are better than I’ve heard.

    The OUS and the legislature perhaps should have paid more attention to the cautions of the UO senate budget committee and others on the Arena financing.

    The whole recent business really stinks. I hope the corpse is fully unwrapped, no matter how bad the aroma.

    Who knows, maybe LaR really made this deal. In which case, maybe it’s time for his golden parachute to open!

  30. Anonymous 03/25/2010

    Dave Frohnmayer had nothing to do with the Bellotti agreement. The 3/24/10 RG
    article confirms this. But UOmatters wrote on 3/20/10 that Frohnmayer and
    Kilkenny apparently struck this deal. This might be a good time to ask
    questions about other comments concerning Frohnmayer that UOmatters continues to
    print .

    1. The statement that Frohnmayer received $186,000 for expenses. Seems like a
    very high amount for Services and Supplies expenses but the only indication of
    this is a copy of the budget report showing the amount in a budget line. Have
    you checked with the Budget Office to see if Frohnmayer is actually authorized
    to spend this on Supplies and Services expenses for himself or perhaps the
    Budget Office just “parked” this money in this line for some reason?

    2. The statement that Frohnmayer receives $245,000 to teach 47 students for 5
    weeks. UO matters had to correct itself once when it kept printing that
    Frohnmayer was to teach only one course. Now it continues to criticize
    Frohnmayer for teaching only 47 students. The classes are a Freshman Seminar
    and an Honors College class. Are there restrictions on how many students can
    enroll in these classes? Not sure how UO matters comes up with the 5 weeks as
    Frohnmayer taught the 2 classes during the entire Winter term.

    3. Frohnmayer’s annual salary is not only for teaching but for a sabbatical
    leave during fall term and an educational leave in the spring as his contract
    indicates. After how many years are faculty allowed to take a sabbatical leave
    with pay? How many leaves did Frohnmayer take during his 15 years as president
    and tenured professor of law? It seems like a typical arrangement for presidents
    to secure a leave after years of service in the presidency such as is included
    in Lariviere’s contract that you have linked to in UO matters giving Lariviere
    1.7 months of sabbatical leave for every year that he completes as president.

  31. Anonymous 03/25/2010

    How about that – a Frohnmayer apologist! Since I’m up late, I guess I get to go first…

    “Dave Frohnmayer had nothing to do with the Bellotti agreement.”
    Maybe – but he certainly was running the ship when Bellotti `would go for a couple years at a time without a written contract’ (a paraphrase from that same RG article). What was up with that?

    “Have you checked with the Budget Office to see if … the Budget Office just “parked” this money in this line for some reason?” Uh, no. But maybe you could fill us in if you know something, which you seem to with your leading question (counselor). It seems that there would be much better places to “park” it (Hey – another parking controversy!)

    “The statement that Frohnmayer receives $245,000 to teach 47 students for 5 weeks … Are there restrictions on how many students can
    enroll in these classes?” UO matters might have gotten the 5 vs. 10 wrong, but while we can ding them on that detail, the point is still valid. I know some faculty teaching a full load of high-contact courses with over 30 students for about 1/5th of what Frohnmayer is making, which brings us to:

    “Frohnmayer’s annual salary is not only for teaching but for a sabbatical leave during fall term and an educational leave in the spring as his contract
    indicates.” A sabbatical might be in line. The educational leave seems fishy (given the quality, or lack thereof, of what he has produced so far). But this along with how much of a furlough he took goes to the heart of his qualifications to teach a seminar on leadership – basking in a cushy retirement, kicking around while the rest of the place burns to the ground…

  32. Anonymous 03/25/2010

    Since you deleted most of my comment, let me ask one point again: how many sabbaticals did Frohnmayer take during his tenure as President?

  33. uomatters 03/25/2010

    Dear Anon –

    I didn’t delete any of your comment – maybe the text box overflowed?

    I don’t have the numbers but it would have been unusual for Frohnmayer to take a sabbatical as President. The purpose of a sabbatical is not rest, it’s to work on research. You propose a research plan and you make a report at the end. Frohnmayer’s plan – as I recall from a RG story – involved research on leadership. I think he said he might write a book on it.

    When President’s step down and return to research and teaching it is typical to give them a sabbatical to get them back into academic life.

    Again, as reported in the RG, Frohnmayer is using his, at least in part, to take a second job as a lawyer at Harrang Long, etc. This is not the purpose of a sabbatical!

    Faculty sabbatical contracts require the professor to stay on teaching and researching for a year after the sabbatical ends. Frohnmayer’s contract does not require this.

    At UO faculty get full pay if the teach a half -load. Frohnmayer is getting full pay for a quarter load. (UO pays for a GTF and also for Frohnmayer’s co-teacher Barbara West, who apparently does half the lectures and most of the grading).

    Frohnmayer’s retirement arrangements are not typical for academia, and in fact similar arrangements at UNC schools led to reforms. I believe the administrators in question had to return payments to the state.

  34. Anonymous 03/26/2010

    Dog Barks,

    Okay, so I was wrong and its not Dave F being appointed as Interim AD – in fact its Lorraine Davis – go figure …

  35. Anonymous 03/29/2010

    This letter appeared in the RG
    on Monday March 29 – to me its a particular good summation of the Bellotti situation from the point of
    an external observer:

    Bellotti payout answers needed

    As a Duck Athletic Fund supporter and alumnus, I am greatly troubled by the $2.3 million payout to Mike Bellotti. In my profession (city-county management) it is a serious breach of ethical conduct to voluntarily leave a managerial position less than two years after acceptance of the job. In addition, the only time that severance payments come into play is if the manager is fired. Also, it is highly irregular to pay any form of severance in the public sector when the individual is moving on to other lucrative employment. Coaches and athletic directors may fall into a different category, but as role models in the state’s flagship public university, they should abide by similar ethical, if not legal, standards of openness and fairness to the public they serve.

    I had great respect for Bellotti as a football wizard and public relations master, but we should take into account that he was already the highest paid public official in the state of Oregon’s history. As a beneficiary of the Public Employees Retirement System, taxpayers will already be footing the bill for his unprecedented retirement benefits for the remainder of his life. Shouldn’t those benefits also be made public as part of this golden parachute?

    The fact that this agreement was never reduced to writing or made public also raises serious questions that should be investigated by the attorney general’s office. Supporters of the University of Oregon deserve better. I certainly will be looking for better answers before I write my next check to the UO.

  36. Anonymous 03/30/2010

    Maybe the Attorney General will be able to figure this out, I sure can’t. Larivierre claims to have made this deal with Bellotti. But it seems the deal must have been in the works before he arrived on the scene. Why then did Larivierre put the finishing touches on it, apparently willing to take responsibility if the thing blows up, as it (almost) has?

    Did he really think an oral agreement to hand someone $2.3 million for quitting would pass muster at a public university? In a state as suspicious of government/higher education matters as Oregon? If he thought that, either there is some important reason for doing something so apparently stupid, or else he really is far dumber than he has appeared so far.

    Either way, something to get to the bottom of!

  37. Anonymous 04/20/2010

    Here’s a chance to talk to the US Department of Labor Election Supervisor in an open public telephone conference about their re-running a national officer election: today 3pm Eastern time: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/about/asc/ascrerun/

    “All interested parties are invited to participate in a pre-election conference. The pre-election conference will be held by conference call at 3:00 PM (EST) on Tuesday, April 20, 2010. The conference call dial in number is 1-888-942-9535 and the participant passcode is 63532.”

    And here’s the DOL’s public statement of what went wrong in that major election: http://www.dol.gov/olms/regs/compliance/volun_agree_2010.htm

  38. UO Matters 04/20/2010

    The above refers to an issue involving the nomination of delegates for the AAU elections this year. The AAU and AFT are co-sponsors of the UO union organizing effort.

  39. Big Bill Haywood 04/29/2010

    The union idea is burnt toast, and maybe good riddance. Now we need to work within the existing governance system – the Senate – to strengthen the voice of the faculty and make sure the administration doesn’t run amok again.

  40. Anonymous 04/29/2010

    Lariviere must have thought Bellotti had a good moral and legal case for the buyout. Did he want a lawsuit UO would lose, in which Bellotti might have spilled who knows what beans? I think he probably made the right decision, given the mess he inherited.

    But what does this say about the quality of legal thought represented by our famous law professor, esteemed Oregon attorney, former UO President (and former State Attorney General, of course)?

    I’m not a lawyer, I’m not even a would-be economist! But I have enough sense to have known that the Bellotti situation, uh, had just a tad of a fishy whiff about it.

    Now we have not only Dave but now also Melinda adding distinction to our already fiercely luminous law school.

    Must make Phil proud to have his surname out front.

  41. Anonymous 04/29/2010

    Double dipping Charles is holding a search? Signed off by AAEO Penny. AAEO Penny will sign anything, she knows who butters her bread.

  42. Anonymous 04/30/2010

    The article on the front page of the RG today is interesting and relates to UO/City of Eugene parking (cartel) related shadiness. To get more money it seems the Eugene city manager is pushing a budget plan to dramatically increase parking fees near campus. This after his planning dept. approved a UO arena building permit (and related M.O.U.) that lacks adequate parking. And then the planning director got her free tickets to the games. In his other hand he tosses the increased parking cash to the olympic trials. He is a real piece of work.

  43. Anonymous 04/30/2010

    No love here for Martinez, but after all, our esteemed Senate voted overwhelmingly for the Diversity plan right about this time time in 2006. If they had wanted to send a message about Charles, and the activities and the budget of the Diversity programs, that was the time. Instead they were silent while a bunch of “students” in guerrila (red and black as I recall) tee shirts heckled the few Senate and other people brave enough to speak out against this travesty.

    Seems like UO is getting what it wants, and deserves.

  44. Anonymous 04/30/2010

    You know, it’s easy to blame Frohnmayer for everything, and I do my share. But his history here also shows some amateurishness and bush-league behavior on the part of the OUS Board and the State.

    He was president for 15 years or so. An awfully long time to be president of a major (or “major”) state university.

    There was something awfully casual about them letting him hold the reins that long. Especially after the Phil Knight/WRC fiasco in 1999. Up until then, I thought he had done some great things. After that, it seemed like one bad thing after another. Not surprising, given all the pressure, his health problems, his other problems.

    What I’m saying is that after 5 years, they should have really looked at whether it was time, as it would be at most places, to look for some fresh blood.

    After the WRC calamity, which actually was about the 5 year mark, they really should have taken a close look at whether he was still the guy for UO.

    Duncan McDonald (then the fundraising director) took the fall for WRC. Maybe he should have, but Dave F was responsible, too.

    Keeping him another 10 years was verging on irresponsibility. With all the weird things going on at UO, especially with athletics; and with the decline of UO as an academic institution — not Dave’s fault, in my opinion, mostly beyond his control, but still, he didn’t even seem aware — with all the problems, they really should have looked for a fresh leader.

    Come to think of it, it didn’t verge on irresponsibility, it WAS.

  45. Anonymous 04/30/2010

    Dog Barks about Union:

    its worth going here for 15 minutes

    http://www.uoregon.edu/~uosenate/dirsen09/UnionizationSurvey2010.html

    If you read the results and comments of the Tenured Faculty, those of you Tenured Faculty that read this blog and are fearful of a union may feel better.

    Note also some comments made by the Tenured Faculty about the value of merit pay raise increases. This is debatable, but for the Dog’s annual report this year, the dog listed dog posts to UOmatters as a scholarly activity. Hmm – I ‘ve never actually gotten a negative raise yet …

  46. UO Matters 04/30/2010

    Dog:

    For the record, all comments on UO Matters are subject to careful peer review – if we could find a peer for you, that is.

  47. Anonymous 05/02/2010

    This is vintage Dave — blaming someone else when he is at least partly to blame, for things that are his ultimate responsibility. No “the buck stops here”, just blah-blah-blah. “What, I’m supposed to keep up on the status of a multi-million dollar golden parachute? Is this small-time stuff or what? Do people think the reputation of the University is at stake? After all, everything has been hunky-dory with the athletic department, right? And for a lousy $500K a year (not including add-ons) I’m supposed to keep track of this stuff? And why shouldn’t I blame Melinda for this. After all, Duncan McDonald took the fall on the Phil Knight WRC fiasco. Why shouldn’t it work this time?”

    I remember the diversity flap a few years back. The Diversity Director of the day had this radical plan, and Dave seemed not to have a clue what was in it right up to the time it was released. There was huge blowback even from the majority of the faculty who were in favor of some sort of revised Diversity package.

    The Bellotti business seems the same. Assume someone else is taking care of major problems, even when it’s obvious the normal processes aren’t working, then blame others when things inevitably go bad.

  48. Anonymous 05/02/2010

    When I read Dave’s comments I had visions of the three cups and a marble. We all know where the buck stops. Go ahead Dave try to hide your marble. This is the kind of hide and seek games corporate America plays. Is this why you want universities to be corporations Dave? I remember you saying once universities should be corporations because it makes doing business easier. What kind of business Dave? Screwing the public, employees and faculty? Or it makes it easier to pass the buck? Or both? Come on Dave…why don’t you just welcome us all to corporate America while the UO administration laughs at the rest of us all the way to the bank. You’ve shown your true colors and their not green and yellow.

  49. Ken K 05/02/2010

    Lariviere is now on the Bus.

  50. Anonymous 05/03/2010

    Dog Barks

    Whether or not Lariviere is a hat, and ex-jayhawk or a duck in disguise, I think is immaterial to the low support of the Union. Rather, given reflective moments, most individuals don’t see how a Union actually would benefit anyone on this campus. In addition, many faculty that I talked to around my water dish thought that if faculty were unionized there would be no more merit raises. Personally, I believe that is a silly argument against having a union, given the fact that the last significant merit raise pool was in the year 2000 (but apparently we have one this year – hey – once every 10 years).

    The main surprise of the survey is that OA’s are totally against the union and many faculty felt they would be for the union. I agree on the NTTF issue – those people are continually screwed and a Union would be good for them but the main attempt to unionize UO faculty should now be viewed as a failure and rendered now to a status of being a historically idiosyncratic event.

  51. Anonymous 05/03/2010

    “All hat” is a reference, I believe, to someone being “all hat and no cattle.”

  52. Anonymous 05/03/2010

    Thanks for explaining, Texas guy.

  53. Anonymous 05/04/2010

    Switch to semesters not a good idea. Pedagogically, I like quarters. I hear the “rationale” for this among a few legislators is that it will save money. Finals week twice per year rather than three. Fat chance it will save money! Unless they cut the school year and with it faculty pay.

  54. Anonymous 05/04/2010

    Dog Barks Profusely:

    On the Pros/Cons of semesters vs quarters in hopes of stimulating a real academic discussion on this.

    Background:

    Dog was an undergrad in a quarter system.

    Dog went to grad school in semester system.

    Dog has taught in both a semester and a Quarter System.

    Dog has experience and favors a semester system.

    Quarters:

    Pros:

    Can teach more course titles in an Academic Year and thus develop a more flexible or robust UG curriculum (in principle). This is a potential advantage for students, and I found it to be so when I was one.

    If its a bad course experience for all, for whatever reason, it only lasts 10 weeks.

    For a year long course you can probably cover more material in 3Q than in 2S, but this may be somewhat debatable.

    Cons:

    Can’t not give an adequate number of assessments in just a 10 week class to grade fairly (to me, this is a big deal)

    Sometimes have to hurry through the course material to make sure you cover the expected content (obviously this varies from class to class).

    No real built-in time to change course direction/content or to relax the pace.

    3 Weeks of Finals instead of 2 –> 50% more taxing on everyone.

    Semesters:

    Pros:

    Can have a more leisurely pace and spend more time on the harder portions of the course.

    Course is much more efficient – say it takes 3 weeks for students to acclimate to your course culture, etc. In semester system you have 12 weeks left where as in quarter system you only have 7 weeks left (again, to me, this is a big, real life deal)

    Can give more and deeper assignments.

    Can save money on energy costs if you take a long winter break.

    Cons:

    Faculty on quarters don’t like teaching in September.

    A bad class is stuck together for a much longer time.

    One University I was at had a compressed semester system (i.e. short winter break) such that spring semester ended around
    April 20 (fall Semester started beginning of Sept) –> there was concern that the state legislature would notice this and pay us for only 8 months

    On balance, to me, the ability to give more assignment and more in depth assignments allows the students to connect with the material in a more sustained way and this is why I favor a Semester system – in the end I believe its more efficient.

  55. Anonymous 05/05/2010

    I find the notion that Charles got a promotion without a position description hard to believe. When the University’s procedures for administrative promotions require not one position description but two, current and proposed see here http://ups.uoregon.edu/content/notification-intent-reorganize-promote-or-reassign-nirpr. So does this mean they promoted him without following their own procedures? Surly not one of the appropriate required approval signatures (department heads, deans\directors Vice Presidents, Senior Vice Provost or Provost’s and of course AAEO) could approve such an action without the proper paperwork? Ya think? Or are they not required to follow their own procedures? Oh well…I’m still trying to figure out how he got tenure so fast. In the real world of tenure one has to work especially hard meeting requirements to gain tenure..oh but we’re talking Charles. That changes everything…he’s an exception.

  56. Anonymous 05/06/2010

    Lariviere will give Martinez a raise. Your poll needs a 4th option.

  57. Anonymous 05/06/2010

    Bean gave him tenure last year, and was going to promote him to full this year.

  58. second hand rumor 05/07/2010

    Lariviere told Russ to take Charles off the promotion list.

  59. Duck Soup 05/08/2010

    Are they really going to give out big raises in September? Where are they going to get the money?

    Tuition increases? If so, this is not going to go over well in the current bad economic climate combined with looming state insolvency.

    Other possibilities: Stop the growth of administration relative to other campus functions. Reorient private donations (which approach a $100 million per year but contribute only a small fraction of that to operating expenses) to relieve tuition increases while allowing for growth of academic-related budgets.

  60. Anonymous 05/08/2010

    Dog Barks

    Some previous posts have dealt with the issue of salary increases.

    Bottom lines – tuition hikes coupled with significant enrollment increases without commensurate increases in instructional resources have resulted in a significant amount of “faculty raise dollars”. Currently there are lots of theories and misinformation about how this will be handled by Russ Tomlin, who is the principle person in charge. By the way, that should scare you …

    The best rumor I have heard is that no one that has been a full professor for more than 6 years will get a raise. I don’t believe this rumor, but its out there.
    I guess all those types are deadwood anyway …

  61. just amused 05/09/2010

    Most of the money will go to equity raises designed to get the departmental averages by rank to the peer average for that field and rank. This will cost $10 million per year when fully implemented, which will take 4 years or so. Most of the raises will got to fulls, since they are the farthest behind.

    Tomlin’s plan is to grade the faculty on an A++. A+, A, A-, B scale (I’m not kidding) and distribute a small merit raise as well. This is controversial because the merit evaluations are time consuming, subjective, and contentious, and probably not worth the bother for a few hundred bucks.

    No one yet knows how the administration will handle their own raises. Provost Bean thinks the equity gap is bigger for the senior administrators than for the faculty. In terms of merit, obviously they are all A++’s, Jim and Russ included.

  62. UO Matters 05/09/2010

    Really, just amused? No one knows? I’m willing to bet that the first thing Jim Bean did was figure out a scheme to make sure he and the rest get fat raises from this pot.

  63. Anonymous 05/09/2010

    dog barks back

    “Just Amused writes”

    “Most of the money will go to equity raises designed to get the departmental averages by rank to the peer average for that field and rank.”

    Yes this is the general understanding and in principle is simple to implement.

    So this is simple to implement:

    Department Y has 5 full professors in that and, compared to some peer average at that rank, the department is 28,000 behind. Therefore, give each full professor 28,000/5 = 5600 increase
    in base salary.

    But, because this is Tomlin, this
    straightforward procedure will be
    maximally uberscrewed.

  64. Anonymous 05/09/2010

    Dog Clarity:

    Let me expand a bit on what a dog means by uberscrewed.

    Suppose that we have the Department of Political Embellishment (hereafter DOPE).

    The national average full professor salary in various DOPEs is 90K

    The UO DOPE has 3 full professors.

    Prof. X is a very productive DOPE and makes 100K per year

    Prof. Y is a national average DOPE and makes 90 K per year

    Prof Z. is an intrinsic dope in DOPE and makes 50K per year

    Total DOPE Prof Salary = 240 K
    against the equivalent national standard of 270K

    solution: give Prof X,Y and even Z a 10 K raise

    Uberscrew concern:

    Prof Z gets a 30K raise and therefore UO DOPE has achieved equity

  65. Anonymous 05/10/2010

    Dead wrong dude. The unionization effort is alive and well. Why would they leave when just the threat of a union has caused Admin to suggest raises this fall?

  66. Ted 05/10/2010

    Just got this little gem forwarded to me (below). I feel ill. Shall we protest?

    ____

    Why do some people make a difference in the world? What leads some to believe their actions can cause valuable and profound effects? Listen in on brothers John and Dave Frohnmayer as they discuss what led two boys from Medford to believe they were capable of living positive and dynamic lives of influence.

    On Tuesday, May 25th at 7 pm the Frohnmayer brothers will sit down for a public dialogue as part of Overhear’s [1] Leaders Engaging in Authentic Dialogue (LEAD) series sponsored by UO’s Holden Leadership Center. The conversation will be held in the first floor lecture hall of the Jaqua Center for Student Athletes. It is free and open to the public. For more
    info call 541.513.7455.

    Chris Daradics

    weoverhear.com [2]

  67. Anonymous 05/11/2010

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

  68. Anonymous 05/11/2010

    The recent link to salaries didn’t clarify this for me, so I’ll ask. Does anyone know how medical school faculty salaries are treated in these surveys? For instance, U. of Michigan has a huge medical school, and medical school faculty are often paid high salaries, particularly if they have appointments in the hospital giving care as part of their job.

  69. Anonymous 05/11/2010

    Dog responds:

    Medical Schools are like Law Schools – separate salary structures and separate salary comparators. Those faculty are generally not (and should generally not) be included in any “average salary at some rank”

    Indeed it is now customary to separate out all professional schools in salary reporting and comparisons.

  70. Anonymous 05/11/2010

    actually retract that last dog statement please. In viewing
    the AAUP survey I am, my dogself,
    a bit confused.

    The listed value of 103K for the UO
    Full Prof Salary has got to include
    our Law School Profs. Doesn’t it?

  71. Duck Soup 05/12/2010

    Have to laugh at Senator Majority Leader Devlin’s touching concern about “quality.” This has been such a high Legislature priority! They have achieved so much over the decades!

    “Senate Majority Leader Richard Devlin, D-Tualatin, former co-chairman of the higher education subcommittee for the House Ways and Means Committee, said he is open to changes in the relationship between higher education and the Legislature. But legislators are not going to give up control over issues such as protecting access, affordability and quality in the state’s universities, he said.”

  72. Anonymous 05/12/2010

    UO MATTERS has expressed an understandable degree of cynicism regarding the State-mandated Faculty Governance at UO. As things stand now, prior to any re-imagining of UO, the teaching faculty has the opportunity to adopt a UO Constitution that protects faculty authority to the limit of State law. Notably, two features of the constitution protect the faculty from being brushed off by Prexy.
    1. Any legislation passed by the Senate takes effect at a fixed data, unless the President is expressly unwilling to accept it. Should he so express, he must take the next step:
    2. Prexy must convene the full Faculty. Should the Faculty then produce legislation unacceptable to Prexy, he shall issue a veto. If the Chancellor fails to uphold the veto in writing within 60 days, the legislation passed by the Faculty will take effect.
    Given the inconvenience of convening the full Faculty (with a 50% quorum mandated by the new Constitution), these provisions will promote serious negotiations on the Senate floor, making Senate meetings both more fruitful and more interesting than they have been in the recent past.
    OldMan encourages attendance at the 4PM Faculty Meeting on May 19 to ensure adoption (with amendment as deemed necessary) of this remarkable UO Constitution.

  73. Anonymous 05/13/2010

    “New Partnership” proposed ? They could not think of a less worn out phrase than that ? Well the RG supports this bonding scheme so it must be right. After all, it was the brilliant RG who recommended Goldschmidt as OUS chair (along with the Oregonian) just before his sustainable self-destruction.

  74. Anonymous 05/13/2010

    @two comments ago: more Senate say is great in theory, but in practice? I wouldn’t trust our university senate to competently run a McDonalds or a preschool, much less our university.

  75. Anonymous 05/14/2010

    Dog Verifies

    Okay, I went to the original source on 2009-10 faculty salaries at different institutions:

    http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/comm/rep/Z/ecstatreport09-10/

    As suspected, for the University of Oregon the relevant note reads as follows:

    16. Includes faculty in schools or programs of law and business.

    so the 103K average full professor salary will include professors in the Law School – I suspect that raises the average by 8-10

    From the same report I have cut and pasted the situation just for oregon – not sure if this gets formatted correctly or not in the Comments.

    It won’t
    so let me put the data in here by hand for average full professor
    salaries:

    UO 103.0
    OSU 93.9
    PSU 93.6
    SOU 68.8 (yes that’s right – screw Shakespeare)

    Reed 105.9
    Willamette 108.5
    U. Portland 86.2
    Linfield 78.5

  76. Duck Soup 05/14/2010

    The devil is in the details, but the Lariviere plan sounds like a “good deal for the state of Oregon”, as Lariviere has said. Not just for UO. Why? The state gets a diminishing obligation, over time, in real dollars, to fund UO — the interest on the bonds will decline in real cost over the 30 year period. Meaning more money for other state programs, including the struggling OUS campuses that in effect are now being subsidized by UO.

    It’s also a good deal because there’s an $800 million private endowment that goes with the $800 million in state bonds. If Lariviere really knows how to raise that much money quickly, the state would be crazy to pass up that opportunity! I don’t know the details, but I can guess. I can also guess that the $800 million isn’t likely to materialize unless there’s a major change in UO’s relationship with the state.

    Lariviere asks, if not this plan, then what? UO (along with the other OUS campuses) has been declining for decades, because of the poor state support. Further decline is inevitable unless something changes. I don’t see increasing state support in the future, I see less.

    So this appears to be an imaginative plan that will benefit not just UO, but the entire state.

    The Lariviere plan has apparently gotten a “chilly reception” from various state officials. I hope they take a closer look before passing up what may be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

  77. Anonymous 05/14/2010

    Dog, thanks for the follow-up. It does look like some Universities include the professional colleges. Business faculty also bring the average up, I think. I also confirmed medical schools are excluded. Good to know!

  78. Anonymous 05/15/2010

    As anonymous said…@two comments ago: more Senate say is great in theory, but in practice? I wouldn’t trust our university senate to competently run a McDonalds or a preschool, much less our university.

    Ok we can always let the administration run everything…see how far that gets you. You would have the pleasure of watching them put education second to their well deserved raises. Not like they haven’t been doing themselves that pleasure for the last few years anyway. I am going to step our here and say..your not a member of the Senate and more than likely a member of our ever enjoyable administration with that point of view. Would not be a surprise.

  79. Duck Soup 05/15/2010

    I think — at least I hope — that after the initial rather negative reaction, the state officials will see that this could be a very good deal for the whole state, not just UO. For the reasons I noted in an earlier post.

    Lariviere, John Chalmers (of the business school), others are to be commended for coming up with this imaginative, positive plan.

    It appears that Lariviere is willing to discuss and sell the plan, perhaps with modifications (especially the possible problems with running up against the state’s overall bonding limitations).

    If the state is really willing to walk away from an $800 million infusion of new endowment, then things are worse off here than I even I imagined.

    If the plan goes nowhere, Lariviere should be in good position to go some place that is more open to innovative thinking.

  80. UO Matters 05/15/2010

    I agree with Duck Soup – new leadership and new ideas.

  81. Roast Duck! 05/15/2010

    The NYT article about alternatives to college is a bit misleading. Forget that some of the principals — Richard Vedder, Charles Murray — are skeptical (Murray) to bitterly hateful (Vedder, who discovered his hatred of higher education after decades at Ohio U. as an econ prof) about higher ed.

    The Obama proposals to increase the number of US “college grads” to the level of Canada include community college associate degrees and even 1-year certifications in vocational fields (which e.g. LCC offers in many areas). It would require raising the minority completion rate to the white level. A tall order, to be sure, but if we can’t do it, what is the future of the country?

    Of course, 4-year college is not for everyone. I would be the first to say raise admissions standards, and especially, raise performance standards once students are enrolled. Get rid of the bottom 20% at UO, the complete goofballs, and it would be a much better place.

    But without some kind of post-secondary higher education — 4-year college, CC, or vocational — most kids are going to be screwed. Meaning all of us!

  82. Anonymous 05/16/2010

    Dog Says

    To Roast Duck and Others

    Read this:

    Our underachieving colleges: a candid look at how much students learn and why they should be
    learning more.

    By Derek Bok

    and then revisit the question of
    the relevancy of our current higher ed curriculum.

    And don’t blow this off just because it was written by the Flamboyant Bok.

    Yes the book (first published in 2006) is controversial but it does
    have real point and a real substance.

    One salient quote:

    If colleges (continue to) mis-educate their students, the nation will eventually suffer the consequences. If they can do a better job of helping their students communicate with greater precision and style, think more clearly, analyze more rigorously, become more ethically discerning, be more knowledgeable and active in civic affairs, society will be much the better for it.

    While the above quote is bloody obvious, Bok’s book nevertheless details how we are not doing much of this anymore in Higher Ed.

  83. Roast Duck 05/16/2010

    dog — please take a look again at what I wrote about admissions standards, performance standards.

    I do agree there’s a lot that could be improved about the curriculum. But I guarantee, my preferences would not be everyone’s. Derek Bok is not a favorite of mine, but in my own teaching, I try to accomplish at least something in several of the lines he emphasizes. Nobody has complained lately that my classes are too easy or content-free. I recommend the same for others.

    While we’re debating the curriculum for the next 20 – 60 years, the students are being born and growing up and having their own kids. Some of us may even be getting older! Given the way the world is going, I don’t see much hope for them with just a high school education.

  84. a wild and crazy duck 05/16/2010

    The $800 million endowment match is mentioned by the astute. Here’s another thing: with semi-independent status, there could be a lot more in the future than that $800 million, wherever it is coming from.

    As it is, major donors are crazy to put big bucks into UO endowment. Because the income will just be used to justify cutting the state contribution to UO and giving it to the failing OUS campuses, i.e. all the others!

    Plus, quasi-private status would make it much more appealing for donors, alumni, et al to give money to the University. The difference shows in the vastly higher alumni donation rate at private schools.

  85. UO Matters 05/16/2010

    I’m no economist, but I believe Wild and Crazy Duck has developed an interesting flip of the “crowd out” effect developed in Bergstrom, Blume, and Varian, Journal of Public Economics, 1986. Simplifying, the logic of the original crowd out argument was that taxes to pay for public goods will reduce private giving dollar for dollar, since “purely altruistic” donors have a target level of provision, and are indifferent to seeing that acheived by taxes or donations.

    His argument flips this, to argue that the state government has a target, and will (has) reduce UO’s allotment as donors give more. So why should donors give?

    Interestingly, some economists argue that if donations are motivated by warm glow altruism rather than pure altruism, then government tax funded provision of public goods will crowd out private donations at much lower than dollar for dollar rates. This is because you only get the warm glow benefit if you donate voluntarily, not if you pay a tax.

    In fact, crowd out is less than dollar for dollar empirically, and this is the standard argument in support of the warm glow model.

    But if you look at crowd out in the reverse Crazy Duck way, you see that the state dollar for dollar crowd out effect still may hold with warm glow altruism.

    In short, I think Wild and Crazy Duck is correct that this is a good argument for the Larviere/Redding plan, and if I were an economist I’d go write a paper on this idea, which I have never seen set up formally or empirically tested.

  86. Anonymous 05/17/2010

    Dog to Roast Duck

    While I agree that better students would help – (I teach a lot in the
    Honors College so I tend to get motivated students and that certainly is a plus) – I think post WW II legacy curriculum in place at most research Universities is the main issue here.

    Are the citizen skills needed in 1960 the same as those needed in 2010?

    Oh I forgot, we are all about critical thinking around here …

  87. Roast Duck 05/17/2010

    Roast Duck to Dog:

    If only we still had the post-WWII curriculum! Far from perfect, but in many respects, it did the things Bok mentions better than the current mess does. If only the curriculum had improved as much as the dorm food! I remember the slop they used to feed us, not worthy even of a wild duck, as I was back then. And that was long after post-WWII, when food was scarce.

    There IS increasing suspicion that we are not teaching the students much, or that what we are teaching is not so good for them.

  88. Anonymous 05/17/2010

    Dog agrees:

    What we have today is largely a mess which has limited value.

    I wonder what those higher up on the food chain think of all this in terms of Academic Excellence (but maybe they don’t grok the concept)

  89. Anonymous 05/18/2010

    OldMan would find the Roast Duck/Dog exchange more interesting and perhaps even more useful if the vague complaints were replaced with specific identification of curricular soft spots and, glory be, concrete suggestions for curricula that will best prepare our students for the 21st century.

  90. Anonymous 05/18/2010

    Dog Responds:

    Well for starters this is what I think is missing:

    1. Data literacy courses and training
    2. Energy literacy courses and training
    3. More researched based and experiential learning instead of course work
    4. Much more interdisciplinary courses with multiple professors as the teaching agents (since a single professor can not be
    interdisciplinary no matter how big their ego is)
    5. Collaborative work/learning – stop treating students as “learners in isolation”
    6. Rhetoric and Presentation
    7. Global Justice/Social Justice coursework oriented around causes and potential cures of global inequities
    8. Science Literacy
    9. Fat Tail Economics
    10. Basic literacy in statistics
    11. More aspects of globalization
    12. Pacific Rim Economics (this means understanding the culture and the economics)
    13. Information Literacy and how to do research
    14. Science Policy Interface courses
    15. Science/Humanities interface courses
    16. Video editing as a means of writing (call it Digital Writing or whatever)
    17. Digital Writing to Learn

    I would be happy with just one aon the above list that is done in a systematic way.

    General education is stupid and broken and most realize that.

    Many majors are irrelevant in an isolated context now.

    But most academics will admit none of this and hence we maintain the legacy.

    Besides, Deans seem to only care about unit cost of education by treating students as beans.

  91. Anonymous 05/19/2010

    FOR UOMATTERS

    Dog lists some skills and understanding that would well serve anyone who aims to contribute, or even survive, in the 21st Century. What is needed now is a way to package that curriculum (or even part of it) so that most, if not all, of our students can chew it, swallow it, digest it, and grow with it. That is a daunting challenge. OldMan reports that, in the Natural Sciences, we do deliver such a program to a small fraction of our top students. Let me tell you about three of them.
    Three students just finishing their second year approached me for the opportunity to do research, unpaid and for credit, in my lab. My colleagues had identified several experiments, all aimed at testing predictions of a novel hypothesis. The students were given some training in methods and then went to work. They designed the strains of yeast they would need, constructed those strains by genetic engineering, mated the strains with each other, collected and analyzed thousands of offspring from each mating, recorded the data in a retrievable format, and analyzed the data to determine their compatibility with the predictions being tested. As is typical in such work, they encountered obstacles. With help from each other (and occasionally from experienced colleagues in the lab), they overcame them. They were really humming when I ran out of money and told them we had only about 8 more months to go. As a group, and without help from their more experienced colleagues, they assessed their progress and concluded that several of the projects could not be completed in the remaining time and should be dropped. The other four, they told us, would be done on time, the data would be analyzed, and they would report to us their conclusions. They described how they would work in shifts to keep all four of the projects moving.
    As the closing day approached, they called all lab personnel to a meeting and reported that, without doubt, the hypothesis we were testing was ruled out – its predictions were simply not met. But, they announced, look at what the data do say! And a new chapter in genetics was written.
    During their apprenticeship, the students learned in a direct way (the only way that really works) how to do science from beginning to end, including the writing up of their work for publication. Two of the students enrolled in Harvard’s PhD program in Molecular Biology and one went for an MD/PhD at Johns Hopkins.
    So, most of what Dog wants can be done in a limited way at the UO, but how do we provide such opportunities for a large student body, a small teaching Faculty and no state support for research?

  92. Anonymous 05/20/2010

    So I read the position description for Charles. So what happens if he is not doing his job as posted? From what I hear he spends a good amount of time working against people he is supposed to direct…I don’t find that in the position description. Oh wait…maybe that is duties as assigned. So what happens to people that don’t fulfill their duties? Proof is in the things he hasn’t done. So…

  93. Anonymous 05/21/2010

    Wow Even the Dog Did Not Know This:

    The Christian Science Monitor ranks the top 25 college football teams according to their expenditures per athlete. UO tops the list at $61,972 per player. The closer contender is Florida at $48,092 per player.

    http://www.csmonitor.com/Money/new-economy/2009/1026/bcs-rankings-top-25-teams-by-the-dollars#comment-44457

    Dog Says: If this is really true, then this is beyond sinful. Hell,
    that’s a decent salary for a starting assistant professor!

  94. Doubtful Duck 05/22/2010

    I’d take the new inquiry into the construction plans and finances with a big grain of salt. This is part of an attempt on the part of the unions to get even for Knight insisting on by-passing them in the project, to avoid paying the exorbitant public works construction costs. There may be something to the allegations, but I will wait and see.

  95. Anonymous 05/22/2010

    I think the “investigation” is being choreographed to create the impression that the UO boo boos have all been fixed. UO is getting worse not better…that is why they need these busy bodies buzzing around acting like it is not going to be business as usual anymore. Do you really think things are getting better around here ? The UO is busy strong-arming language into the City of Eugene “Walnut Station” planning effort to allow for a indoor arena next door to the Knight arena. The city planners all let UO write its own rules. So this looks like another indoor track site “option” (besides the 18th and University Street one)for PK. The Walnut Station plan still has a hearing before the city council.

  96. Anonymous 05/25/2010

    You’re kidding about Grier being “summarily fired,” right? UO is continuing to pay her what, 183K, to teach ONE term of a class that a cheap adjunct used to teach? Personally I would love to see her teaching “contracts 101.” Want to bet she ends up at Harrang too?

  97. uo matters 05/25/2010

    Well, obviously you’re not a law student. :)

  98. Anonymous 05/25/2010

    Grier was given timely notice. Her contract was not renewed and she gets a terminal year. That is how long term OAs get “fired”.

  99. Anonymous 05/26/2010

    So Melinda is given the easy way out of her job…classified go through two to three years of harassment, intimidation, threats, and a constant barrage of nit picking badgering by their bosses, cut pay and a host of ugly behavior thrown at them…then they are given relief and fired. Melinda has it easy. Over paid…but easy. Too bad they can’t cut her pay and move her on. That would be fair.

  100. Duck Soup 05/27/2010

    So, just as could have been predicted, the state is in the hole, and UO will make it up out of its “reserves” (not an even bigger tuition increase than the one already planned, presumably). So much for the faculty salary increments supposedly planned for the Fall, out of those reserves? Anyhow, it would be very, very bad politics to increase faculty salaries in a splashy way while the state budget tanks, other professional salaries in the state government are (supposedly) frozen, etc. etc.

    It’s the Oregon way: screw higher education, especially UO, when times are good, and when times are bad.

    uomatters is certainly correct about the need for eventually implementing the “Lariviere plan.” It’s the only hope UO has.

    Duck Soup sure is a lot of laughs!

  101. Anonymous 05/27/2010

    Dog Barks@Linton

    While this decision is probably Linton’s only I would bark that under his “leadership” as dean of the graduate school, our graduate programs have tanked (in terms of actual numbers of graduate students at a University – we are now down to something like 14% total graduate students – has to be the lowest in the nation for a research University) and ultimately he is accountable for this decline.

  102. Anonymous 05/27/2010

    It won’t help that now all graduate applications have to go through (some administrative unit) and have a $50 application fee. I know that will cut down on applications to my department, especially for under-represented minorities.

  103. Anonymous 05/27/2010

    And are we supposed to admit graduate students who have very little chance of getting a job upon graduation? No doubt that’s not true in some fields, but in many areas it could be considered dishonest to increase the number of graduate students beyond current levels because job prospects are so dismal.

  104. Anonymous 05/28/2010

    dog barks @anonymous above

    what’s the difference between
    undergrads and graduate students
    if your gonna use job probability
    as a metric ..?

  105. Roast Duck 05/28/2010

    I don’t know if Linton was forced out or just wants to move on after many years here. I had heard rumors several years ago that he was about to leave.

    He has been a classy guy, and has done a lot of good things e.g. to move faculty hiring along in the sciences by coming up with research startup packages from a tight budget.

    On the other hand, he came from a background in the applied end of science, where UO has been known, to the extent it is known, in more basic areas of science. He has followed the path, it must be said in response to initiatives from certain quarters among the faculty, of pursuing “earmarks” from the federal and state government for supposedly futuristic research in over-hyped areas like nanotechnology, interdisciplinary brain science, and the like. Look at the new “integrative science” building and its planned follow-up. Look at where the Lokey money has gone.

    Meanwhile, as others have noted, the graduate enrollments have lagged, rankings of UO research/Ph.D. programs have dropped. It certainly isn’t primarily Rich Linton’s fault, he probably isn’t rsponsible much at all, but he hasn’t been able to stop it and he has not resisted the tide of over-hyped dubious research initiatives.

    Lariviere, unlike a certain previous administrator, is aware enough to know what’s been going on, especially with the rankings of the UO programs. So, it’s entirely possible that he decided it was time for a change.

    It’s also possible, as I say, that Rich Linton simply decided it was time to move on.

    So, Rich, I hope you find something better, you probably deserve it, you did about as well as anyone probably could have under the circumstances at UO the past decade or so. All the best to you!

  106. Anonymous 05/28/2010

    If the media ever decides to cover the Rich Linton departure they should ask what Ron Wyden’s reaction is. Wyden is a nano-champ and Linton’s exit might be something of a concern for Wyden. Wyden successfully pushed for passage of a 3.7 billion dollar nano research bill.

  107. Anonymous 05/30/2010

    If graduate students are down relative to the total population, that’s a sign of a growing number of out-of-state undergraduates who help keep the institution funded, not a deficiency on Rich Linton’s part.

  108. Duck Soup 05/30/2010

    It’s nice to see the candidates talking about higher education. It would be even nicer to hear their plans for action. I don’t see how they are going to avoid slashing higher education given the State’s current budget shortfall, the never-ending PERS disaster, the shaky long-term economic prospects of the state, the nation, and the world!

    But let’s not just indulge the old gloom and doom thrill.

    These guys should really be drawn out on whether they support the Lariviere UO autonomy endowment plan. As I’ve said here, I believe it’s the only hope for UO, and it’s also a good deal for the other institutions and the state as a whole. (Hint: if the Legislature commits to $65 million/year for UO for 30 years, even in deflating dollars, that puts a floor under the other campuses, i.e. they won’t be able to cut them below that level (per student) in the coming state fiscal crises.)

    So draw these guys out on where they stand.

    If they hem and haw, then it’s just a bunch of hot air.

    If they both support it, it will probably happen!

    If one of them supports the plan and the other doesn’t, that person just might get my vote!

  109. Anonymous 06/01/2010

    dog @anonymous

    we fell below 20% total graduate
    student population and hence out of Carnegie Research 1 status 6-7 years ago – long before the current UG enrollment surge which started Fall 08

    In addition, if there is an enrollment increase, shouldn’t the grad population scale somewhat with
    undergrads. We aren’t even at fixed numbers of grads and rising
    UG enrollment – we are actually at somewhat reduced numbers of graduate students (remember, Law students are grad students). This situation is not good for a Research University.

    People can defend/praise Linton all they want on the Research end (although I believe there are deficiencies there as well as favorites played) but there is no defense at the level of the health of our Graduate School programs.

  110. Anonymous 06/02/2010

    Do you just thrive on innuendo?

  111. UO Matters 06/02/2010

    Actually, I prefer public records to innuendo. If you have any you’d like share, email them to [email protected]

  112. Duck Soup 06/03/2010

    This could be bad for the Lariviere “independence plan”: UO is asking to increase tuition by about 10% (not 6%, that is net of increased financial aid). While OSU and PSU are only asking for about 6%. (See below from RG.)

    UO is basing the appeal for independence on the claim that it will help to control tuition costs. But how does this give confidence? The suspicion will be that UO, once on its own, will jack up in-state tuition as high as it can.

    Why are costs increasing so much at UO compared to OSU and PSU? There could be a lot of reasons: UO has the lowest state subsidy per in-state student? Administrative bloat? Heftier faculty salary increases (including those planned for September)? There will be lots of accusations about payoffs for athletic personnel, etc. etc. whether true or not.

    I had thought that the Lariviere plan was a deal too good for the state to turn down. Now I’m not so sure.

    Perhaps UO is still acting too clever for its own good.

    Members of the state Board of Higher Education will vote on proposed tuition hikes this week

    When: 9:30 a.m. Friday, June 4

    Where: Portland State University, Academic and Student Recreation Center, Room 515

    Resident undergraduate tuition and fees per year (including resource fees rolled into tuition)

    2009-10 2010-11 (proposed)

    OSU: $6,726 $7,115

    PSU: $6,765 $7,130

    UO: $7,428 $8,190

  113. Anonymous 06/03/2010

    As I remember last year during our directors evaluation I was surprised to find out that the upper OA’s evaluate themselves. Yup they write there own evaluation. When I asked why I wasn’t notified and asked for my input…I was soundly put in my place and told that it wasn’t any of my business. I said..I am supervised by this person I should have some input. “No, your opinion doesn’t matter”. Stunning. Living in the world of corporations. Wonderful isn’t it. So it’s no surprise the faculty hasn’t been asked for their evaluation of the President. You don’t matter…get used to it.

  114. Anonymous 06/03/2010

    Please. Perhaps in your neck of the woods, administrators evaluate themselves. This is not following policy. Administrators do go through a review process. All OAs must have an evaluation to get their contracts renewed. This is from the policy web site:

    “3. Evaluation and Performance Appraisal:

    a) Each vice president is responsible for ensuring that all officers of administration in his/her area receive annual performance appraisals to provide feedback about their work performance and to form a basis for pay increase decisions and adjustments in portfolio and responsibilities. This annual evaluation process should specify the time lines and appraisal instruments to be used. The evaluation may include use of the evaluation criteria outlined for officers of administration in the current edition of the UO Faculty Handbook and additional performance criteria established in the position description.

    b) More extensive and in-depth evaluations are conducted periodically on a schedule determined by contract renewal time lines and the extent of the individual’s internal and external responsibilities. These evaluations may use a committee-review method or a more comprehensive evaluation instrument. The objectives of these periodic in-depth reviews are to encourage, to reward, and to support the continuous development of officers of administration, and through the process of performance review, to identify administrators who merit special recognition or who need special assistance.”

    Granted this has come together in the last few years. But administrators evaluating themselves is inappropriate.

  115. daffy duck 06/04/2010

    Why should faculty expect to evaluate administrators?

    After all, you wouldn’t expect to be evaluated by students, would you?

  116. Duck Soup 06/05/2010

    I fell in the soup pot, now I’m trying to get back out.

    A few posts back, I said that the UO tuition increase was 10% and that this is excessive and no way to move the Lariviere plan forward.

    Apparently I was quite mistaken, according to the RG and Oregonian articles about OUS tuition increases, that 10% folds in fees that will no longer exist.

    The net increase in “tuition and fees” for UO is reported to be 6.0% and exactly the same as for OSU and PSU. (They must have coordinated this.)

    So, my humble apologies, an abject quaking quack or two, then a few more lusty quacks for the independence project, which I have generally have strongly supported.

  117. UO Matters 06/05/2010

    Dear Soup:

    An honest mistake. You were probably thinking about 2009, when UO tried to disguise the increases by raising fees on the sly earliere in the year. This time they are actually folding the fees into tuition – for some real transparency.

  118. Anonymous 06/05/2010

    Dear Soup: You are one of the most thoughtful commentators around. Keep it up!

    I wonder what you make of UO finances overall?

  119. Duck Soup 06/05/2010

    Dear Soup Fan: I try to live up to the standards of my idol Harpo.

    As for UO finances: briefly, UO is a very low-budget place, an overachiever, but starved too long to have avoided academic decay.

    However, UO could have reached its supposed faculty salary goals of a decade ago if it had really wanted to. Dave F, Moseley, Bean didn’t. I don’t know if this was due to intent or simply a lack of focus.

    UO spends a lot of money on things that I don’t care to have in the pot. Some of these things would be missed by others.

    Overall, there has been a growth of administration at the expense of more directly academic expenditures. Been going on for years, maybe decades. All of this is easily seen from publicly available figures. Why this is not an issue — in the state board, the UO senate, the completely feckless FAC and budget committee — is beyond me. Maybe too many would-be administrators in the latter three groups, a lot of surreptitious butt-kissing.

    Finally, I don’t see how tuition can keep rising faster than disposable income of middle class families. UO (and most other universities without huge endowments) need to figure this out before the public rebels. Part of it can be solved by ending above-mentioned administrative growth/bloat.

    But, another piece of the puzzle, I think, is a reorientation of private giving. UO brings in something like $100 million/yr, very roughly, in private giving. But very little of this, proportionately, goes to tuition relief — I mean holding down posted tution rates in addition to augmenting financial aid.

    Where does all the booty go? Look around! Especially near the corner of 13th and Agate and surroundings. Some of it is worthwhile, but different goals are needed for the future.

    Have I left anything out?

  120. Anonymous 06/06/2010

    Sounds bad for the Lariv white paper plan in the Sarasohn article. I guess Peter Courtney is pretty comfortable at WOU getting subsidized by UO. But I liked this sharp observation from the comments under the article:

    “Before long, the state will be begging the public colleges to cut loose, to sink or swim. There isn’t going to be any money to subsidize higher edcuation — not that there’s more than a pittance now — when K-12, the public unions, police, burgeoning welfare requirements get done with the diminishing state budget.”

  121. Anonymous 06/06/2010

    uomatters wonders at Knight imposing deadlines, this time on the new athletic construction. But the Oregonian article says he was unhappy about construction delays/cost overruns on the library and law school. Anyone know if this is true?

    uomatters seems to be in favor of the Lariviere autonomy plan. What if Knight just happens to be one of the major donors to the $800 million endowment? (Any bets on that?) Do you think he’s not going to have plenty of demands before he’s through with the Legislature? (Hey, that could be a big bargaining chip for UO.)

    I can understand his frustration if he feels he’s being ripped off. Or if he gets tired of playing with the fartaround club.

    Won’t be too surprised if that billion or two ends up down at Stanford.

  122. Anonymous 06/06/2010

    Dog@Duck Soup

    Two quick points:

    1. In 1997 JTM decided the best UO internal budget procedure would be to decentralize everything and let the individual Colleges compete for a zero sum pot. I believe this moment put the UO on its present course and we have been decentralized to such a point that we can never come back from (without a radical
    restructuring). We have been decentralized to the point of system dysfunctionality such that the concept of a Campus Mission statement no longer makes sense.

    2. My one sentence summary of the UO: A place where mediocrity is consistently touted as excellence.

  123. a wild and crazy duck 06/08/2010

    A case can be made that UO faculty are adequately paid relative to Oregon’s economic situation. You read that right.

    uomatters posted the very interesting Oregonian article by Tim Duy which pointed out that Oregon per capita income is down to slightly under 90% of the national average. Dismal!

    UO faculty compensation — including health insurance and pension benefits — is probably above 90% of national norms, even for the full professors. And a good deal higher for the lower ranks! Don’t take my word for it, check the UO statistics generated by the administration, the senate budget committee, etc.

    How is this possible with full professor salaries at 84%? It’s the benefits! Especially if you are a Tier I employee, the pension benefits are lavish. They will move that 84% up quite a bit, certainly to 90% or more.

    Does Lariviere think he can pull a fast one with big faculty raises for the highest paid group? Can this be kept secret?

    I doubt it. When it comes out, there goes his store of trust, his political capital. Nobody will trust him on his “cut us loose” plan.

    I hope they reconsider. This is not the right time. Not when they’re cranking up tuition 6%.

    They simply can’t cry poverty and give big faculty salary increases at the same time.

  124. UO Matters 06/08/2010

    The counterargument is that drastic steps are needed to ensure UO’s survival as a top research school, that this should be a top state priority, and that the benefits to the students are worth the extra tuition. I think Lariviere can and will make that case – he’s already got a bunch of newspaper editorial boards to agree, including the Oregonian and the RG.

  125. Anonymous 06/08/2010

    dog has a lot to bark about here:

    One of the things that has always bothered me about the UO is how much attention we pay on faculty salaries + benefits as our total compensation or resource package. Now of course this is important and it is mildly irritating to continue to loose ground every year, especially at the full prof. level. But …

    I think we should be more creative than just mapping on extra tuition dollars into faculty base salaries. Personally, at this point in my career, I would rather have more internal UO funds to access (in a competitive programmatic way) to help support my scholarship (if its possible for a dog to have any) in teaching and research.

    For instance, back in the day there were these Ed Tech RFPs which I personally found useful as a way to support some of my dabbles into instructional technology as a means of extending the way one can deliver course material.

    So basically, I advocate that perhaps the idea of “increasing faculty support” should be broader than just a pay raise.

  126. Duck Soup 06/09/2010

    wild and crazy and the barking dog — hey, someone once said that “the dean is to the faculty as the fire plug is to the neighborhood dogs”, that is worth at least a National Medal of Science in sociology — both have pretty good points.

    You have to count total compensation, not just salary. Comp is higher than salary at UO because of the sky-high benefits. (If you’re Tier I).

    Many full professors would like some research support in lieu of, say, more higher-than-needed pension contributions.

    There’s some discontent over the health plan faculty are offered. I, for one, would like more than one choice (Providence). I would be willing to pay part of my medical insurance in return for more flexibility.

    What I’m getting at: maybe an opportunity to reconfigure the whole faculty package, in the “autonomy” scheme. More flexibility in salary vs. benefits. More medical plan flexibility. Maybe some tradeoff between research support and personal compensation.

  127. Anonymous 06/09/2010

    Dog agrees

    Yes. Exactly – a configurable
    compensation package would be great.
    I for one, would be willing to forgo future salary raises (since I’m old,
    near dead, and exhausted) if the UO
    would guarantee me support of one graduate student per year.

  128. Anonymous 06/11/2010

    The editorial boards have agreed on other issues too: bond the arena, put Goldschmidt(former Nike guy) in as OUS chair. Those ideas did not turn out too well.

  129. Anonymous 06/12/2010

    Dog on ORSA:

    I suspect this rumor is true. ORSA has become an extremely dysfunctional operation, unacceptably so in my view for a research University. Grants get lost, index accounts don’t get created in a timely manner, arbitrary rules change in arbitrary ways. I don’t know a single investigator that has had a good experience with ORSA over the last 18 months or so. Common sense just seems to be absent from that organization.

  130. Anonymous 06/12/2010

    If it’s true that Rich Linton was basically let go (gently), does anyone know what was behind the decision? Connected to the overhead snafu? I don’t know how much, if any, that was his fault. What then? What are they looking for going forward?

  131. Shame on you greedy research faculty. You always want to skirt compliance. Dr. Roberts was brought in to restore ORSA to a place of responsive and responsible sponsored programs and grants management. You people always want to operate in grey areas. The problem is that faculty need to be trained on the proper use of federal money. This is not Dr. Robert’s issue, it’s yours. Oh, by the way, Dr. Roberts has not been fired! She’ll see you soon.

  132. Anonymous 06/16/2010

    A rather unimpressive search committee for the new VP for research.

    Does anyone know why Rich Linton was (allegedly) shown the door? In other words, what problem(s) are they trying to fix?

  133. Anonymous 06/17/2010

    Dog @unimpressive Search Committees and Paula Roberts

    Here is what the dog thinks that it knows.

    1. Hey, its reasonable search committee with some conscientious and knowledgeable individuals on it.

    2. Notice all the wording is only about VPR and not VPR/Dean of the Graduate School. Anyone wondering about this?

    Well,

    a) Sandy Morgen is likely to be the interim Dean of the Graduate School starting July 1

    b) if the “right” person is found in this search to do both VPR/Dean of Graduate school then so be it. If not, then Sandra Morgen is likely to continue.

    3. Paula Roberts is currently on paid administrative leave – presumably a prelude to being fired.

    4. A lot of this has come to a head because of the need to balance and report things by the end of this fiscal year (i.e. in 2 weeks). ORSA was so dysfunctional in its ability to do proper financial reporting and records that the provost got rather livid and intervened.

  134. Anonymous 06/18/2010

    My sources indicate a similar view of problems at ORSA. Linton and Bean have intervened and a consulting company has been hired to try to keep things from capsizing.

  135. Anonymous 06/18/2010

    The statement for the Search Committee indicates Linton stepped down. How do we know he got a terminal contract and did not step down? What is the source of info for the conclusion that he got a terminal contract?

  136. Anonymous 06/18/2010

    A hearing about development in the Riverfront Research Park is coming up. The city of Eugene owns a parcel there next to the Urban Farm (now a grassy field). Date: July 28 at 5 pm in the Sloat room of the Atrium building (across from the downtown library).

  137. Anonymous 06/20/2010

    I hope UO Matters does not think that our VP for Research should be beating the bushes for projects that will make money for the UO. The role of that VP is to facilitate the research of faculty who have been hired based on their intellectual abilities and the depth of their curiosity and energy. You can ask this Old Man about the horrors he observed at a University that undertook projects for the bucks that went with them.

  138. UO Matters 06/20/2010

    UO Matters is merely commenting on the fact that OSU has had a lot of success lately getting money for research on beer and wine, and that UO should concentrate on an area in which it has a comparative advantage – or whatever it is those economists call it.

  139. Anonymous 06/21/2010

    Question: Why do we always resort to hiring consulting companies to fix our problems? It seems odd to me when you have a very large faculty who specialize in problem solving that we take on the added expense of hiring outsiders to solve our problems.

    This seemed to really proliferate with Brady. What’s up with this practice?

  140. Anonymous 06/21/2010

    dog @outside consultants

    1. What exactly are “our problems at the UO”?

    2. Is there any evidence to suggest that our “problem solving” faculty have historically had success here?

    3. Is there any evidence that outside consulting as worked either?

    All of higher ed now uses headhunting firms for administrative appointments.

    And to the previous posters on the subject of VPR Rich Linton – remember VPR Rich Linton was also Dean of the Graduate School.

  141. Anonymous 06/22/2010

    Exactly. And what have happened to costs at universities? Why do we outsource all this stuff? Why do we pay these administrators/managers the big bucks? So they can choose to select the appropriate firm to do their job?

  142. UO Law Student 06/23/2010

    We students were told that Dean Paris is a lot happier in the classroom than she is in the conference room, and wants to resume teaching full-time. Having spent a bit of time in casual one-on-one conversation with her, I have no reason to believe this isn’t true. Margie cares more about students – and enjoys interacting with them – more than any high-level administrator at every school I’ve attended since childhood (9 schools in all).

    On top of that, there are no indications that the School of Law is anything but well-run or that faculty members are anything but happy. I’ve never even heard a professor gripe about the usual things professors gripe about.

    It would greatly surprise me (and, I think, the rest of the student body) if anything unscrupulous was going on here.

    Of course, I don’t actually know anything about the situation, so take this comment for what it’s worth.

  143. UO Matters 06/23/2010

    From an email:

    It would be nice if your readers could comment on each post instead of in a long thread. I’m sure there’s a good reason for the current setup, but it must discourage participation. Most importantly, I don’t like it, and as a student my opinions are more important than your accumulated wisdom. ;)

    You’ll go far.

  144. Anonymous 06/23/2010

    The parking situation and the ripoffs described here, in the Emerald, and elsewhere should become a focus of attention for Lariviere. The UO senate, too. They didn’t create the situation, but they have been remiss in ignoring them. Lariviere has been here for a year now, and the UO senate has been here for what, eternity?

  145. Anonymous 06/25/2010

    The OUS has been so successful running the system, at maintaining and enhancing the quality of the institutions, hasn’t it? In particular, to be a bit parochial, UO has been on a soaring trajectory, right? Why shouldn’t things continue as they have in the past?

  146. daffy duck 06/25/2010

    So the plan is to keep the faculty drunk, happy, and low-paid, thereby saving one of the few things in Oregon that is (sometimes) first-rate. (I mean our Oregon wine industry, not our distinguished Oregon faculty.)

    How cynical! How dastardly! How utterly ingenious!

  147. 007duck 06/27/2010

    The question has been raised in this esteemed forum, “What is the deal with the Rich Linton resignation and what the hell is going on with the research office, ORSA, etc?”

    Here’s what I’ve been able to find out about the view on campus of Rich Linton and the research operation. This may or may not be related to his resignation. It may or may not just be sour grapes, at least in part. But it’s part of how things are perceived.

    Was he given a “terminal contract”? I don’t know. If he was, does this mean he was let go? Not necessarily. Maybe he just gave notice, to allow a search to begin. If needed, they could always ask him to stay on, I suppose.

    There have been a lot of controversial things in the research office, however. Most recently, the apparent breakdown of ORSA. This really has some of the major research departments spooked, i.e., are they going to be able to get their grant proposals submitted and if they are funded, will ORSA be able to service them? This has happened well into Lariviere’s term. He can’t just blame it on Dave, it’s his baby now. If the UO research operation breaks down, Lariviere’s career is over, so he has to do something.

    Plus there was the cut in overhead rate from 48% to 42%, about a year back. This might make some individual investigators happy, but it can’t make the central administration happy. Your faithful agent is not confident of having any information about who or what was responsible for that. Was it Linton or Dyke or someone else who was responsible? Was it anyone’s fault? Don’t know, but it has to have Lariviere concerned.

    There has also been a lot of unhappiness about decisions whose responsibility is Linton’s, partially or entirely. Unhappiness about how the space has been divided up (so far) in the new science building (which exists only underground so far, but the above ground part is in the works). Much unhappiness about how the Lokey money was divided up. Finally, a lot of unhappiness about who was given access to Lokey to raise money. Basically, a few people in a few departments.

    One or two or several of these few people have high positions in Linton’s operation and/or unusual access to him.

    Then on top of this, there’s a special master’s science program, in which all of the above are heavily involved, which is not part of CAS. Their money all gets funneled through continuing education. The word is – nobody outside can verify this for sure since the details are kept secret – that all the tuition and other funding for the program goes to the program. Rather than half or so being siphoned off to other parts of the university – administration, libraries, deans offices, building and grounds, etc. etc. — all the things needed to keep the University going – as happens with virtually every other academic program. As you can imagine, this has been a sore point with CAS, and also within the affected departments, according to my sources.

    My pals also tell me that various people are now frantically trying to get all the deals and agreements written down, because they exist now only as unwritten “understandings.” Does this modus operandi sound at all familiar?

    All that said, there’s still a lot of good will toward Linton. So I guess he must be a pretty good guy in a lot of ways.

    Well, it’s time to head overseas for another secret assignment.

  148. Anonymous 06/28/2010

    Dog @007duck

    Not too bad for duck spy school.

    Below are some clarifications and likely corrections on your sleuthing
    paragraph by paragraph starting with
    number 3

    3. Indeed no one seems to know if he was actually given a terminal contract, asked to resign, or decided for himself he wanted to do something else. I believe, but
    can not prove, he was asked to resign, mostly over graduate school issues.

    4. ORSA was dysfunctional long before Lariviere came here. Dog has been fortunate enough to obtain a few research grants. From the Dog’s experience, ORSA started to break down around 2005/6.

    5. I’ve posted the reason for the 48-42% cut before in this forum. Succinctly, it was stupidity/human error, made in Frances Dyke’s office for failure to properly account for the square footage of research space on campus.

    6. There is some unhappiness but its not particularly derisive – Chemistry is simple the winner as it is in all things Linton.

    8. This “masters of science” program is basically the Material Sciences Institute Summer Internship program done in partnership with industry. Those kinds of programs are routinely handled outside of CAS and by CEP
    because MSI is not an academic department. The roles are different. Is the MSI program ripping off the UO – yes, but just a tiny bit.

    10. Personally I found Linton to be a consummate bureaucrat in all phases. He had no vision, but he was amiable and had some common sense so it could have been worse in that office.

  149. Anonymous 06/29/2010

    to Anonymous

    ORSA breakdown began before 2005/06. Prior to arrival of Paula Roberts ORSA’s administrator lobbied Rich repeatedly for increased funds in order to hire more staff and in order to attract better qualified staff since the best candidates were saying no to UO due to low salaries. Rich repeatedly turned down the requests for added funds even though the number of new grants and the increasingly complex grant rules clearly indicated a need to increase the staffing in ORSA. I like Rich personally and have had good experiences working with him, but he really messed up in handling ORSA.

  150. Duck Soup 06/29/2010

    Time to liberate the “student-athlete” parking lot contracted for by Mr. Phil. Might he be persuaded that it’s a waste of a needed resource, mostly unused and unneeded? That its return would be a nice goodwill gesture that would incidentally help solve a real problem?

  151. UO Matters 06/30/2010

    Dear Soup:

    The man sells shoes, not tires. But good try.

    UO Matters

  152. Anonymous 06/30/2010

    A hearing about development of UO parking lots (on city owned land) near the riverfront research park is coming up in late July (July 28 at 5pm in the Sloat room of the Atrium building). The city owned lot is next to the Urban Farm. The City of Eugene planner suggests the location of this hearing may be moved to the City Hall council chamber. The outcome of this land use decision is subject to appeal. The UO should be prevented from developing any new parking sites before there are rules in place forbidding development of athlete only parking areas and other tricks.

  153. Duck Soup 06/30/2010

    Dear UO Matters:

    I must confess, I didn’t see this angle, and your logic is inescapable. I know you’re not an economist, but you are certainly thinking like one!

  154. Anonymous 07/02/2010

    Dog On Linton

    Not to drag more on this issue but I do find it strange that he is currently trying to get the VPR job at Punk State University (otherwise known as Portland State).

    Perhaps this means that Marilyn Linton is not leaving and if I had to choose between the two, I would have kept Rich …

  155. Anonymous 07/02/2010

    How much have per capita parking fees increased at UO during the period for which you have total revenue data?

  156. UO Matters 07/02/2010

    Good Q – does anyone have these numbers? For students, faculty/staff?

    On average, a UO parking slot now brings in ~$700. So the ~200 non-Jock / non-Foundation slots in the new garage are worth about $140,000 in revenue. If my numbers are correct, we will pay ~700,000 for them, in higher fees, making for a subsidy to athletics of about $560,000 per year.

  157. Anonymous 07/03/2010

    There is lots going on with OIED why is there no updates in that area?

  158. Roast Duck 07/03/2010

    Re student retention: UO has actually made a lot of progress in improving retention and graduation rates. Much of it under Karen Sprague’s long service.

    It’s not clear that increasing retention beyond a certain point is a desirable thing. Word is that Lariviere wants to get retention up to 90%. (Not sure what the current rate is.)

    But isn’t there some advantage to losing the bottom-feeders among the freshman class? 10% seems mighty paltry. Of course, who’s to say that the 10% that actually are lost are from the group you’d like to lose.

    Still, there’s a lot to be said, IMHO, for raising standards, especially in the first two years. It’s a little hard to reconcile that with increasing retention and graduation rates, beyond a certain point.

    A case could be made that raising standards — both for admissions and subsequent performance — and publicizing that, would lead to better students and higher retention/graduation rates.

    UO certainly hasn’t raised its admissions standards in many years — not if you go by SAT scores.

    It’s kind of pathetic that UO is rated as “selective” in US News, while a place like Oklahoma is rated “more selective”. No surprise that most of the better students stay away from UO (and other, even less selective OUS schools).

  159. Anonymous 07/03/2010

    Dog says

    http://collegeresults.org/search1a.aspx?institutionid=209551

    should report the actual data for
    UO graduation rates.

    I will live it up to the reader to
    decide how significant any gains are.

    For me, personally, I think the best state Universities are defined by those with 4 year (4 year, not 6 year) graduation rates
    that exceed 50%

  160. Anonymous 07/04/2010

    Dear Rust Duck:

    A delicious post. But aren’t you in danger of losing your usual lucidity with this? Please clarify!

    “there’s a lot to be said, IMHO, for raising standards, especially in the first two years. It’s a little hard to reconcile that with increasing retention and graduation rates, beyond a certain point.

    A case could be made that raising standards — both for admissions and subsequent performance — and publicizing that, would lead to better students and higher retention/graduation rates.”

  161. Roast Duck 07/04/2010

    To Dog: To me, the increase in 6-year graduation rate from 58% to 65.3% between 2002 and 2007 is quite impressive. I agree about the graduation rate for top public universities, but UO is not anywhere near being one of the top public institutions — the absurd and annoying claim on their press releases that it is “world-class” to the contrary. (That just makes us sound bush league, Lariviere should get out his editor’s axe.)

    To Anonymous: Sorry that I was a little confusing, I must be a little rusty, as you note. What I meant to say was: an immediate increase in performance standards would probably decrease graduation and retention rates, as weaker students are weeded out. But a long-term increase in admissions and performance standards would attract better and more serious students, increasing said rates over the long term.

    I believe economists (and others who deal quantitatively with complex systems) are familiar with such paradoxical behavior. I know “UO Matters” is no economist, but I would hope this would be appreciated here.

  162. Anonymous 07/04/2010

    Dog @Roast Duck

    Well the 6 year increase in graduation rate, I agree, is certainly going in the right direction – Now I wonder if we can sustain that increase or if we will
    merely asymptote at 63%. The data
    I would like to find is IN state vs
    OUT of state graduation rates. I suspect, but cannot prove, that increasing our OUT of state students is causing our graduation rate to rise as those students have more tuition driven incentive
    to graduate.

    As to admission standards, I remain unconvinced that they matter in the individual classroom but I agree they matter in some larger scale, statistical sense.

    But I am biased and pretentious –> I want motivated students that can engage with the material, not entitled students that demand an A on the basis of respiration.

    Obviously, we don’t have an admissions filter for motivation and I have had plenty of high SAT/high GPA students who simply sit like puddles of ectoplasmic goo, submit sub-standard work (because other profs never call them on this), and then bitch because they got a B for the class.

  163. Roast Duck 07/04/2010

    Dear Dog: Generally, dogs and ducks don’t get along so well — I’ve had many a close shave, saved by my surprisngly weapon-like bill, quick feet and wings — with cats as well as dogs — soft moist doggy noses and beautiful kitty eyes make for great fun — but you and I might be able to coexist.

    I haven’t a clue whether your conjecture about in-state and out-of-state student graduation rates is true or not. I think you’d have to go to Karen Sprague or even higher to get that kind of data.

    I agree that high SATs alone don’t cut it. I listen to friends at Cornell, Berkeley, Yale bitch about unmotivated students almost as much as we do.

    Send your low-performing, entitled students to me and I’ll help shape them up. I think we’re on a similar page about improving performance standards.

    I wonder what Lariviere’s take on this is.

  164. somewhat dubious 07/09/2010

    It’s hard to know what to make of the dismaying statistics on how much time students put in, especially compared to olden days.

    In the first place, most of the purported decline had taken place between the first study (1961) and the second (1981). To find out now how much the graduates of 1961 studied, you have to talk to people who are now over 70. I’ve asked a few. One kind of response is “Yes, that sounds about right, we studied that much”. Another response is “Hah! People probably just said that because they thought it was expected! My friends and I hardly studied at all!”

    Another thing, the current studies (NSSE) ask students “how much time they spend each week preparing for class”, apparently without further explanation. I’ve asked a number of my students (physical science) this, and the median response is consistent with these studies, about 5 hrs/wk for my class. But then if I ask “does that include time spent styding for exams?” the response usually is a surprised “Oh, are we supposed to count that, too? Then add another 2 hrs/wk to the average.” And if I ask “What about general discussion and conversation, reading, about academic matters, science, what we used to call intellectual bull sessions?” the response is that this might add another couple of hours.

    Personally, I don’t see how a typical UO student in the physical sciences could get by with 15 hrs/wk total. I’m in no position to speak about the other subjects/majors.

  165. Anonymous 07/10/2010

    Dog speculates on student study time evolution:

    For me, I think there are three fundamental reasons, not necessarily listed in order:

    1) I personally give less assignments at the UO than when I was at other institutions because I have less access to distributed grading resources (e.g. well trained
    graduate students).

    2) I do believe that finding “information” is not considerably less time consuming than in the pre-digital library era. I suspect this is significant.

    3) I do think the phenomena of the part time student (12 credit hours)
    vs. the full load student (18 credit hours) per term also plays into this.

    There is also a possible 4th reason – students can’t add …

  166. Anonymous 07/10/2010

    Dog inquires to UOmatters:

    My own dogged investigation regarding whether or not the UO-Portland center is making or losing money has returned ambiguous evidence. Perhaps, UOmatters could probe this issue more as that (non-economics based) entity seems to be more efficient than dogs on the ground.

    The dog is drinkin’ (early) to the death of UO-Bend and the self-monument of JTM. Its about doggin’ time that enterprise was terminated. It was a failure from the get-go.

  167. Anonymous 07/10/2010

    Old Man met with DF on two occasions early in DF’s tenure. On both occasions, he warned DF about JTM, who, according to many in the Science Faculty, viewed the UO as an institution created for his own exploitation. On both occasions, DF rejected Old Man’s warning. Old Man is slow, so It took him a while to figure out why.

  168. Duck Soup 07/10/2010

    The new proposals probably don’t amount to much, and what there is doesn’t sound especially good. New targets for graduation rates, retention, research, etc. Sounds like even more pressure to keep standards low, inflate grades, pander to students to keep them willing to hang around, raise research dollars no matter how meretriciously.

    One goal is 40/40/20: 40% of Oregon school students will get bachelor’s degrees, 40% associate’s, 20% high school grads. In other words, 100% of students will graduate from high school. I guess they’ll have to lower K-12 standards from their current absurdly high level to accomplish that. No matter what they do, ain’t gonna happen.

    And 40% will get bachelor’s degrees? 40% associate’s? In the first place, there’s no money for the vast higher ed expansion this would require. Think 30-35,000 students at UO. There’s not even the acreage! And think of dipping that much lower into the Oregon high school pool. (We have no hope of recovering the high-end students who overwhelmingly shun Oregon public universities).

    Bottom line: they’re making pie-in-sky commitments in return for (promises of) marginal reforms in things like interest on tuition. Plus even our Governor has publicly called for further cuts in higher education funding in his long-range “Reset Plan”.

    In other words, the plan is “doing (much) more with less.”

    And complete reluctance on the part of the Board to relinquish any real authority from the hands of that eminent tribunal, which has worked to such advantageous results in the past. (Thanks Honest Abe.)

    UO’s best bet is probably to go with the Lariviere/Redding Plan and hope that the state will recognize its self-interest in having UO bought/ransomed by its anonymous patron with the deep pockets.

  169. Anonymous 07/11/2010

    The first paragraph of Bill Graves article on the OUS reshuffle:

    “Oregon university leaders will ask the next governor and Legislature to change the Oregon University System from a state agency to a more independent structure, similar to a statewide community college district.”

    What a brilliant, perfect expression of the situation, aware or not. This man should have a Pulitzer!

  170. Anonymous 07/11/2010

    Re Lorraine Davis, AD, UO Matters asks, “And why is her salary on the academic budget instead of the athletic budget?” Perhaps putting her on the Athletic Budget would make her answerable to herself rather than to Prexy. Maybe we need an economist to explain such things.

  171. Anonymous 07/12/2010

    Does uomatters think it is safe to assume that for UO (actually uo foundation) keeping the legacy gift 20 million dollar payments coming in depends on the timely passage of the proposed restructuring ?

  172. Anonymous 07/14/2010

    I suppose UO Matters doesn’t remember the Campaign for Oregon – when Dept heads and Deans spent a lot of time assembling projects and proposals for donations. These were used in the campaign for Oregon. But who chose what to pitch? I think that is the core of the problem. In the end, academics got about half of the funds raised. The other half? Athletics.

  173. Anonymous 07/14/2010

    This is an example of Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

    In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

  174. Anonymous 07/14/2010

    Dog on Oregon Campaign

    The Dog remembers all of that cause dogs remember shit until they get old in which case they can’t remember anything. This dog is on its way to being that old dog but I digress.

    The anonymous poster suggests that 1/2 went to Athletics and 1/2 to
    Academics. Well, that would be a tolerable ratio as 1/2 of a lot is still a lot. What is the proof/evidence that said 1/2 really went to academics and would most of that be in the form of pledges, unlikely to be realized.

    Now this gets to be a shell game at some point if one includes the new business, music and education buildings as counting against this “1/2”

    From the Dog’s perspective:

    Since 1994 the FTE per student athelete (FTE counts coaches, assistant coaches, trainers, tutors, advisors, entourages, escorts, etc, etc) has gone up by about a factor of 8 relative to the FTE per student.

    The dog has seen stadiums expanded and arenas built and new playfields built but the dog has not seen a new classroom building erected since, well, almost forever.

    Until the dog sees a state of the art classroom building with a distributed set of modern classrooms with sizes of 40-120 with a total capacity of 2000 students, the dog will not believe that the University chooses to make any investments in “academics” on the scale in which investments are made in athletic infrastructure.

  175. Anonymous 07/14/2010

    The FAQ page of the University Counsel web site does, indeed, reveal a big improvement in their operations. Under the previous Administration, no one could consult the GC without permission from one of the top-two: Moseley and Frohnmayer.

  176. alumni and staff member 07/14/2010

    In regards to the Alumni Center and Campaign Oregon, I’d like to say that without the work of Development Officers and the commitment and generosity of UO alumni and donors, we’d be unable to support many student scholarships and programs on campus. With an Alumni Center (we’re the only school in the pac 10 without one), the UO will only be able to raise MORE money for scholarships and important academic programs. http://giving.uoregon.edu/why-give

  177. Anonymous 07/15/2010

    Dog barks @alumni center

    I don’t think any of us faculty disagree that having an Alumni Center is a bad thing. Of course we need one and of course that facility helps to gather donor dollars for things like scholarship. What is consistently missed in exchanges like this, is the scale problem. Yes, building an Alumni Center is a good thing. But, does building an Alumni center that costs 5-10 times more than it should, for its purpose, going to bring in proportionally more donor-based scholarship dollars – I seriously doubt this.

    In other words, if the University decides it needs more faculty office space then it will distribute cardboard cubicles.

    If the University decides it needs a better facility to support Alumni functions to improve potential donor dollars, then it builds a Palace.

    The sense of balance at the University has been completely lost.

  178. Anonymous 07/15/2010

    Dog I agree that we never got good data on the Campaign for Oregon. Only cheerleading posts from Dave about how much was going to academics. My .5 was a discount of the. Dave PR which tried to argue the majority of funds went to academics.

    And then he went on a world tour trumpeting his success and asked us (employees) to pony up more for the UO.

  179. Anonymous 07/15/2010

    Dog says: Regarding Captain Herb and parking.

    No he did not loose his job. In fact
    this is a ne position, decreed by F.DYKE.

    Herb was trying to do two different full time positions. before it got handed to him, parking was under a “manager” and is now going to be under a director…who will report to a director.

    So this is just more layers in administration in Parking now (following the Don Harris Computing center model) so that
    everyone can insulate themselves from responsibility

    Nice work if you can get it, I guess …

    Meanwhile, dogs no longer have any place to park – can I piss on a hydrant somewhere?

  180. a wild and crazy duck 07/16/2010

    To Dog: It has been noted in these esteemed pages that “the dean’s office is to the faculty as the local fire plug is to the neighborhood dogs.” I believe this originated in a large eastern academic environment, perhaps NYU, but I think it could have application here. So it may be a dog’s life at UO, but make the most of it!

  181. Anonymous 07/16/2010

    Dog on new AD

    Dog pays a fair amount of attention to NCAA sports (for no apparent reason) and has inside connections at some universities. Dog thinks that Mullen was the right kind of profile for the UO to hire – good background at similar institutions, good vision and good financial management skills. So I think the trajectory here is a good one. Now, the issue is whether or not competent people can survive the environment here first, before they can start to change it. Go Ducks …

  182. Duck Soup 07/17/2010

    in the soup Part I: I can see why they’d emphasize athletic and alumni funding. After all, their incomes depend on how much money they raise, right? That goes all the way up to the Prez. Who gets about half his salary from the Foundation. I imagine fundraising success might play a role in how much they give him.

    The sad fact is, it’s hard to see why alumni should make major donations to academics. Any “gravy” that UO gets is largely (or wholly) siphoned off to subsidize the weaker campuses. That might have something to do with how UO winds up with the smallest subsidy per (in-state?) student of any of the campuses.

    Realistically, what does UO have to offer that is really first rate? Or at least is tangibly something to be proud of for a donor? Buildings come to mind. The athletic program, perhaps. The best arena in the country, if you’re into that kind of thing. And of course, don’t forget the role of the “academic” university in alienating Phil Knight.

    And there are things like the Oregon Bach Festival. They made their endowment goals, made their budget this year. Fantastic! But they are one thing in Oregon that is truly first rate, maybe even world class.

  183. UO Matters 07/17/2010

    Thanks for the comments Duck soup. I agree about the Lariviere plan and donor incentives.

  184. Anonymous 07/17/2010

    Dog just wants a class room building at 1% of the total cost of the Arena.

  185. Anonymous 07/17/2010

    Duck Pate says:

    The missing scholarship money was for Pat Kilkenny. We gave him a full-ride, plus a few million extra so he could finish up his degree.

  186. Duck Soup 07/20/2010

    Probably the Oregonian has gotten the message that the Lariviere plan won’t fly with the Legislature, so the editorial board wants to salvage something, however small. The OUS plan is very small ball, even the golf team would probably turn up its nose, maybe the new AD should start a peashooting squad. Or a BB gun team.

    The plan to commit $65 million/yr. in bond payments for 30 years may look too generous now! The Legislature may soon be cutting annual support for UO below even that paltry level. And, a commitment of 30 years may look irresponsible now.

    The donors for the $800 million private endowment for the Lariviere plan may have to do some hard bargaining with the Legislature. No autonomy, no $800 million.

    It may be that the best bet would be for the donors simply to “buy out” the Legislature — say, by doubling the private endowment offer to $1.6 billion in return for real autonomy — then telling them to take the deal, or walk away from the money, leaving Oregon with one more campus to support (UO) than it need have.

    Oh, and a reminder that bills for the arena bonds are coming due might help.

    Call it the “Duck Soup Plan” if it’s too controversial for OUS or UO to be associated with it.

    It looks like Lariviere is getting an opportunity to learn something about the vaunted “Oregon values”.

    I’ve been wondering if he’ll crack and pull a Paul Olum. Or maybe a Myles or a Dave.

  187. Anonymous 07/20/2010

    The UO faculty, along with a small subset of students who are interested in such things, and Eugene’s obstructionist faction, will screw around with the riverfront project forever, if they’re allowed to get away with it. The site is (literally) a dump, has been for decades.

    It would be no surprise if the Oregon Research Institute, which is under time pressure from the NIH, picked up and moved their project to where, Springfield? What a hoot that would be! (I had thought maybe that would happen with the Arena, but I guess with Uncle Phil pulling the strings, the dang thing is getting done — under budget? on time? Gadzooks!)

    If the faculty etc. really think the RRP expansion is such a bad idea, here’s a suggestion: mount a fund-raising effort to buy the land, put it into public ownership as a park. That would be OK with me, though frankly, I don’t think it would ever be such a great area, too small, too close to the existing traffic. But do something to fix the damn place up and make something nice of it. But don’t expect the reset of the world to put up with with the fartaround routine forever.

  188. Anonymous 07/22/2010

    Dog on Trees

    And yes, trees are often the dog’s best friend. Ah yes, Sperry’s – why build a modest arena when you can build one for 3 times the average University arena cost to have empty seats at non competitive Pac 12 games. Always hire the one with the best reputation independent of actual quality. Style over substance, that be Us. Go Ducks.

    Expert Tree Service – small scale,
    reasonably priced, excellent knowledge and quality. Substance over style.

  189. Anonymous 07/22/2010

    The attitude that title IX doesn’t matter is because it is the Office of Affirmative Action & Equal Opportunities duty to report title IX compliance and we all know who that office answers to these days. Ask for the latest title IX report generated by the AAEO office see how Penny reports compliance.

  190. Anonymous 07/23/2010

    Dog barks

    Yes it was the annual Provost Leadership Retreat. These started more formally under Brady.

    Nothing ever happens at these things but there are
    occasional reflective and substantive discussions but that substance is quickly lost once the retreat ends.

    The admin is acutely aware now of the faculty trust issue and the perceived apparent lack of transparency. Trouble is, at these retreats, the group conclusion is always that nothing is ever really broken, that all is well and excellent and when barking dogs offer any external perspective, said dogs are usually neutered …

    besides, the faculty really actually never do anything collectively rebellious against
    the admin so they have nothing to worry about.

    In fact, the admin views faculty as interchangeable parts – disgruntled faculty leave – big deal – they can be replaced

    But I digress …. Go Ducks

  191. Anonymous 07/23/2010

    Duck Soup remarked “It looks like Lariviere is getting an opportunity to learn something about the vaunted ‘Oregon values’.” That phrase, ‘Oregon values’, means different things to different peoples and nothing at all to others. Duck Soup may be taking it to mean the lack of any significant academic values. Indeed, the M.O. of recent UO Administration(s?) has led Old Man to doubt the commitment of some recent top officers to quality education. However, things have not always been bad, and “Oregon values” may have a positive tone to some. Old Man reminisces:
    In the ‘60s –‘80s, UO was attractive for several reasons (beyond its glorious location). 1. It offered a Liberal Arts education in which quality humanities faculties cooperated with a growing, forward-looking science faculty that viewed their science as a branch of Philosophy, not Technology. 2. The Administrations respected the role of the Faculty in decision-making, which, in return, nurtured respect for the Administrations and a remarkable degree of loyalty to the University. Presidents and Professors duked it out in the Assembly in open, honest and enlightening debate. 3.Tuition was affordable, and the State supported the UO pretty well, considering its financial limitations. Except for lumber and agriculture, the State was, of course, poor. Faculty accepted that fact, proud that some of the poverty was apparently due to the unwillingness of Oregon’s Senator Morse and Representative Porter to play War Games, where the big bucks are. 4. Students were visible social activists. Faculty, too, recognized that education does not stop at the boundaries of the curriculum or the edge of campus. 5. The Faculty passed legislation prohibiting classified research on campus and, in Assembly, denounced the murderous intrusion of American military into the affairs of Viet Nam. 6. Until 1967, football was played in cozy Hayward Field, which had the constructive effect of discouraging delusions of athletic grandeur.
    Can such “Oregon values” be resurrected? Old Man hopes so, but more Faculty Push will be required since it is in the eternal nature of things that some administrators will try to arrange things to their own convenience, forgetting that their role is to serve the Faculty in its efforts to execute the University’s educational mission.
    The new Prexy seems to understand that mission and seems to be taking steps to clean up the mess he inherited. Faculty would do well to support his efforts.

  192. Anonymous 07/23/2010

    Dogs are historical too.

    Since we are on the subject of history I would like to add a few numbers. Qualitatively, I mostly agree with the Old Man’s view and in dog years, man am I older than Old Man. But its useful to keep the UO history in the context of it being a Research University.

    The most qualitative aspect of the Old Man Analysis I agree with is in the period oh 1970 – early 1980s the school was very affordable and state support was high. Importantly, enrollment (see below) during this period is about constant at 11000 – 12000 undergraduates. Since then the UG population has essentially doubled without anywhere near the commensurate increase in academic infrastructure. Thus both Old Man and Way Old Dog, look back and remember a more accessible and coherent community that was the UO 35 years or so ago – shit
    35 years! WTF???

    Here is some enrollment data.
    Column 1 gives year, 2 gives number of undergraduates, 3 gives graduates, 4 is the ratio of grad students to total population:

    30% defines top tier Research Universities

    20% is the threshold for Carnegie Type I Research Universities

    1970-71 11302 3999 26%
    1973-74 12390 3653 23%
    1976-77 12311 4451 27%
    1979-80 12066 3945 25%
    1982-83 11316 3482 24%
    1985-86 12296 3344 21%
    1988-89 14104 3663 20.6%
    1991-92 12845 3484 21.3%
    1994-95 12941 3216 19.9%
    1997-98 13347 3158 19.1%
    2000-01 13643 3161 18.8%
    2003-04 15583 3539 18.5%
    2006-07 16283 3418 17.3%
    2009-10 18210 3471 16.0%

    we are clearly becoming an unbalanced University and evolving to an UG institution

    For me, this is the most serious problem at the UO and has been for the last 10 years.

  193. Anonymous 07/24/2010

    On Douthat from the American Prospect:
    http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/adam_serwer
    “Potts On Douthat.

    Monica Potts sat down and read the study Ross Douthat cited in his New York Times op-ed that led him to the conclusion that “the gatekeepers of elite education seem to incline against candidates who seem too stereotypically rural or right-wing or “Red America.” Potts spoke to one of the authors and ultimately found a somewhat different conclusion:

    The researchers looked at a broad category of “career oriented” activities, of which those groups could be examples, and found that there was a “statistically significant but small negative correlation,” as Espenshade described it in a brief phone interview, with having held leadership positions in those groups or having won an award in them and being admitted to an elite college (just being a member didn’t make a difference). The study says, “These activities include ROTC and co-op work programs. They might also encompass 4-H Clubs, Future Farmers of America, and other activities that suggest that students are somewhat undecided about their academic futures.” Spending “too much” time in activities like athletics, or in holding a part-time job also seemed to have a negative effect, and what those activities have in common is that they take time away from purely academic pursuits. Of all the markers that seemed to matter to admissions officers, this was merely a side note.

    So “statistically significant but small negative correlation” is the thin reed on which Douthat hung evidence of systemic discrimination against “white Christians” that justifies or explains the recent racial paranoia ginned up by conservatives. I hadn’t read the study either when I wrote that lower-class whites and blacks were fighting over “table scraps,” but the study suggests I was right:

    The study looked at admissions rates for seven elite colleges. The study definitely found, as Nieli wrote, that admissions officers give preference to lower-class black and Hispanic applicants, but it’s worth looking at that fact in context. Overall, the applicant pool was extremely well off: Only about 10 percent of the applications to elite institutions, public or private, came from lower- and working-class families, and only about 19 percent of those applicants were admitted to elite private schools (acceptance rates to the public institutions didn’t correlate highly with class).”

  194. Anonymous 07/24/2010

    On Douthat from the American Prospect:
    http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/adam_serwer
    “Potts On Douthat.

    Monica Potts sat down and read the study Ross Douthat cited in his New York Times op-ed ….Potts spoke to one of the authors and ultimately found a somewhat different conclusion:

    The researchers looked at a broad category of “career oriented” activities, of which those groups could be examples, and found that there was a “statistically significant but small negative correlation,” as Espenshade described it in a brief phone interview, with having held leadership positions in those groups or having won an award in them and being admitted to an elite college (just being a member didn’t make a difference). ….

    So “statistically significant but small negative correlation” is the thin reed on which Douthat hung evidence of systemic discrimination against “white Christians” that justifies or explains the recent racial paranoia ginned up by conservatives. I hadn’t read the study either when I wrote that lower-class whites and blacks were fighting over “table scraps,” but the study suggests I was right:

    The study looked at admissions rates for seven elite colleges. The study definitely found, as Nieli wrote, that admissions officers give preference to lower-class black and Hispanic applicants, but it’s worth looking at that fact in context. Overall, the applicant pool was extremely well off: Only about 10 percent of the applications to elite institutions, public or private, came from lower- and working-class families, and only about 19 percent of those applicants were admitted to elite private schools (acceptance rates to the public institutions didn’t correlate highly with class).”

  195. Roast Duck 07/24/2010

    The claim — I haven’t checked it out myself — is that the study concluded that belonging to 4H or FFA or ROTC will reduce your chances of admission by close to 2/3 if you happen to be white, holding everything else equal. If that’s true, it’s not a minor thing, it’s startling and it’s a shocking indictment of the admissions policies of the elite schools.

    If the statistics are true and reasonably interpreted, they are true and can’t just be dismissed as “racial paranoia ginned up by conservatives”. The statistics should be refuted or further investigated, as the case may warrant, but they can’t just be dismissed or deconstructed or sneered away.

    You know, people used to say similar things about the claims of unfair treatment of blacks. Just substitute “liberals” or “northern agitators” (or “outside agitators” if you remember Chicago or Boston) for “conservatives” above and you’ll have the picture perfectly.

    Considering that a lot of these elite schools don’t even allow college ROTC, it’s entirely plausible — nay, entirely likely — that a ROTC background would be discriminated against.

    It’s also amusing, if reported accurately, that membership in 4H or FFA would be considered evidence of a lack of decision or commitment about academic plans. As if running a modern farm is necessarily less “academic” or “intellectual” than, say, working as an investment banker.

  196. Roast Duck 07/24/2010

    Another article, and a quote therefrom, coming from a different perspective — shall I say “conservative”, even though the author apparently is a kind of adjunct at Princeton? — then so be it! — covering many aspects of that discrimination article

    http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/07/how_diversity_punishes_asians.html

    But what Espenshade and Radford found in regard to what they call “career-oriented activities” was truly shocking even to this hardened veteran of the campus ideological and cultural wars. Participation in such Red State activities as high school ROTC, 4-H clubs, or the Future Farmers of America was found to reduce very substantially a student’s chances of gaining admission to the competitive private colleges in the NSCE database on an all-other-things-considered basis. The admissions disadvantage was greatest for those in leadership positions in these activities or those winning honors and awards. “Being an officer or winning awards” for such career-oriented activities as junior ROTC, 4-H, or Future Farmers of America, say Espenshade and Radford, “has a significantly negative association with admission outcomes at highly selective institutions.” Excelling in these activities “is associated with 60 or 65 percent lower odds of admission.”

  197. Anonymous 07/25/2010

    Dog on Graduate School Data:

    Yes it in includes the professional schools. For instance the Law School alone is about 500 students,
    all of which are grads so if you take them out, the statistics get even worse.

    One consequence of all of this is that the UO’s per capita PHD production rate is one of the lowest of any research University as well.

    Obviously no one cares about this at any level.

  198. a dreaming duck? 07/25/2010

    came across a very interesting post at a website called “Oregon Catalyst” on shocking disparity between spending per student at community colleges vs. OUS campuses. Bottom line: CC’s spend more per student than say WOU, even more than UO. Talking total funding, not just public subsidy. The disparity in latter is HUGE! Below is most of the post
    and the link should uomatters not be able to include the post. (The website is a libertarian/con outfit; UO types might find it interesting if only to see how some others in Oregon think):

    in Comment #7 at

    http://oregoncatalyst.com/index.php/archives/3375-Representative-Dennis-Richardson-Oregons-Financial-Status.html#comments

    some recent news about the “Delta Project” on trends in higher education expenditures. Go to

    http://www.deltacostproject.org/

    and then click on “Full Report.”

    Then go to the data, you’re best off with three of the graphs on pages 50, 51, and 33, that’s Figures A3, A4, and 13.

    You’ll find:

    p. 51 Oregon CC expenditures per student (full-time equivalent) at least as of Academic Year 2008 were 4th in the country at roughly $14,300 with most of that coming from public subsidy.

    p. 33 Oregon expenditures per student at public research universities (UO, OSU, and PSU, sort of) are near the bottom, right above Mississippi. The public subsidy is near the bottom, too. It’s FAR less than at the CC’s.

    Most amazing, the expenditure per student at around $11,800 is much less than at the CC’s, by $2500, if I’ve done the arithmetic right. Even though upper division programs generally cost much more than lower division. (I don’t know if the figures include graduate students; if they do, the comparison becomes even worse. The numbers undoubtedly exclude athletics, dorms, research grants, extension etc. which are funded by other sources; the comparison is supposed to be of student-related academic program expenditures.)

    p. 50 Oregon expenditures per student at the “master’s universities” i.e. WOU, SOU etc. are also near the bottom and lower than at the CC’s.

  199. UO Matters 07/25/2010

    A reader sent us this email on safety issues related to congestion. I kind of like the “Ice Cube” name – but I’m sticking to calling it the Jock Box myself!

    This is such a dangerous situation being created by adding more traffic into the “funnel” that feeds students to & from the housing on MLK Blvd, the resources at Autzen and their classrooms, their dorms & the ice cube — oh, yes, & now the arena ———-

    Several of my co-workers remember the evening about 10years ago when a lady jogger was exiting the park area & collided with a pickup in the intersection of Riverfront Parkway & Millrace Dr — needless to say the jogger lost that battle. There are constantly pedestrians, cyclists, skateboarders, people making u-turns to access the restaurant entrance, etc,etc on this road between Franklin Blvd & the entrance to Alton Baker park.

    And if that isn’t scary enough there is the proximity to the bike path — on the inbound side of Riverfront Parkway you cross the bikepath about 6 car lengths in && must be cautious for fear a runner, bicycle or skateboard comes shooting out into your path. Then, looking at the diagram you see that the exit from the proposed parking lot is about 2 car lengths from the bikepath & 2 more from the entrance/exit of the restaurant. Yes, it is closed right now but it will probably be another fast food establishment —- When I asked the UO Planning Associate in charge of this project if anyone had looked at this, the suggestion was to put a control gate on the exit. The City planners are only looking at the Franklin Blvd intersection — it has controls & markings. It also has moving targets — I gave up trying to turn right from Riverfront Parkway onto Franklin Blvd – the walkers have the same green we do; the cyclists, etc are in your right side blind spot; & then there are those that cross against the lites — by the time all of the pedestrian traffic has cleared your lite is red.
    There is another exit at the designated entrance but that would take one out onto Garden Ave. This is nothing more than a driveway which feeds into a curve on Garden Av. This “driveway” is right next to the driveway of the Mill Race Apartment complex & is further cluttered with parking from Track Town & since this lot will be used for event parking that’s going to be busy ——-

    At every turn we hear about reduction of the UO’s liability — that’s why we can’t process transactions expeditiously anymore — there is probably more liability being created by this parking lot than by all of the paperwork on campus.

  200. Duck Soup 07/26/2010

    Interesting data there.

    Where has the senate and/or its vaunted budget committee been on this for the past 10 or 20 years?

    Look at it this way. Just for the period 2002-2008, if the share of the budget for “institutional support” had grown only as fast as the share for instruction, there would be about $6 million left over, say, for faculty salaries. About 60% of what it would take to close the notorious faculty salary gap.

    And the faculty are cynical enough to suspect them of not really caring about the famous “white paper” plan!

    And they wonder why the faculty doesn’t trust them? Questions their priorities?

    Can it really be this ridiculous?

    A rough calculation — a back of the web calculation, since my department is out of supplies — but close enough.

    Somebody point out my error!

  201. Anonymous 07/26/2010

    I certainly understand the skepticism attached to the blurb about the competitive cheer ruling, but please note that the sport as the UO operates it is different from the sport that the judgment came down upon. One of the primary reasons for concern in the Quinnipiac case was the fact that the team did not participate in sanctioned organized competition, which is not the case at the U.O. Oregon’s Team Stunts and Gymnastics team competes in NCSTA events – and while the organization is totally new and largely the brainchild of the UO’s own (or, perhaps stolen, is more appropriate) Felicia Mulkey, it is recognized by the NCAA.

  202. Anonymous 07/26/2010

    Dog to Duck Soup

    A baseball Metaphor:

    Willie Mays Glove – the place
    where triples die

    University of Oregon – the place
    where white papers die

  203. Anonymous 07/27/2010

    dog on More Bloat

    I think the perspective offered by UOMatters (and good job partnering with cafe press by the way) on this last issue of postsecondary spending is slightly unbalanced because teaching and research is being lumped together. The spin that UOMatters is trying to put on the data is that we proportionally spend too much money on administrivium.

    I don’t necessarily disagree with that, but I, the dog, simply look at things from a different perspective.

    From that perspective, we spend way too little on research and I will elaborate a bit on this below.

    For instructional costs, in terms of dollars per student FTE, we are strongly limited by poor state funding since normally virtually all state funding goes to that category. As a result we raise tuition and increase the numbers of students without hiring any significant new instructional resource so our costs per FTE go down because we are not scaling correctly. Again, I think this is primarily due to poor state funding.

    However, the research side is pathetic. Every research University I have been associated with in my long, extinguished, career (about 10 of them) has had a significant amount of internal money available for various RFP competitions – the only analog we have ever had here was the EdTech process in which individual Faculty could get grants for sizable amounts (50K or so). The summer research program here is a complete joke, for instance. There is also no sizable fund for graduate student research fellowships. So this is where the UO completely falls down; 63% is just horrible. The UO simply does not support faculty research at any sensible level. Period.

  204. Anonymous 07/27/2010

    The Westmoreland Housing sale could be considered a UOAD subsidy….the proceeds (17 million) went to buy land (needed for surface parking) that allowed the arena to get its building permit. The arena could not have gotten the permit if the UO Foundation did not own the land.

  205. a wild and crazy duck 07/29/2010

    Personally, I think it’s time to put the Bend business behind us. I don’t know if it was losing money or not. I did have extensive conversations with the principals early in the Bend endeavor — Moseley, Frohnmayer, John Leahy (who was running it for a while). They all had good and honorable intentions, and I say this as someone who has rather severely questioned the intentions of the first two on some other, much more important UO matters.

    One theory is that UO letting go of Bend is part of a maneuver to get OSU support for the Lariviere plan. No idea if true, but if it is, I will drink a toast to its success.

    Hey, I have a great idea. Those who don’t think paying Moseley to work in Bend should start a campaign to bring him back to campus, to teach freshman physics! I bet he would even do a great job. The People’s Choice! How could he turn that down?

  206. Anonymous 07/29/2010

    I was on the FAC when the proposal for a Bend campus was first presented. We discussed it for the better part of the year, in weekly meetings with the principals. I don’t remember a single faculty member who thought the idea made any sense at all. Quite the contrary, it became a source of laughter in our meetings with each other. The main argument for it was that if we didn’t get it, OSU would.

  207. Anonymous 07/29/2010

    People who know and who do not have an axe to grind say UO-Bend cost UO between $5 and $10 million, net.

    Lariviere believes we lost about $400,000 last year on it. But Bean still says we made a profit. He doesn’t try this with Lariviere – just the faculty and the newspapers.

    What’s the point? Bend is done. But what about Portland? Anyone got any ideas on that? Anyone believe UO’s numbers on it? If so, why?

  208. Anonymous 07/30/2010

    Executive Assistant Duck says: “you should speak to prior job holders at OIED. The Job Description for EA is just verifying that the previous EA did in fact do all the work but their contract was not renewed because they did not go along with endorsing the fact that the guy was not doing one thing or had a clue of what he was supposed to do.

  209. Duck Soup 07/30/2010

    Interesting to and gratifying to see the back and forth about budgets.

    A query about another aspect of “administrative bloat.” How much is “adjunctification” happening at UO and how much of this can be attributed to the allocation of “resources” aka “money”?

    A few years ago I saw data that showed a surprising runup at UO in the number of adjuncts compared to tenure-track faculty. Anyone know if this continuing?

    And if, as I suspect, it is so, how much can plausibly be attributed to a rising fraction of the budget going to “institutional support” aka administration?

    There’s a lot of talk nationally about tenure fading away, because tenure-track faculty supposedly are too expensive, and besides, so many adjuncts available to be exploited.

    But I wonder if this is just self-serving talk by administrators who would rather keep more of the (ever-rising) budgets for themselves, forcing the adjunctification of the real work of the university?

  210. Anonymous 07/30/2010

    Don’t forget, that Diversity office runup happened after 2006 — the year of the Diversity dustup — when the faculty voted 5-1 for the new Diversity Plan — so maybe the faculty are getting what they wanted?

  211. Anonymous 07/30/2010

    dog comments on adjuncts

    Yes the UO, like most other state institutions did experience the adjunct/instructor/NTTF/whatever increase in the early part of this decade but that has since leveled off. Most of the increase was driven by cost effectiveness in terms of teaching large classes at the lowest unit cost.

    In round numbers there are currently 650 faculty and 400 — 450 NTTF.

  212. daffy duck 07/31/2010

    When we see Lariviere in one of those T-shirts, with a baseball cap on backwards, we’ll know things are really changing!

  213. Anonymous 07/31/2010

    The rise in adjuncts came about because the University had a considerable number of people who had put many years working as adjuncts in the temporary status. It was argued that the University was taking advantage of these people by not considering them permanent employees (some more than 10 to 15 years on a temporary appointment)and that a change needs to happen to make these positions permanent appointments thus the NTTF. That would result in a huge jump in adjunct appointments even though those people have been here for many years…and not counted because of the temporary status they once held.

  214. Duck Soup 07/31/2010

    It appears I was wrong or at least misapprehensive, it appears the adjunct situation has changed very little over the past dozen years or so. Go to the “UO Performance Indicators”

    http://ir.uoregon.edu/indicators

    and click on 2008. Go to University Summary or any of the subheadings. For University Summary, scroll down to Instructional FTE. The number of tenure-track FTE is up 6% over 97-98. “Other faculty” FTE up 9%. Within the noise, things are unchanged. (The GTF FTE is up substantially, which is probably a good thing.) Note that student credit hours (top of page) are up more than instructional FTE — no surprise.

    So things have not changed that much, there are short term ups and downs. Perhaps the death of tenure has been exaggerated, at least at a place like UO.

    It’s also good to see that a choice is not needed between higher salaries and resisting adjunctification, if the latter does not exist.

  215. Anonymous 07/31/2010

    Dog Provides Real Data:

    I was a bit wrong on my counts as well for NTTF but this data reinforces something the dog posted here long ago is that the actual Tenure Track Faculty Headcount has essentially not grown for 20 years – I guarantee that most faculty and admins don’t realize this.

    Here is the data since 1992

    TTF = Tenure Track Faculty
    NTTF = Non ” “
    Other = Adjuncts/Visitors/600 hrs retired

    YR TTF NTTF Other Total

    92 609 471 170 1250
    93 639 477 179 1295
    94 625 518 190 1333
    95 656 548 192 1396
    96 661 531 196 1398
    97 655 513 234 1402
    98 631 523 214 1368
    99 613 511 267 1391
    00 605 527 292 1424
    01 627 589 351 1567
    02 630 604 347 1581
    03 612 610 419 1641
    04 625 622 401 1648
    05 635 660 371 1666
    06 638 634 369 1641
    07 642 678 394 1714
    08 646 645 444 1735
    09 660 644 482 1786

    A few conclusions:

    1. TTF is now, at best 10% bigger than it was in 1992

    2. TTF are about what you expect – square root of N or about 25

    3. NTTF has grown by 35-40% over this period.

    4. In the other category there was a demographic PERS induced retirement wave that started in 2001 and has now petered out.

    5. Adjuncts, which are not NTTF in this designation, have in fact increased significantly -so duck soup has that right

    in 1992-1993 there were 90 or so
    in 2008-2009 there were 360

    but the real bottom line in terms of teaching, quality, whatever is that the ratio of total teaching done by those in the TTF category has gone down precipitously.

    And the latest figures, 2009,
    show that

    660/1786 teaching individuals on the UP campus are TTF – that’s 37%

    is this good or bad?

  216. Duck Soup 08/01/2010

    So, doggone it, where are you getting your data?

    The UO Performance Indicators

    http://ir.uoregon.edu/ir_files/University_Summary_PI08.pdf

    breaks faculty into tenure track, post retirement i.e. mostly 600 hrs. and “Other”. What is the difference between NTTF and adjunct?

    The Perf Ind numbers for full time equivalents (FTE) are what I say: essentially flat number of “Other” FTE.

    That doesn’t include GTF though.

    In my own department the ratio of tenure track to all faculty is nothing remotely like what you say, unless you include GTF’s. If the number of GTFs has increased, that is a good thing, from the point of view of my department at least — not a dying graduate program (yet).

    I see little real change in the relative importance of tenure track people in my department.

    This whole business needs more clarification.

    Why don’t we ever hear about these matters from the Provost or the President? Or our dearly beloved Senate?

  217. Anonymous 08/01/2010

    http://ir.uoregon.edu/ir_files/fac.pdf

    Perf Indicators are often ambiguous
    and have never been a proper way to actually measure manpower.

    They are good at aggregate measures like collective teaching resource and collective SCH

  218. Anonymous 08/01/2010

    The difference between NTTF and Adjuncts as I understand it.

    NTTF are individuals on fixed contracts (often multi-year) that
    were earlier classified as Instructors.

    Adjuncts are one-off’s – sometimes only teaching one particular class
    in any AY.

    Generally speaking, the ratio of TTF to all instructional staff is highest in the Science Departments.

  219. Duck Soup 08/01/2010

    Thanks for the link and the clarification about the different categories.

    So, from your link it appears that there are greatly more personnel of the non-tenure track variety.

    From the performance indicators, it appears that the ratio of FTE power of tenure track vs. non-tenure track (of all kinds) is pretty much unchanged.

    Hard (for me) to conclude what it all means.

    I wonder about the ratio of student credit hours taught by TT and NTT. My hunch: it has gone down i.e. more SCH relatively taught by non-tenure track. Probably concentrated in the intro classes. But only a conjecture.

    Again, really a job for our provost, pres, and esteemed senate — not for amateur bloggers.

  220. Anonymous 08/01/2010

    Dog says to Duck Soup

    right – there is no direct way
    that I know of to find SCH’s taught
    by TTF, NTTF, Others as a function
    of College, School, or Discipline.

    The indirect way,
    analysis of class term schedules,
    is way too time consuming.

    But again, to me the fundamental point in all of this remains the significant lack of increase in TTF positions, even though the UG population has essentially gone up by about 75%!!

    So in no way are we scaling TTF with increasing student enrollment and that must be because of a long range financial plan to teach as cheaply as possible.

  221. Duck Soup 08/02/2010

    Again, according to the Performance Indicators, in ten years 98-08 student credit hours went up 14% — not 75%! — and tenure track FTE went up 6%. So yes, there has been a small lag in TT fculty. (That has probably allowed compensation per TT faculty member to go up relative to national comparisons — I believe this has happened, partly due to higher PERS and medical benefits, but also due to higher salaries, especially for beginning faculty.)

    And yes, the lag is probably greater after the past two years — that is probably why UO has enough dough, despite cutbacks in state support, to raise salaries substantially, if allowed to do so by the state — which seems increasingly unlikely.

    Bottom line: I see no definite evidence of a great shift away from tenure track faculty, nor a lag in “resources” devoted to faculty. Even if administration resources have been growing even more quickly.

  222. Anonymous 08/03/2010

    Dog barks at two matters

    I posted the enrollment data earlier
    from 1992 to now UG enrollment is up
    by 75% – I can’t believe and don’t believe that total SCHs only increased by 14% during 1998-2008 but will review the data myself.

    In my own department they have gone up by 40% over the last 3 years!

    1998 UG enrollment was 13,368 (http://registrar.uoregon.edu/files/pdf/enrollment_stats/facts_f98.pdf)

    2008 UG enrollment was 17,358

    that’s a lot more than 14% in fact its 30%

    also the time period that I am consistently referring to is 1992-2009

    1992 UG enrollment 12,676
    2009 UG enrollment 18,210

    so about 67% (75% was just a guess of the top of my nose)

    So I can’t support the statement
    that TTF lags behind just a bit

    1992 TTF = 609
    2009 TTF = 660

    let’s just take the ratio to see how much this doesn’t scale

    1992 = 609/12676 = 0.048
    2009 = 660/18210 = 0.036

    take the inverse to put this in
    better perspective

    1992: 20.8 students per TTF
    2009: 27.8 students per TTF

    On the AAU list – good find but needs to be normalized to per capita
    for instance – Rice University is a great research University which is 4-5 times smaller than the UO.

  223. Anonymous 08/03/2010

    Dog to Duck Soup

    I see the reason for most of our qualitative/quantitative discrepancy

    the last two years really matter
    the 14% number in the Perf Indicator
    is based on fall 1997 vs fall 2007

    Fall 1997 UG enrollment is 13,347
    Fall 2007 UG enrollment is 16,424

    so that’s 23% increase which I think is consistent with 14% total increase in SCH if the average student is taking 10% less credits per term.

    But this is misleading relative to the current state of the UO as the Bean plan wasn’t hatched until Fall 2008

    So here is the ratio for the 10 year periods ending Fall 2008 and Fall 2009

    Fall 2008/Fall 1998 = 17358/12972 = 34%

    Fall 2009/Fall 1999 = 18210/13042
    = 40%

  224. Duck Soup 08/03/2010

    Quite right, the PI’s end in Spring 2008. We’ll see if the enrollment surge of the past two years is part of a long term trend or not. My guess: if there’s an economic recovery, it levels off or even drops for quite a while. If no recovery, we’re all in the soup, so why worry?

  225. Anonymous 08/03/2010

    A criterion for AAU membership:
    Old Man notes that amount of federal research dollars is one qualification for AAU membership. Of course, one sure way to get on that Big Bucks Band Wagon is to initiate programs in secret military research. Old Man is pleased that UO has eschewed that path, and wishes it would eschew all DoD funding. Such an act might send a message and would not jeopardize UO membership in AAU – Old Man knows of no University that has been expelled from that organization for falling below the standards by which it was initially qualified.

  226. Anonymous 08/03/2010

    Oh, come off it, if there are any universities that have secret military research, it’s hard to think of them. Frankly, LOL, your obsession with military research at UO strikes me as illiberal, even a tad fascistic, to use a word than one old man I know of likes to throw around rather obscenely.

  227. a quacker, not a whiner 08/03/2010

    At least for the Tier 1 full professors, the salary comparisons are kind of misleading. Add in the 6% pension “pickup”. Then add in the stupendously high “state contribution” to pension. Put those together and they’ve probably averaged 11% or so of EXCESS “salary” over the past few years, compared to most other places. I know because I’m in the optional retirement plan, Tier 1, I track how much pension contribution I get. (And you guys who stayed in PERS will make out like bandits, if the dear State doesn’t figure out a way to screw us). So now we’re up to around 95%. Add in another 2-3% compared to many schools because we don’t pay anything for the medical insurance (yet). Hey, we’re getting close to 100%! And in a state where the per capita income is 90% of the national average. In Lane County — per capita income 80% — you are comparatively close to top of heap. Sure, that won’t pay your kids way to go to a decent college. But make more money, and your kids get less financial aid. Ask my pals at MIT! (Or your not-so-bright kids might have to go to UO).

    Hey, no wonder I haven’t left this dump! It’s not very inspiring, but it’s not so awful, either.

    As for the research funding: face it, without a medical school, without engineering, or forestry, or pharmacy, or all that other stuff most of those AAU schools have if they’re state schools, Oregon is always going to be small potatoes. Let the AAU kick us out if they want, not much to stop them.

    The question is how to make the most of what we have. Here, I have to say that UO has not done terribly well. It’s no surprise that our Ph.D. programs have dropped in national rankings. There’s been very little thought given, as far as I can see, to how to preserve what we have given the limitations of size and programs.

  228. Duck Soup 08/03/2010

    quacker, that’s pretty interesting. You really think Lariviere doesn’t know that stuff? He needs to have a talk with Frances, or Moseley, he would really be earning his pay, LOL! (both of them, LOL)!!

    Some of us faculty have thought it through, though we don’t like to admit the implications. Is he really going to up the salaries to 100% on top of the super-rich benefits? That would be something!

    It’s possible the state will succeed in lowering the medical benefits AND somehow screwing with the retirement benefits. Then, the enhanced salaries might compensate.

    That might not be such a bad outcome. The low UO salaries make us look bad to outsiders, while the benefits are certainly out of line, and also a source of deep resentment and even hatred in the state. Getting there could be very messy though.

  229. Anonymous 08/03/2010

    Dog @quacker

    i agree mostly with your points and will add the following, just because I am a dog.

    1. This old dog is also in Tier 1 and I agree that when you fold Tier 1 benefits into the total Full Prof package, it looks better.

    2. I do believe the state is going to make a down correction to PERS guaranteed 8% – right now this is the best investment the dog has by far but every projection shows the state going further into debt to meet this Tier 1 obligation – it gets especially bad if all us old dogs live for another 20 years post retirement. So we will see what happens.

    3. The dog has not left the dump either for similar reasons. Strange as it seems, the dog is better off economically staying at the UO.

    4. On research funding, I don’t quite agree. Yes if you have a Med School and Engineering school you will have more opportunity – but even with just traditional departments our per capita federal funding should be higher – we do not favorably compare here. I do quite agree, as I have posted before, that the UO has or is allowing its graduate programs to die. This is beyond stupid.

    5. As related to funding and benefits, while the high benefits are good for faculty, they do really rob your research dollars.
    I will give specific example:

    Dog has several people working for him – so that the dog enjoys leisure time.

    One person is a professional paid at 40K per year. I would like to pay more but I can’t. Why.

    Well the OPE on that 40K per year is 57% – that’s right 50 Fuckin 7
    percent. Then I pay 42% overhead on that so the total cost is

    40K salary
    22.8 K OPE
    26.4 K overhead

    sum = 90K

    90 Fuckin’ K

    As other PIs know all too well, this is a real limitation on where our funded dollars can go.

    If our exorbitant fringe rates were not taxed in overhead, things would be better.

  230. Anonymous 08/04/2010

    dog barks at GTFF

    I have had lots of grad students over the years and I generally support their arguments for equity, etc. But there is one aspect of the GTFF Union that has always bothered me.

    yeah its fine for the Union to advocate for more health and insurance (although now grad students
    of age less than 26 can remain covered by parents insurance) as long as the University pays for that and not me, the PI.

    So here is the real life problem (are you reading this graduate students?)

    Whenever that GTFF Union Insurance rates increase, my ability to support monthly stipends on federal grants decreases. Why? Simple – when a grad student is a TA – the university covers insurance.
    When a grad student is an RA – the PI pays for the insurance and fuckin’ OVERHEAD on top of that insurance.

    As a consequence of that, monthly stipends are lower.

    I think that the grad students that are RAs do not understand that the Union, in only really caring about TAs, is screwing them and the ability for campus PIs to support grad students as RAs as a competitive rate.

    Again to re-iterate

    if a grad student is a TA then the University is paying their insurance with no overhead.

    if a grad student is an RA then then individual PIs are paying their insurance plus OVERHEAD.

    Can I start a PI Union?

  231. Duck Soup 08/04/2010

    I hear you about the effect of fringe benefits on grants. I restrict my summer salary on accout of it, in fact. Maybe, happy quacker, I should count this against my overall “compensation”.

    On the other hand, I do have ways to stretch my grant expenditures on postdocs, that have to do with negotiating the salary in light of the benefits. I know I’m not the only one who does this.

    On the research funding per student or faculty member: I’ve heard Lariviere say that UO actually does very well on funding per faculty member. I’m not sure how to square this this with the figures presented on this blogsite, I think they are research dollars per student.

    I don’t see how UO can compete on those indices without all those programs we lack, especially the medical school. There simply are too few faculty members here who are in line for the major research grants. And, even those who are seeking NIH (medical related) funding are probably not in line for the really big money.

    If the GTFF gets more insurance coverage, it’s going to come out of grants, with overhead added. I don’t see any way around it.

    The problem is the ever-exploding costs of medical care.

    A similar situation pertains with tuition, including undergraduate tuition.

    The typical parent/taxpayer probably sees the tuition situation similarly to how we view the fringe benefits/overhead issues. Something to think about.

  232. daffy duck 08/04/2010

    Somebody told me access to the famous Performance Indicators is blocked, I told them this can’t be, would check it out myself. Sure enough.

    I know UO Matters is no psychiatrist, but surely I must be crazy?

  233. Anonymous 08/04/2010

    UO Matters, check it out — the Performance Indicators are Forbidden now! Let’s hope they’re just updating the files — for the new academic year?. Hey, has anyone copied the old files? lol! Just kidding. It will be interesting to see when they put that stuff back up. It will be going back up, right? There are some men in white coats outside my office, I’ll have to get back to you …..

  234. UO Matters 08/04/2010

    IR is updating its website. Stay calm, people.

  235. Anonymous 08/04/2010

    dog on per capita research dollars

    yes, this is a very ambiguous indicator that lets you spin it any way you want depending on what goes in the denominator

    is it

    # of TTF
    # of Instructional Faculty ?
    # of students
    # of graduate students

    to me the most meaningful comparator among research universities is

    annual fed. funding/# of Grad Students

    that’s a measure of research health

  236. almost a dead duck 08/04/2010

    “Stay calm, people.”

    Whew! Now i can do without the smelling salts. This must be the Glenn Beck of university websites.

  237. Anonymous 08/05/2010

    Impressive how UOMatters got those Performance Indicators put back up so fast!

    Now, your alert paranoid sees an apparent discrepancy between two different versions of the Performance Indicator figures.

    Click on University Summary here:

    http://ir.uoregon.edu/indicators2008

    and you’ll find that “Other” faculty i.e. part-timers and non-tenure track increased in FTE from 223 to 242 over 1997-98 to 2007-08. This is the modest increase reported earlier.

    But go here:

    http://ir.uoregon.edu/indicators

    and go down to click on

    University Summary FY98-08 and you’ll find that the increase was from 223 to 307. I haven’t checked the other years for consistency. But the apparent discrepancy, and the implications, are huge. Is this daffy, or have I just goofed?

    Perhaps the powerful UOMatters operation could obtain a clarification, from the data wizards, or the Dog, or Duck Soup.

  238. Anonymous 08/05/2010

    dog on numerical exercise

    A simple exercise can show why SCH’s are very misleading and far removed
    from issues of teaching and teaching quality.

    Suppose we take the Economics Department at UOmattersUniversity
    (UOmU)

    UOmU has an impressive economics department that has partnered with CafePress for all kinds of memorabilia.

    The faculty at the UOmU economics department consists of 4 esteemed Economists (that pretend not to be) and 1 instructor.

    There typical teaching load in one term is.

    Each of the 4 esteemers teach one
    majors course , worth 3 credits, with 25 students each.

    Total SCHs taught by the Esteemed Ones is then 300 SCH

    The instructor teaches the lower division “economics are cool” course to 200 disengaged students that are fulfilling their General Ed requirement. That’s 800 SCH

    thus 800/1100 (73%) SCHs are taught by NTTF folks and so the UOmU economics department sucks …

    head count is far more important than SCHs …

  239. Anonymous 08/05/2010

    The question (this time) seems to be, why the discrepancy in FTE “Other” faculty in 2007-08 in the two official documents. Still don’t see that we have an answer.

  240. Anonymous 08/05/2010

    dog on resolving the discrepancy:

    if you look closely the two reports
    are not for the same time period

    this one

    http://ir.uoregon.edu/sites/ir/files/PI_History_Summary_FY98-FY08.pdf

    is one year farther along than this one

    http://ir.uoregon.edu/sites/ir/files/PI_History_Summary_FY98-FY08.pdf

    and there has been a big increase in “other” the last two years

    The problems with the Perf Indicator reports are the following:

    1. sometimes a time period say
    2006-07 means fall 2006 only

    2. Sometimes reports average the the three terms together

    there is no way to tell

    and, by the way, the perf reports only count instructional FTE
    which is why the TTF count is always low by about 60 units
    because there are 60 TTF or so that do not teach here – they are usually department heads, etc.

  241. UO Matters 08/05/2010

    Is this series of revise and resubmits converging to an equilibrium? If so, and when you two get within epsilon, please post an abstract for the rest of us?

    And email [email protected] to claim your free coffee cups. Assuming campus mail will deliver them.

  242. Duck Soup 08/06/2010

    Duck Soup says: Both reports say 2007-08, but they clearly do not agree. I doubt that Dog and happy quacker or daffy and certainly not yours truly is capable of resolving this, certainly not to within epsilon — this isn’t economics, you know!

    So I would suggest that Institutional Research look into this, resolve it, and present a public explanation. Before UOMatters goes after them. Who wants a knock on the door from the AG in the middle of the night? Just kidding! I hope somebody resolves this.

    Will our esteemed senate look into this?

    The original question was, as I recall, and I believe I may have introduced it, how far is adjunctification going and how much is tenure being eroded at UO?

    I don’t have any confidence that I or anyone I know, including neighborhood dogs who go everywhere, can answer this question at present.

  243. Anonymous 08/06/2010

    dog says

    one report is for fall 2007 headcount of others

    the other one is for fall 2008

    and yes they both say 2007-2008

    in the last two years adjuncts
    have increased significantly

  244. a sick twisted duck 08/07/2010

    Hey, at least the Jock Box Ice Cube is good for faculty and staff morale! Let’s examine this carefully.

    In place of that bare parking lot we used to use at Agate and Franklin, soon we’ll be able to enjoy the walk across Franklin from the lot they’re going to build to replace the big one behind the Law School, and others that have been yielded to better uses. It will be especially good for the older faculty who are starting to have mobility, joint problems etc. Maybe they’ll have enough sense at last to take public transportation and leave promptly by 5:00 pm each day.

    And hey, the old lot is now nicely gardened, with larger parking spaces reserved for the student-athletes, with access carefully controlled by the Athletic Department (I was told this when I tried to get a permit from Parking!) The spaces are usually empty, so it’s a nice spot to come and admire the architecture, soak up the landscaping, and bask in the self-satisfaction of Duck Spirit.

    Thank you Uncle Phil! And please, when the state finally sells you the University, as it probably should, please drive as hard a bargain with them as you did with UO. And please be as considerate of the faculty and staff as you have always been, and as they have of you, and as you have been of the athletic people, including the jocks.

  245. Anonymous 08/07/2010

    The Dog Laments

    1. Damn, I just lost my bet with my UW alumni buddies – I bet the Jock Box costs $35 Million and had to be within 10% to collect. Now I owe yet more dawgs.

    2. Given this exorbitant per sq f price tag, how can any external view of the University see any academic priority? The more UO internal spin insists that we are all about academics, the sillier we look.

    UOMatters has it right.

    This is an EgoFest.

  246. Anonymous 08/08/2010

    “maybe we should rent these from the private sector as well?”

    You sure you want to give them ideas?

    This is what happens when the University acquiesces in a “take all comers and their tuition money and don’t worry about the consequences” attitude.

    It’s a close cousin of the relations with the athletics operation. If they offer money, take it, and pretend the negatives don’t exist.

    UO is rapidly reaching its physical limitations. As enrollment ratchets up to 25000 and then 30000, it’s going to become an increasingly less pleasant place, pedagogically, physically, and psychologically. This is already happening with the parking situation, the filling in of open space, and of course the deteriorating academic climate.

    Interestingly, the university under Frohnmayer blocked off academic expansion to the east, at least along Franklin Blvd. The Jock Box would have been prime academic space. Now it’s gone, probably for good. And then of course, there’s the new alumni center and then the arena (which, in my opinion, despite a truly interesting, sleek, flowing design, creates a hulking impression on its too-small space abruptly up against the highway).

  247. Anonymous 08/08/2010

    Faculty should stop whining about parking. We live in a town and work at a University in which, barring physical disability, driving is not necessary. In fact, this is one of the selling points in my mind for U of O/Eugene. Ride your bike (like this professor), walk, or take the bus. Driving to campus just degrades the place for the rest of us — more congestion, more pollution, more dependence on foreign oil, etc. That ought to stir the pot!

  248. Anonymous 08/08/2010

    When the “student-athletes”, the AD, the President and all the VP’s, visiting dignitaries, and of course all our other students stop driving to campus, and give up their reserved parking spots (where applicable), and when the University gives up expectations of working after-hours and on weekends — make it 9-6 — this aging, increasingly joint-challenged faculty member will happily stop “whining” about the parking situation. And also, when the other faculty stop “whining” about their salaries — I live happily on mine!

  249. Anonymous 08/09/2010

    Perhaps senate Pres Nathan Tublitz is about to make a $40 million donation for all those good things? No? Then he has donor(s) in mind? Maybe the guy(s) who want to pony up the $800 million (or is it double that) for the Lariviere plan? Perhaps this is calculated to make them more eager to part with their money?

    Or perhaps there’s another WRC fiasco in the making? Last time, it was the UO Pres + Senate + Students. This time it may be Sentate + State Legislature.

    Where are the students when we need them? Maybe we can whip up their enthusiasm when the new academic year begins.

  250. Anonymous 08/12/2010

    Was Dave F ever tenured? Was Moseley ever tenured? How about Davis and Dan Williams…were they ever tenured? I don’t recall ever seeing that any of them were. Just asking because how can one get a tenure reduction contract if they were never tenured? And what about this “President emeritus” did the legislature approve this position? Another thought…is it legal for our administration to use the university for their own personal gain? Lots of questions today.

  251. Anonymous 08/12/2010

    Dog Barks

    1. I know that Moseley was tenured and believe he came to the UO tenured from Georgia Tech. He was chair of the physics department at one point.

    2. Dave F was Dean of the Law School at some point, so was tenured.

    3. LGD (Let’s go Ducks) was certainly tenured and has done a lot of scholarly research on Public Health issues.

    4. I don’t believe that Dan Williams was ever on any academic track to qualify for tenure.

  252. dazey duck 08/13/2010

    Unremarked is a somewhat confusing, somewhat touchy sounding (to put it politely) letter to the Oregonian from one Phil Knight of Hillsboro about UO and the Jaqua Center. Getting past the snideness about University practices — obviously, they execute things so much better, if more extravagantly in the hard-headed world of business! — is he saying it didn’t really cost as much as reported? Or what exactly???

    http://blog.oregonlive.com/myoregon/2010/08/letters_university_of_oregons.html

    Print publication: Tuesday, Aug. 10

    The University of Oregon, for whatever reason, felt a need to benchmark the cost of the Jaqua Center. It had someone make an estimate. There was no reward or punishment for being right or wrong in the estimate. The resulting “guesstimate” was so far off, so far inflated, as to be meaningless. Or maybe it was accurate as to what it would have cost had the university been managing the process. (And, by the way, prevailing wage was paid in the entire construction process.)
    At any rate, The Oregonian took this meaningless estimate and turned it into a front-page story critical of the extravagance of the building. Great journalism.

    PHIL KNIGHT
    Hillsboro

  253. Duck Soup 08/14/2010

    Since when has UO Matters gone over to being a European or German-style democratic socialist statist advocacy organ? Weren’t you just a little while back advocating for more independence for UO, for the Lariviere plan, for a massive infusion of private money to replace state support?

    And the German guy is arguing against private charity in general, not charity for causes a particular group of people may not like, such as college athletics.

    It’s up to Congress (the State) to decide whether things like the Jock Box and the Arena (and things like the Hult Center and the Schnitzer Museum and Carnegie Hall and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, as well as the Eugene Mission and O’Hara Catholic School, etc. etc. you get my point) are tax-deductible. And the State has decided, so far at least, that the Jock Box is just fine.

    Believing as I do that UO is doomed as a state university, I hope that our dear faculty don’t manage to screw things up with potential near-term major donors. Especially given how prickly some of them can be. (See the recent post about an unremarked letter, very interesting.) I know it’s hard to resist, and I dislike the Jock Box as much as many others do (especially the location), but sometimes it’s best to hold one’s tongue. If an SEG is too much, just keep quiet.

  254. UO Matters 08/14/2010

    Professors say a lot of stupid things. Faculty support for the WRC is an excellent example of how dumb we can be. But Duck Soup can’t really be serious in suggesting that we should avoid publicly questioning the costs and benefits of something like the Jock Box, because this might offend a major donor, who then might stop giving us money? Public discussion of touchy subjects is the reason we exist.

    BTW, what’s SEG?

  255. Duck Soup 08/14/2010

    Let me just quote myself:

    “I know it’s hard to resist, and I dislike the Jock Box as much as many others do (especially the location)”

    I guess the more official it is, the more discretion should be used. Official faculty advisories, like the WRC business — was that the UO Senate, a special advisory committee, or both? UO Senate President Nathan Tublitz recently was probably not being wise, speaking as he does, in a sense, for the University.

    What’s an SEG? A special pose for special occasions. Noted in the OED (that’s Oxford English Dictionary). It has a somewhat ambiguous meaning, can be used in two different ways. I think university presidents wear it often, in both senses, sometimes hard to tell which, maybe he didn’t know either. Definition 2 is how I usually think about it, perhaps from my own personal experience.

    Learn about it here:

    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shit%20eating%20grin

  256. Anonymous 08/18/2010

    Aren’t you being a little hard on athletics? I don’t know who will ultimately pay for the arena site — do you? But the arena will free up badly needed space in the heart of campus (Mac Court).

    You really want to count the lottery money as an unfair “subsidy” to athletics? Betcha the lottery players might vote against you.

    Should the athletic department turn down that money? Or maybe donate it to the instructional budget? Seems to me that is going a bit far.

    I hear you on the parking. But would you also say the parking fees are going to subsidize the new dorm? Isn’t this largely a matter of poor planning/financial management on the part of UO?

  257. Anonymous 08/18/2010

    dog on “being too hard”

    As I have posted before, the issue
    of Athletics vs. Academics is being made too black and white and this leads to distortion and gross misunderstanding of the issue.

    While I will not post in detail now (as this exists somewhere in the UOmatters Archive) – simply go back the the University of Oregon of Fall term 1994 and compare that to the UO now in one key indicator

    the amount of money spent on improving athletic infrastructure and athletic FTE compared to that spent on Academic Infrastructure and Academic FTE

    You find the following:

    Academic FTE is less than 5% of
    Athletic FTE

    Academic infrastructure is about
    30% (because this includes new law, business, music and ed schools) – if you take that out 0
    its about 3%

    So the central has always been that the UO either internally or through external funding raising/giving has invested far more dollars in athletic infrastructure/FTE than academic infrastructure/FTE.

    A university needs to do both in a BALANCED way and the UO is way, way out of balance (and I bet is the most unbalanced research university in the nation on this matter integrated over the last 15 years).

    Just one clue: When was the last time the UO built academic infrastructure in terms of just a classroom building.*

    Has anyone been to Kane Hall at the UW as an example …

    *Answer – Gilbert Hall which we tore down …

  258. UO Matters 08/19/2010

    I’m too hard on athletics? Actually I’m pretty indifferent. On the one hand I’ve had a lot of good undergraduates over the years who’ve told me they came to UO because they’d heard of the Ducks. On the other hand I’m a bit tired of hearing the propaganda about how the program pays its own way, and seeing this used argument used to justify some pretty shady deals.

    I have been spending a little more time digging into athletics than normal, mostly because they’ve been stonewalling me on a few basic questions. That always makes me curious!

  259. Anonymous 08/19/2010

    The new parking under ground parking at Matt Court? Yeah someone should look into where the money for that is actually coming from. No state funds for athletics? Think again.

  260. Anonymous 08/19/2010

    Dog On Cool Schools:

    If you look at the questionnaire
    (see the UW response) you will say
    that its

    a) a lot of work to fill it out

    and

    b) requires someone with pretty comprehensive knowledge to do so

    Since neither exists at the UO, I suspect we didn’t return the questionnaire.

  261. Anonymous 08/19/2010

    Little doubt that UO has had extravagant athletic private giving in comparison to academic giving. But it’s water under the bridge — maybe with more coming — and complaining about it may do more harm than good.

    If the “Lariviere plan” is to have any chance, from what I understand, it’s going to be necessary to stay in the good graces of a big donor or two. I doubt that complaining too much about their present largesse is helpful.

    Of course, even if the money does come through, and the Legislature approves the plan, there will be the job of dealing with both those donors and the Legislature.

    Maybe we should all just admit that UO is doomed, and move on to something else.

  262. Anonymous 08/19/2010

    Tatoo(s) my ass! I’m going for serious body piercing. Sick of nauseating at students with ring noses, ear plugs, belly button rings, nipple rings, butt plugs showing through their underwear above their pants sagging down to their knees, LFMAO! If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em! If they are grossed out, serves ’em right!

  263. UO Matters 08/19/2010

    Back in the day we grew ponytails and bragged we were rebels. But really we were hypocrites, and we cut them off right before our first serious job interview. So our kids raised the stakes by requiring a visible and *permanent* commitment. Nothing says I will never sell out for a real paycheck like giant ear plugs.

    I agree with anonymous – the only way to stop this trend is for more old fat balding professors to do the same. We owe it to our students.

  264. Anonymous 08/19/2010

    uomatters fat and balding?! LMFAO! I am M prof lithe, lean, sleek, sheeny shiny stimulating brain in all ways. Looking for …..

  265. UO fire goddess 08/19/2010

    Anonymous sleek shiny stimulating mind M, I beseech you, be my man prof forever, you are my archangel, my eternal fire, I will carry your tatoo until the end of time, I will burn forever in your light.

  266. Duck Soup 08/21/2010

    Recently drove by the Jaqua Center after hours. It is worse than I thought! All that wasted prime academic space on the east side, the landscaped area and the parking. Does it extend all the way to the eastern road boundary? Could be with the curvy waling path (bike path?) and landscaping.

    The addition to the usual UO parking area sign informing that it’s “special permit only” doesn’t sit well either, nor the sleek metal “student athlete only” signs at individual parking spaces. I’m sure many people will think about this often as they walk across Franklin Blvd. in the rain this year. (Some of course will try to focus on what a great academic institution UO is becoming.)

    This was really one of Dave’s most bozo decisions. Did he feel he had to keep in Phil’s good graces? He could have at least saved a modicum of dignity.

  267. Anonymous 08/23/2010

    As a member of the law faculty, I think it’s important to clarify Knight’s donation to build our new law school – something mentioned every time the adm speaks to the Knight issue.

    Dave Frohnmayer was opposed to this donation. The donation was solicited behind his back by former dean Chuck O’Kelly, who knew that Dave would oppose it as possibly interfering with athletic plans. Dave’s anger over this was one of the reasons O’Kelly left the university.

    Under Dave, the sole concern was raising money for athletics — even to the point of opposing a donation to his own law school. Hopefully this is changing.

  268. Anonymous 08/24/2010

    Anonymous law faculty member: what you say strains belief a bit, but I’ll take it at face value. Why would Dave F. have been so focused on athletic fundraising? What were his motivations? Why so little concern with faculty salaries? Why so little focus on academics?

    Maybe you understand him better than I ever did. Despite quite a lot of personal contact, I never had much sense of what was behind “Dave”. Other than a pretty firm sense that he wanted to be highly regarded in public. Was there ever anything more?

    Again, why would he be so focused on athletics — other than perhaps the circunstance that that was where the money was.

  269. Anonymous 08/24/2010

    We can only guess at Dave’s reasons for disrespecting the Faculty. Old Man will venture such a guess: Dave considered the UO Faculty to be infested by Left Wing Radicals that would bring disrepute to the UO if they were not kept on a tight rein. (The WRC business may have aggravated that view.) This attitude became evident to Old Man when some members of the Faculty proposed that the Faculty Governance bodies (The Senate and then the Assembly) denounce the impending invasion of Iraq. Prior to the Senate meeting, Dave wrote to each Senator a personal letter, which, I surmise, said “Don’t you dare.” When the Senate didn’t dare and an Assembly meeting was called by petition, Dave announced that he would impose a 50% quorum requirement for such a meeting to proceed. Furthermore, if the quorum “requirement” were met, an action could be taken only if 50% of the total Assembly Membership (not 50% of those attending) must vote in the affirmative. Everyone knew that the UO Assembly had never operated under such rules and, in fact, everyone knew that that the Assembly meeting that adopted the UO Senate Charter (presided over by DF himself) was in compliance with no such rules. For Old Man and many others, any residual respect for DF’s leadership was obliterated by that autocratic behavior.

  270. UO Matters 08/25/2010

    Anon Law School Faculty:

    Any particular part that strains belief? I’ve got public records on most all of the statements of fact. I’m curious as to what strikes you as off target.

    UOM

  271. Anonymous 08/25/2010

    dog on off target

    Personally, I find it hard to believe that DF was actually “opposed” to the Knight donation to build a new law school. He may well have wanted to redirect the 25 Million dollars to something else, but I doubt he was out and out opposed to this and remember, at this time, DF had just transitioned
    out from being law school dean to being UO Prez.

  272. Anonymous 08/25/2010

    In noting DF’s disagreement with the Law School donation, I did not mean to begin a discussion of his personality. At the same time, this was an ever-present issue for those of us who worked with him, in ways it should not be in a good administrator.

    DF is basically a timid man, inclined to ingratiate himself to rich and powerful people. This explains most of his dealings with Knight. He resents any disagreement or challenges to his authority; he was mainly upset that O’Kelly went behind his back. Finally, he is utterly incapable of taking responsibility for his own mistakes. Hence the Bellotti fiasco was all Melinda Greer’s fault; the WRC fiasco was all Duncan MacDonald’s fault, etc.

    I am not sure any of these problems would have impacted the U of O so negatively if he had not stayed too long in the presidency.

  273. Anonymous 08/30/2010

    What are the plans for raises this year for non-union employees at UO?

    Just reported today that state union workers get a 5% step increase.

    Keep that in mind if the Administration claims that giving raises would be politically inopportune “at this time”.

  274. Anonymous 10/03/2010

    I would like to exchange links with your site uomatters.blogspot.com
    Is this possible?

  275. Anonymous 01/25/2011

    not for publication.

    Is there something wrong with the way Comments are displayed now, or did it just change? It seems weird there have been no comments posted since the Van Vliet, and that instead of getting the newer comments one gets the older.

    No reply needed, just wondered if you’d noticed it.

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