Another update: In this Oregonian op-ed, the Portland Business Alliance, Associated Oregon Industries, the Oregon Business Council and the Oregon Business Association come out in favor of the OUS reform plan, and a delay in consideration of the Lariviere plan til another year.
Update: WWeek posts part of their exit interview with Kulongoski on higher ed reform.
Whenever someone says the problem with Oregon higher ed is that the state keeps the interest on tuition payments either they don’t understand the problem or they think you don’t.
Here’s a link to Suzanne Pardington’s interesting August 2009 article in the Oregonian, about Kulongoski’s stalled efforts to reform Oregon’s higher ed system:
Five years ago, Gov. Ted Kulongoski recruited a new slate of business leaders to serve on the State Board of Higher Education and charged them with saving the state’s university system. This summer, the last of those appointees stepped down, feeling disappointed and frustrated over the structural and political roadblocks to making the big changes needed for dramatic improvements. John von Schlegell, who resigned from the board recently, sent Kulongoski a letter this week calling for an overhaul of the way the state manages and funds its seven universities. “If people just wait around for more money and don’t change the system with pretty radical changes, we’re just dying a slow death,” von Schlegell, managing director of a Portland-based private equity firm, told The Oregonian.
von Schlegell’s letter is here. His frustration with politics and academic bureaucracy is obvious. He argues for a more independent OUS system, including an end to political appointments to the board. From what I can tell, no reporter has bothered to ask him what he thinks of Lariviere’s reform plan.
1/2/2011: Harry Esteve has an interview with Gov Kulongoski in the Oregonian today that includes a few points about higher ed:
When he needed a single vote to lock in landmark protections along the Metolius River — a spring-fed trout stream in central Oregon — Kulongoski spent some quality time on the phone with the one wavering Democrat, state Rep. Larry Galizio of Tigard. Galizio later switched sides, and Kulongoski got a big notch in his environmental legacy. Galizio soon left the Legislature for a job with the Oregon University System.
“I would say the governor’s political skills were consistently underestimated,” says Chip Terhune, who was Kulongoski’s chief of staff for most of his final term.
Treating OUS jobs as a political prize, not so good for us. But the big one was this:
The turning point
Every political career has its turning point — a seismic shift that changes everything. Kulongoski’s can be pinpointed to the spring day in 2004, when Goldschmidt confessed to having sex with a 14-year-old girl while he was mayor of Portland.
In what he thought would be a master stroke, Kulongoski talked Goldschmidt into returning to public life as chairman of the state Board of Higher Education, reasoning that the former governor would provide the high-voltage help needed for a dramatic remake of the state’s universities.
It proved a disastrous mistake. Goldschmidt resigned, and Kulongoski was hit with charges that he had been told about the abuse years before — charges he flatly denies but that have never gone away.
… The overriding assessment: Kulongoski underperformed. Asked to address these complaints, the governor bristles.
“I don’t think history shows that at all,” he says, his voice rising to a near shout. “I have invested more in preschool and early preschool than any governor in the history of this state. I have contributed more and put more into K-12 than any governor in this state. I would tell you the same with higher education.”
Then Senator Vicki Walker was the person who – finally – reported Goldschmidt. Her testimony on Kulongoski’s knowledge of the statutory rape is here. Disturbing reading. She is a brave person.
Current OUS Chancellor George Pernsteiner was appointed by Goldschmidt, shortly before he was forced to resign as chair of the higher ed board over the scandal. Pernsteiner was an insider appointment, and he is apparently the only higher ed chancellor in the US without a PhD.
The previous chancellor, Richard Jarvis, had resigned over the appointment of Goldschmidt. There is an excellent overview on the collapse of Kulongoski’s efforts to reform higher ed from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, here. It includes a bit on a previous attempt to use bond funds to stabilize funding.
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