UO Economics Professor Tim Duy estimates that UO’s economic impact on the state is $2.3B. But Oregon State President (and economist) Ed Ray says his impact is $2.37B. I’m no cost-benefit economist, but Duy’s methodology looks pretty solid. Matthew Kish has the story and links in the Portland Business Journal, here.
Direct quote from the report: “The University of Oregon remains a significant force in the Oregon economy. The estimated economic impact of the University of Oregon increased 33.8% to $1.3 billion in the 2013-14 fiscal year. The estimated economic footprint increased 16.6% to $2.3 billion.”
So these figures are just estimates, and for all we know, since UO rounds to 1 decimal place and OSU rounds to 2 decimal places, the numbers might not be telling the whole story. The one thing we can conclude from this is that the figures are very, very close. This should be very disconcerting to the state flagship university.
It does not help us that OSU has full engineering and agricultural colleges.
When you say “disconcerting to the state’s flagship” do you mean OSU? I’m confused.
The State of Oregon has no “Flagship” University.
Yet despite OUS insistence that there is no flagship, UO recruiting materials still lie about it, making wikipedia impossible to correct, resulting in countless uneducated claims from those who don’t have time/drive to go to the source.
A couple of corrections
* OUS no longer governs UO, OSU, or PSU
* It’s not just UO and Wikipedia claiming we’re a flagship university. Wikipedia uses The College Board and USA Today as sources for this fact. It’s also backed up by HuffPo and About.com, as well as countless other sources. Disagree with it all you want, but don’t say it’s just UO and Wikipedia claiming it.
Yes, the College Board, that august body that bestows its determination of flagship status on name recognition polling as much as, or arguably more than, any other criteria. Other research that goes into their designation includes, but is not limited to, AAU status, and publicity materials from the institutions in question.
UO has been using the term “flagship university” quite loudly and publicly for years, so the provenance of the College Board designation is automagically suspect.
USA Today, HuffPo, and About.com (the latter two about as legitimate a reference as, say, wikipedia, and the former barely holding its legitimacy as a journalist organ) get their information for rankings from…the College Board.
Meanwhile, words have meaning. In its use in education, the term “flagship” is generally acknowledged to mean that institution that the largest and most research-intensive public universities. By those measures, OSU has clearly earned the sobriquet in recent years, and it would be disingenuous to apply that term to UO.
But what strikes me as most curious in your defense of the UO’s alleged flagship status comes from your own cited source:
The wikipedia page on flagships cites Berdahl for this information.
It is worth noting that only one school has been so elitist and boastful enough to carry on trumpeting its purported “flagship” status while melting down in newspaper headlines, while the other school just keeps on quietly doing the work of a flagship university (based on NSF funding)…
(I don’t know why my last submission of this comment didn’t show up, but here it is again.)
So let me get this straight. You just:
* Told me you don’t like those references and you don’t agree with the College Board’s methodology you think is for determining flagship universities, which you fail to cite
* Use one of the sources that you don’t like to try to prove a point
* Accuse my institution of being “elitist and boastful” for relaying information determined by one of the most authoritative sources on the matter?
Got it.
Anyway, note that:
* Research funding != research impact
* OSU is not the oldest public university in the state. That would be WOU.
* UO has historically had a much larger student and faculty body than OSU
* UO has historically been and is currently the most selective of the two universities
* UO is better known than OSU, both academically and athletically
So the UO is the “flagship” of the one-campus University of Oregon system?
Congratulations, I guess.
That’s a lot of NikeU swoosh shirts being sold…