Dear Colleagues:
We have a difficult message to share with you today about the financial outlook for our institution.
Over the last several months, the university’s budget has been adversely affected by several factors, including sweeping changes to federal research funding, limited state support, and shortfalls in non-resident enrollment projections.
Since January, we have been navigating the negative impacts of multiple federal actions that have ceased or paused research funding at a scale that the university cannot replace. Other executive actions threaten our international student enrollment.
State appropriations continue to fall short of needed investments: the governor’s recommended budget provides only a 2.8 percent increase to higher education funding for next year, substantially below the expected growth in our costs. The state budget itself faces pressures from many directions, putting our efforts to secure additional state funding in jeopardy. This comes as we are grappling with increased costs, including compensation costs and state-mandated programs such as the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System.
Finally, as a tuition-driven institution, enrollment has a profound influence on our budget. While we are delighted to be welcoming a record number of Oregon students this coming fall, we are trending far short of our target for non-resident students, who pay higher tuition and thus have an outsized impact on our budget. This shortfall also reflects a more competitive landscape for college recruitment. Future cycles will also likely demand that we invest more to attract out-of-state students.
Any one of these factors would cause us significant financial challenges, but the cumulative effect of their simultaneous impact creates a level of financial difficulty the university has not experienced in many years. These external factors have also exacerbated preexisting budget gaps we are addressing in some individual schools and colleges.
While we are still determining the scope and scale of the challenge, we know it will require difficult decisions in the months ahead, decisions that must be guided by our commitment to fiscal responsibility, our concern for the well-being of our community, and our aspirations to make the university stronger and more resilient. We will work over the next several months to bring intentionality and a principled approach to a difficult task. That work will engage leaders across the university, allowing for local knowledge to inform our final decisions.
We understand this message may raise important questions about what our financial outlook will mean for the future of the university and for you personally. We will be sharing more information late next week and are planning a town hall before the end of the term to address as many questions and concerns as we can.
For nearly 150 years, the University of Oregon has faced adversity with resolve, met disruption with imagination, and responded to uncertainty with a steadfast commitment to our shared purpose. Together, we will meet this moment with the enduring spirit of humanity, resilience, and creativity that has long defined our university community.
Sincerely,
Karl Scholz
President
Christopher P. Long
Provost and Senior Vice President
The lead made me think this was going to be an obituary. Interesting to contrast this doom/gloom/but no real info with the message from UC-Davis, whose communication folks at least started with a more forward-driven message: https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/checking-chancellor-may-budget-outlook-uc-davis
‘To the UC Davis community:
UC Davis has a long history of innovation and an extraordinary community of students, faculty, staff and alumni who make it the great institution it is. Today, we must tap our ingenuity, resilience and history of collaboration as we brace for unprecedented financial challenges….’
Zero accountability.
Moffitt and Nelson in CAS both have made and are responsible for poor decisions (way over optimistic out of state students enrollments and over hiring in CAS) seriously aggravated the underlying economic conditions of the UO. The Presidents letter blames it all on conditions that have easily existed over the last five years if not a decade. Moffitt and Nelson are not alone, but they are both responsible per their job descriptions for these decisions and they both clearly have not met expectations. Yet, I’ll bet my GOAT payment that they’ll receive nothing but praise for ‘helping’ to make the difficult decisions that will ‘fix’ the issue.
“Holy $hift Batman!”
That UC Davis release was amazing and chocked full of information (at least compared to the UO letter). I contrast that to one of my favorite lines in from the UO letter:
“We will work over the next several months to bring intentionality and a principled approach to a difficult task. That work will engage leaders across the university…”
Is there anyone out there that can get an AI prompt to output the UO letter?
The Meat:
Since one has nothing to chew on in the UO letter… I have questions about the UCD info that probably apply to the UO.
The capping of the indirect fee at 15% means that money, which dissappers in the Admin Budget, could/will affect the UO general budget, but what effect does the loss of grants (soft money)–although painful for the grantee and will probably be a total bloodbath in the labs–on the institutions general budget?
I see the state of California seems to be reducing the UCD budget by 3% while the OGB (Oregon Governors Budget) is offering nearly a 3% increase–Note this seems to be the only hard data in the UO letter… Go Oregon???
Since Oregon and the rest of the Pacific states (and their congressional delegation) are viewed by some as backwards, liberal, RNC hating states, should the admin be preparing for the nuclear doomsday options, as seen at Harvard yesterday, and contemplate/post what the budget would look like if all non-us citizens were blocked from enrolment? Add to that that the UO would probably be unable to compete if California and Washington backfill their losses of international students with Western State Students both in and out of their state.
Dark days indeed?
Back in my days working for various Employment and Training organizations (anyone remember CETA and its successor JTPA?) JTPA put the same cap on administrative costs. So management, at City of Eugene employment & training department would buy shit and call it for participant/client usage. Like a super extravagant conference table not one participant or client ever saw, for example.
There are lots of ways UO management/administration can do to get around that, and I am sure they will. CAS kinda fucked themselves over by making administrative units for multiple department, but I’m sure all staff that are Undergraduate Student Coordinators(Office Specialst 2) and Graduate Student Coordinators (OS2 as well) would not be “administrative” salaries – and anything the touch as well, including printers, office equipment, telephones, copiers, etc etc etc.
With an a budget as transparent as lead, you can be sure they will and there’s no real way to know about it.
Who has CAS been over hiring? Certainly. It classified staff. OA’s/administrators perhaps? Hard to know exactly as the UO continues to make knowing this information in any current way basically impossible – or to know the full compensation, $ and extra benefits (bonuses, utilities, cars, phones, travel for them and their families, etc).
https://ir.uoregon.edu/employees/salary-reports
From there you can get classified and unclassified lists, in PDF format of course, but I have a script that converts it to CSV for me.
In that time period, CAS budget has gone from just over $96m to just over $113m, an increase of $17m or 17%.
Note that that information is always way out of date. – because running a canned query is just too dangerous hard to do. Also, I believe, OT is included. And other $ going to OA’s is excluded. So the data, or “data”, is marginal at best. Ask for a list of employees who are hired via temp agencies. Those will be scrubbed of any OA or very high level, very expensive employees (usually retired people who come back).
Nelson in CAS has thrown money at her pet projects the last few years, especially the ASU’s. Now has overpaid OA’s running amuck – and Nelson continues throwing money at the problem. CAS Dean’s Office Administration has exploded under her and Poulsen. Years in the making – and I bet they are praised after layoff’s of unnecessary staff they hired. Boo!
Ah, the ASU debacle. There was SO MUCH gullshit and wasted $ in that exceedingly broken project. So many excellent classified workers ran. At least one excellent office manager is gone. Shit managers/administrators remain. At least a certain one, who shall remain unnamed is gone, to avoid lawsuits and OSU is stuck with them now. Yeah, Nelson and her higher up’s couldn’t have screwed up that whole thing worse if they tried.
SEIU has sent an email out to members saying that they are assuming the administration will pursue classified layoffs.
When I think about how every associate dean/provost makes the salary of 2-3 classified staff…
Oh, lookie. Another missive from Sholz and Long today about budget shortfalls. Interested to see that post here, along with the comments.