Last updated on 05/26/2020
It certainly looks that way. Here are the basic operational metrics, courtesy of Brad Shelton:
Total expenditures per student credit hour have increased by 64% in just 4 years. Where is that money going?
In response to a question, here are the definitions, available at https://ir.uoregon.edu/ under Operational Metrics, along with reports on every department.
SCH and number of majors are down, but expenses didn’t drop accordingly. Some costs are adjustable, but many are fixed, at least in the short term, and it’s not trivial to ramp back up if the fickle winds of SCH choices start blowing your way again.
I’m no accountant, but it looks like something funny is going on with the Type III expenditures in 2018-19, though. It looks more like a one-time charge or an accounting change than something happening in the real world.
Accounting at UO is a zoo.Almost $1/2 Million went walk about for about three years before it was call back. The intended recipient didn’t notice they didn’t have it, the unintended recipient didn’t notice *they* had it.
I suspect that the drop in undergraduate students from China also contributed.
What’s a type III accounting?
Some stats that might help put these numbers in perspective:
UO Undergraduate Tuition is $217/credit in-state, $741/credit out-of-state. Graduate tuition is roughly $303/credit in-state, $542/credit out-of-state.
http://catalog.uoregon.edu/admissiontograduation/tuitionfees/
UO Law tuition is roughly $1,150/credit in-state, $1,450/credit out-of-state. (but keep in mind that’s for a semester credit, so it’s more like $767/term-credit in-state, $967/term-credit out-of-state)
https://registrar.uoregon.edu/costs/tuition-fees/law
The Economics Department’s 5-year average expenditures per SCH is $144.8 (and it has increased 47% over the same time period).
Chemistry’s 5-year average is $288.5. Anthropology is $165.6. Sociology is $186.6. Mathematics is $145.8. Women’s and Gender Studies is $274.0. Counseling Psychology is $326.7. Landscape Architecture is $422.3. 3PM is $322.8. Law is $637.2.
As far as I can tell, Economics and Mathematics are the cheapest departments (at least on a per Total SCH basis) on campus.
“cheapest?” Here in the economics department the tone word is “efficient”
You gotta pump those numbers up! Those are rookie numbers!
@uomatters Sure, but how many administrators (other than the CAS Dean) have economics training?
These data also show average and median class sizes, which I suspect correlate closely to “efficiency”. Wow, you economists teach a lot of big classes! I hope that every now and again they let you teach in a small room. Or, I guess for the future, only put 10 or 15 in those big rooms.
How come we are always focussed only on costs, and not also on income?
This is why I posted the per credit tuition prices below — income is sort of fixed by central, in a way. Costs are all that individual departments/colleges have “control” over.
The way things are set up, that may be true. But in a reality-based university, these things could be considered more intelligently. For example, units can do things that increase income – attract out-of-state students, allow more majors into their departments – but they get no incentive to do this. A initiative may cost more, but it may more than pay for itself. The current budget “model” doesn’t acknowledge that. Somehow only graduate students are seen as increasing revenue.