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UO drops flagship claim, prepares for loss of AAU research status

5/11/2013: Old press release boiler-plate:

About the University of Oregon 

The University of Oregon is a world-class teaching and research institution and Oregon’s flagship public university. The UO is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization made up of 62 of the leading public and private research institutions in the United States and Canada. Membership in the AAU is by invitation only. The University of Oregon is one of only two AAU members in the Pacific Northwest.

New:

About the University of Oregon 

The University of Oregon is among the 108 institutions chosen from 4,633 U.S. universities for top-tier designation of “Very High Research Activity” in the 2010 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The UO also is one of two Pacific Northwest members of the Association of American Universities.

But our jocks are now way ahead of OSU. If current trends continue in a year or two UO will be spending more money on sports than on research. Diane Dietz has the story and data on UO here. I got the OSU data from their very complete Research Office data page, here. Both are “Federal Flow Through” totals, which are the easiest to find directly comparable data. They include spending on outreach and instruction, but it’s mostly research money and the trends look similar no matter how you cut it. That’s the table on the left. The table on the right shows athletic department spending, from USAToday. (Official UO and OSU numbers for 2012.)

12 Comments

  1. The Truth 05/11/2013

    Preparing for the inevitable.

  2. awedome0 05/11/2013

    No wonder they want to drag.out the salary negotiating. Then they can use sac state as our comparator

  3. awesome0 05/11/2013

    I wonder to if the AAU looks at athletic spending relative to research, or if NCAA sanctions hurt our case.

  4. Anonymous 05/11/2013

    My affiliation is increasingly embarrassing. Shit.

  5. Anonymous 05/12/2013

    Fishwrapper suggests, for future boilerplate: The University of Oregon is in Eugene, Oregon.

    • Anonymous 05/12/2013

      Too specific, we could be located. You might as well add the GPS coordinates.

      No, strategically speaking, I’d favor: “The University of Oregon is.”
      This is more neutral with regard to the outcome.
      Once Bean’s fully retired and Espy’s hired in Allahbama, we could add … “better”.
      or if things go terribly wrong and both stay, we only have to add “not” or “not what it used to be”

    • Anonymous 05/13/2013

      Fishwrapper sez: To strategically target the crackphone-wielding admissions demographic, take a cue from His Visored Visiting Holiness, and super simplify to three characters: UO B (four with the space).

  6. Anonymous 05/12/2013

    Yeah, but our administrators will retain their flagship salaries and perks no matter what! Its always interesting that the top administrators justify their excessive pay to stay competitive with comparator schools. Yet there is not enough money to bring faculty wages up to the wages at comparator schools. And its been like that for over 25 years… Top administrators should share the pain with their salaries pegged at the same percentage of comparator schools as are the faculty salaries here…

  7. Section38 05/12/2013

    Big deal. Learning is overrated. I want wins instead

  8. Oryx 05/12/2013

    About the change in press-release boilerplate:
    1. The first sentence of the new text is very clunky.
    2. this post is a good example of UOM providing a useful service. Without it, I would have no idea that the boilerplate changed, and it seems like something that the university community as a whole should be aware of. Of course, I probably would have been happier had I not known.

  9. Unknown 05/13/2013

    The University of Oregon is in Eugene, Oregon?

    I always thought that institution was UC Eugene, based on the marketing efforts and enrollment figures. I guess students who will pay out-of-state tuition are a lot more valuable than kids from Oregon whose parents have paid taxes which somehow barely trickle to our universities.

    That said, the “Flagship” designation was dated, arrogant and simply not warranted based on the paltry amount of funded research and the lack of support for anything OTHER than athletics.

    But in good news, the Athletic Department is hiring a Sous Chef…

    http://jobs.uoregon.edu/unclassified.php?id=4301

  10. Sheldon 09/07/2014

    Glad I went to OSU.

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