7/5/2012: At some point in the next few years the UO athletic department will announce plans for an expansion of Autzen stadium and Hayward field. We can expect that they will argue that sports has spillover economic benefits for Eugene. This is a dubious idea theoretically, since when people spend…
UO Matters
at Western Washington University. From the Seattle Times: In a harshly worded letter to Western President Bruce Shepard, the governor criticized the university’s decision to raise salaries 5.25 percent this school year and 4.25 percent each of the following two years in addition to boosting department-chair stipends 15 percent. The…
7/4/2012. Jefferson only had a page to work with. He must have thought this was important: To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. … He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole…
7/3/2012 update: I got interested in public records matters back in 2006, after Melinda Grier and AA Director Penny Daugherty tried to charge me $200 to see copies of UO’s Affirmative Action plans – documents which state clearly on the cover that they are to be made freely available on…
That’s the conclusion from a new paper by economist Michael Anderson from Berkeley, that uses Vegas odds to control for endogeneity: According to the report, if a college improves its season wins by 5 games, it can expect alumni athletic donations to increase by $682,000 (28 percent), applications to increase…
6/30/2012: That would be the University of Maryland. From the WaPo: With its multimillion-dollar deficit mounting and no deep-pocketed donor to cover the shortfall, the University of Maryland’s athletic department will proceed with plans to cut at least seven of its 27 varsity teams this weekend. The downsizing is an…
The famed Pulitzer prize winning historian of the civil rights movement has turned his attention to college sports and the NCAA hiring cartel. His 3 point program for reform is here – it starts with transparency: 1 . TRANSPARENCYAt any college or university that hosts an intercollegiate sports program, the principal…
From her meeting with the editorial board of the Statesman Journal: Ellen Rosenblum will seek changes in Oregon’s 40-year-old public records law to make government responses to citizen requests “earlier, cheaper and better.” This sounds nice. Oregon is rated one of the least transparent states for public records access. But…
I’ll be making a public records request for the 2012-2013 contracts for the usual Johnson Hall suspects, at the beginning of July. In past years these have yielded info on all sorts of interesting financial arrangements. Post a comment if there’s anything you are particularly interested in seeing. 6/27/2012.
6/27/2012: I wrote a while back about the economic department’s election of representatives to the union organizing committee. The OC rejected that idea, and came back with their own process. I followed it, and they have agreed to accept me as a member. In return I have agreed to abide…
of UVA. From The Hook: In his remarks prefacing his reinstatement resolution, Fralin conceded that all Board members possessed advance knowledge of the desire to remove the president. He says he regrets that he wasn’t “clever enough” to know that he and just two other board members could have called…
A UO economist’s study shows medical marijuana doesn’t increase HS marijuana use. And people call this this the dismal science? On the other hand, football wins are bad news for UO students’ grades. I wonder what will come out of the economics department next? 6/25/2012.
That would be Susan Herbst, the new President of the University of Connecticut. From the Chronicle, which also describes similar plans by Iowa and Minnesota: Our power is always going to be in the faculty,” she says. “They’re the people with the ideas. I feel sometimes in higher education we’re…
6/25/2012: From the Daily Progress: “I think the whole process by which people are appointed needs to be revisited,” said House Minority Leader David Toscano, D-Charlottesville. “I think there’s probably a role for having a designated slot for someone who has a lot of background in academia, perhaps a faculty…