11/23/2010: President Lariviere has an Op-Ed in the WSJ on his restructuring plan today, here. It’s pretty rare for the Journal to give space to a university President – they usually save it for economists. So I suppose UO Matters can do the same. Here’s the full text: Saving Public…
UO Matters
11/22/2010: Ron Bellamy of the RG offers a milquetoast recap of a story reported by Bill Graves and Rachel Bachman in the Oregonian back in June: Phil Knight is building more athletic facilities for UO. As in the past, these tax-deductible gifts will cost taxpayers a bundle. They also require…
11/17/2010: From Steve Duin’s column in the Oregonian on Chancellor Pernsteiner’s raises – while he was pushing furloughs for the UO staff and trying to get faculty to take them too: … In February 2009, Gov. Ted Kulongoski told union officials he wanted to freeze wages and eliminate step increases…
The parents are paying $50,000 plus for their kids to sit in a lecture that starts with “telegram” and ends with “kilobyte”. The random abuse from the prof in between is not the real story. Parents are willing to pay this because other parents are willing to pay it. This…
11/16/2010: This adds some credibility to the argument for unionization. From Peter Schmidt in the Chronicle. The paper itself is here. I’m no economist, but the story quotes Ron Ehrenberg, a very respected one from Cornell: “This is a serious study, and very well done.” Unions Hold Mostly Pluses for…
(Werner von Braun, rocket scientist. 1912-1977.) Posting will be light for a bit, because I don’t know what I’m doing.
11/14/2010: President Lariviere’s restructuring plan calls for more UO autonomy and the unique state bond financing plan Michael Redding drew up. The UO Senate Budget Committee report on both is here. Very thorough and is generally very favorable on both counts. They do call for more transparency, particularly with the…
11/11/2010: My personal preferences are for more riverfront development, not less. But they are also for more transparency, not less. And the Connecting Eugene people have just demonstrated, very convincingly, that UO and ORI would have been *much* better off with more transparency from the start. Now ORI faces long…
11/10/2010: You can’t make this shit up. From Ken Goe of the Oregonian, link courtesy of the Commentator. We should all thank UW Athletic Director Scott Woodward for bringing some attention to the embarrassing imbalance between UO’s athletic extravaganza and our academic mission. This is supposed to be UO President…
11/11/2010: The fast acting folks in public affairs have put this up on UO’s homepage, in reaction to the embarrassment UO has recently suffered. They should be fast: their budget has grown from $2.5 million to $6.8 million in 5 years. It’s a shame we didn’t have that money for…
11/10/2010: From Dan Corcoran of KEZI. The most purely rhetorical question I’ve heard in a while is from Paul Cziko of Connecting Eugene: “Should the University follow the law and uphold its contracts? That’s the question. Do we do it all the time, or do we do it when it’s…
11/10/2010: I used to be a skeptic about Affirmative Action. But the rules boil down to this: have a public announcement of job openings and an open search – or a good explanation for why not. If you are spending taxpayer’s money, report your hiring practices and outcomes to the…
11/9/2010: The Senate has an unusually full agenda for tomorrow – everything from the ORI building to a report by Frances Dyke on parking. The opposition to the ORI project has dug up some documents that apparently show the decisions to approve the building were made without the necessary community…
11/9/2010: Here’s a nice moneymaker for DPS: Rent 100 parking spaces from Peacehealth for $25 a month, then sell parking permits for them for $400 a year. Earn a bit more by selling, say, 120 permits for the 100 slots. See UO’s contract with the Peacehealth parking garage here. Of…
about voicing your opinion in the polls on the right or in the comments? Don’t be. The NY Times reports, tonight, on a new NLRB case involving an employee who criticized her boss on Facebook: Lafe Solomon, the board’s acting general counsel, said, “This is a fairly straightforward case under…