5/18/2010: Here’s an interesting article by Duck tight end and UO business school student David Paulson, on CNBC. He writes about a lawsuit arguing that the NCAA should not be able to use a player’s likeness after graduation without permission and compensation. The current situation is essentially indentured servitude: the…
UO Matters
5/17/2010: President Larivere fired Melinda Grier almost 4 weeks ago. He didn’t let her resign or give her a golden parachute. He fired her and immediately took away her job responsibilities. This is almost unheard of. She had been Dave Frohnmayer’s General Counsel for 12 years, and Lariviere’s for 10…
5/15/2010: The NY Times points out that many students would be better served with something less than a traditional 4 year degree. “Roast Duck” responds in our comments: The NYT article about alternatives to college is a bit misleading. Forget that some of the principals — Richard Vedder, Charles Murray…
5/15/2010: Two news reports about Pres Lariviere’s reform plan. Ted Sickinger of the Oregonian’s story could not be much more negative, ending on this note: But neither sitting state Treasurer Ted Wheeler nor his Democratic opponent in Tuesday’s election, Sen. Rick Metsger, D-Welches, appear supportive of using the state’s borrowing…
5/13/2010: As you can imagine, Charles Martinez’s 0.65 time job off campus at OSLC doesn’t leave him a lot of time to do his 0.75 time job as UO’s Vice President for Diversity. This is why UO has never produced a written job description or had a public AA search…
5/14/2010: The union organizers are saying that it was possible to make multiple responses to the Senate Exec Committee poll via the email link that was sent, so long as you used computers with different IP addresses, and that this is one reason they discount the results. (My own faculty…
5/12/2010: President Lariviere sends this to the faculty yesterday: “I am writing to share the University of Oregon’s white paper, “Preserving Our Public Mission Through a New Partnership with the State.” Bill Graves of the Oregonian has a good story on the proposal and reactions to the proposal. I took…
5/11/2010: Uh, thanks, I guess.
5/10/2010: The local AAUP (American Association of University Professors) chapter sent along these recent data on faculty salaries at UO relative to our “comparator” schools. Obviously we are not comparable. Compensation is 90%, 97%, 93%, and 85%, for instructors, assistants, associates, and fulls, respectively. It’s worse if you look at…
5/10/2010: Greg Bolt of the RG has a story on the Senate census of opinions on a union. Some people say this was “unscientific”. In this context this typically means a sample that is biased towards one group, therefore with results that are problematic for making unbiased estimates of population…
5/10/2010: Pablo Eisenberg of the Georgetown Public Policy Institute writes about problems with university foundations. The UO Foundation suffers from many of the issues he raises, particularly excessive secrecy. Their IRS 990 form is due next week – we’ll be sure and post a copy. Here’s last year’s. The first…
5/10/2010: David Moltz and Doug Lederman of Insidehighered.com write on the US DOJ anti-trust investigation of the NCAA and what it might mean for college athletes. Also see Libby Sanders in the Chronicle, here. Currently the NCAA acts as a hiring cartel to prevent athletes bargaining for a better deal…
5/7/2010: Kaitlin Flanigan of the ODE has a story on Ken DeBevoise. FWIW, the rumor we hear is that most people agree it was a mistake to fire him, that the decision will be overturned, and that his students should get credit for a well run campaign. A recent shift…
5/4/2010: Lots of OSU visitors lately. Sorry, we got nothing for you, just UO stuff. Get your own blog! Wait, here’s a copy of the OSU Affirmative Action plan. Your Associate General Counsel Charles E. Fletcher tried to sell this to us, and said he didn’t want it posted online.…
5/4/2010: The PSU student newspaper, the “Daily Vanguard”, reports on the OUS system’s consideration of a conversion to semesters. 89% of public universities are on semesters. There is extensive information about this on the OUS website, looks like it is under serious consideration. A reader pointed me to this survey…