The 8×10 faculty offices? Once a week:
Whatever, it’s mostly just empty cups from Cafe Roma. But the day care center? Just on Wednesdays:
Now that’s a bit scary.
The Husky faculty, on the other hand, took the Ducks by 13 points:
10/4/2012: Forthcoming in the NYT’s Sunday Magazine’s education supplement:
Eugene, Ore: Just eleven months ago the sudden firing of beloved President Richard Lariviere devastated morale on the University of Oregon Campus. But now faculty and student leaders are crediting new President Mike Gottfredson and Interim Provost Jim Bean with initiating a bold new plan for UO’s future.
“With Richard, everything was outside the box. Gottfredson, on the other hand – well, let’s just say he has spent two months doing some tidy work with his org chart” said one former faculty Senate president.
The new union leadership has been equally supportive. “After seeing this I’ve got new hope for UO’s future. Sure, competitive pay, space, graduate student support, and some respect from the administration would be nice, but this visionary org chart has already convinced two of my colleagues to reject lucrative outside offers at top 20 schools.”
One department chair, who asked not to be quoted by name, said “I was one of the 50 out of 50 department heads who voted to tell Pernsteiner and Kitzhaber we did not want Jim Bean to be interim President. But when he showed up at the leadership retreat on Monday and unveiled this we were blown away by all the boxes and how the lines came together right at the source of UO’s past failures. The long silence in the room spoke volumes. Bean has earned his right to be the bottom in that big box.”
The University of Oregon moved up in the rankings — jumping six rungs to No. 109 on the list of about 1,376 colleges nationally.
And Christian Whithol of the RG reports on still more good financial news for UO: Eugene’s latest city subsidized student rental – aimed at some pretty well off students:
The company, which has been promised a $4.55 million property tax break by the city, has submitted new and more detailed plans that show a wealth of upscale amenities for the 139-foot-high building. They include a pool and hot tub on the roof and, on a lower story, a fitness and leisure complex that would feature another hot tub, golf simulator, billards room, piano room, steam room, two tanning rooms, a sauna, yoga room and lounge.
According to Zillow, rents in Eugene are well below the levels in our competitor college towns such as Boulder, Seattle, Phoenix, and LA. In contrast to those towns, the increase in the supply has kept rents level in Eugene, despite the increase in the number of students. The new construction coming on line this fall should lead to rent decreases – judging by the reports of unhappy local landlords.
Because parents look at these rankings and at total cost of attendance, this means that UO has plenty of room to continue out-of-state tuition increases, while staying competitive for students.
So expect another round of raises for UO central administrators, as soon as the faculty and SEIU sign their contracts.
I’ve just been informed that UO is now changing their reporting cycle so that it ends on Sept 31. And rather than make the August report now, IR is going to delay reporting anything until sometime in October. This means that the data on the stipends that UO administrators have been receiving over the summer will not be public until after the administration’s bargaining with the faculty over salary has likely concluded. How convenient.
9/4/2013 update: Thanks friends, we’ve got this $239.85 covered now. Any University of Nike t-shirt royalties through this weekend go to the suddenly depleted Glenlivet 15 fund – or Randy Geller, depending on the outcome of the bargaining session on Intellectual Property. Friday at 9AM, 122 Knight Library.
9/4/2013: Wondering how much our central administrators are now making, and how many of them there now are? Me too, but Dave Hubin’s public records office says:
Make a contribution below, or get your University of Nike T-shirt here – $4 from every shirt goes towards buying UO’s public records, and making them public: 
|
UO’s faculty union bargaining team has played President Gottfredson’s lead negotiator Sharon Rudnick like a screechy fiddle. She has insisted since March that there was no more money, beyond her initial 10.5% offer. The union has now forced her to raise it by significantly more than the 1.25% that dues will cost.
We’re not yet up to 14.5%, but the AAUP and AFT can take this on the road – deservedly – as proof that a faculty union at a research university can raise faculty salaries by more than enough to cover dues, even in the face of a determined if misguided president.
Today’s synopsis:
Raises: The elevator version:
We’re going down. During the first year of President Gottfredson’s administration UO faculty pay has fallen still further behind other AAU public universities:
The relative drops are mostly driven by pay raises at the other AAU schools, however UO’s average pay for assistants and fulls has actually fallen, presumably because of composition changes. The retroactive 1.5% ATB raise proposed by the admin’s for 2012-13 is only for 6 months, so it’s really only a 1% raise. Sneaky. Either way it is not close to enough to make up for the ~3% UO faculty lost relative to other AAU publics between Fall 2011 and Fall 2012. Much less enough to get the elevator going up. And the administration has been fibbing: UO benefits don’t make up salary gap.
Their conclusion is that while both effects are at work, Bowen effects dominate in public research universities, with $2 in increases due to administrators seizing on increased revenue for every $1 in increases due to upward pressures on faculty and staff salaries from other industries. Same for private research institutions. What’s more, they find a plausible culprit within universities. They notice that cost increases are likelier when the ratio of staff to faculty is higher. That suggests that when administrators within the university accumulate bargaining power, they’re better able to force increases in costs. The administrative staff, they suggest, is what’s really driving this.
By administrative staff, they presumably mean central administrators like Jim “38%” Bean. Say Jim, any update on how much our administration is going to piss away in Portland this year? Thanks to an anonymous reader for the link. From the WaPo’s excellent “The Tuition is Too Damn High” series.
Lots of rumors flying around – and I didn’t start all of them – that the administration’s haste to wrap up bargaining is motivated in part by a desire to get the economics off the table before the latest administrative bloat data comes out:
From: Bill Harbaugh
Subject: public records request, non-classified employees
Date: September 1, 2013 11:55:21 PM PDT
To: Lisa ThorntonCc: J P Monroe , [email protected], Andrea Larson , [email protected], [email protected] Dear Ms Thornton:
This is a public records request for a machine readable file in excel, comma delimited, or any other standard format showing the following information for UO non-classified employees as of 9/3/2013:
First Name, Last Name, MI, University Email Address, University Office Address, University Office Phone Area Code, University Office Phone Number, Employee Type, Academic Title, Job Type, Job Title Job Start Date, Yrs in Position, Fac Prim Activity, Home Department, Rank, Rk Date, Pay Department, Annual Salary Rate, Appt Percent Job Status, Job End Date, Appointment Status, Term of Service, EEO Type, FT/PT
I ask for a fee waiver on the basis of public interest.
I’m ccing a few people in the UO IR office, who should be able to easily provide these data.
The prior data on this is from the error ridden Beangrams, and the most excellent presentations of the AAUP’s Howard Bunsis. March 2013 update for UO here:
“Institutional Support” means central administration, more or less.
More background:
Rumor from the spectators at the annual faculty club ping-pong semi-finals is that Gottfredson has told Geller and Rudnick to stop their $100K a month billing frenzy and cut a deal, quick. The large faculty turnout at the Thursday meeting had its intended effect, and Rudnick’s flip-out didn’t hurt either.
Rudnick will apparently meet with Gottfredson et al at 9AM to get his instructions. As you can see from the spreadsheet below the union has already come down from 19.3% over 3 years (compounded) to 15%, and has made concessions on health, childcare, and promotion raises as well. The majority of the faculty I’ve talked with feel that if the union offer is not acceptable to Gottfredson as is, we should strike during week one.
Synopsis from session XXXVI, Thursday 8/29:
Your Guarantee of Truthiness: All UO Matters bargaining posts are fact-checked by Geller and Rudnick’s secret team of well paid consultants, who post their spin on the official UO Admin site, here. If you pay Dave Hubin $285.98 he’ll even tell you who wrote it.
Proposals so far:
Live Blog:
Disclaimer: My opinion of what people said or were thinking but were too decent, or well-paid, to say. Nothing is a quote unless in quotes. If you don’t like my blog read Luebke’s.
12:55: Admin team filing in. ~50 faculty, kids, etc. Approaching fire code limit. Any volunteers to move Rudnick’s chair?
1:05 Rudnick: Thanks for delay, we have economic proposals and more propaganda about how we already spent your money on athletics and pet admin projects.
Art 24 Leaves, admin counter:
Rudnick: Go forth and multiply. We’ll give dual family leaves if both parents are UO employees. Admin relents on Ebenezeer clause: Officers of instruction can now leave for xmas and spring break without getting pay docked.
Art 31 Release time, admin counter:
Rudnick: Union gets 2.5 FTE for officers, extra 2.0 FTE for bargaining, and can buy course releases based on salary, OPE, admin costs, facilities use.
Mauer: Why not charge us the replacement cost? Rudnick: It’s not replacement cost. Mauer: Why not? Rudnick: blah, blah. (She’s an expert on bill padding issues, be careful here Mike.)
Art 20, Salary, admin counter:
See the spreadsheet, admin proposal is very weak.
Caucus break. Union team leaves.
Admin’s and ~50 faculty stay. I start giving a thoughtful, fact-based discussion of the admin proposal, using the spreadsheet above, with a few illustrative examples such as:
Proposal: $350 one time signing bonus. This goes over like a lead brick. Jim Bean’s been getting $775 a month for his beamer payments:
Rudnick interrupts, saying I’ve got something wrong, but won’t answer when I ask her for details. Faculty start ripping into the admin proposal, asking her questions. She won’t answer them either.
Union team returns, tells Rudnick we’re moving this to Room 101. We do. Session restarts:
Gleason: While you were in caucus, the people in the bargaining room, including your economic consultant (me) were ridiculing this proposal. This is unacceptable, and I’m a journalism dean so I know all about that so called free-speech stuff.
Mauer: So, you want to talk about it? (I’m right there Tim. Why not send me another harassing fact check letter?)
Gleason: No.
Rudnick: Long bit about $350 being an attempt to split off the NTTF’s and divide and conquer. Gives a bit more to the lower classes. She tries to explain her math, Cecil finds a few errors.
Rudnick: No changes to your merit proposal. We cut your equity proposal for NTTF’s because of something the finance people said. Then she adds “Don’t ask me any details” and “It’s all in the details.” (Why didn’t Jamie Moffitt show up for this crucial bargaining session? Because the administration doesn’t have enough respect for the faculty to make the trip over from JH).
Cecil: 2% is not enough to get NTTF’s to $36K floor.
Rudnick: We think it is enough. But it’s all in the details and don’t ask me any details.
Promotion raises:
Rudnick: We accept the union’s 8% promotion raises for NTTFs. Currently there is no policy for this, so it’s a significant increase.
Rudnick: For CAS, post tenure review typically gets $2k or $4K, we’ll boost that to 4% or 8% in order to give more equity and merit. (Note, however, that this is only for the *first* post-tenure review after the contract is signed. Among the many problems with this proposal is its hit or miss nature: had an excellent review last year? You will wait 5 years to try again for your raise.)
Rudnick: Here’s our spreadsheet, with cost increases, estimates promotion and post tenure review increases will result in $3.5M or so in new costs. Pratt: So, these are just for first post-tenure reviews? Rudnick: Yes, because …. Pratt finishes for her: Because that would increase faculty salaries.
Why isn’t our $270K a year (plus football junkets) VPFA Jamie Moffitt here to explain this proposal?
Rudnick: This is a significant proposal. We worked very hard to try to put some significant extra money on the table. There was a very long discussion in JH this AM on how to fund this. (Uh, cut athletic subsidies and drop the $2.4M Portland White Stag lease, for starters?)
Rudnick: We hope you see this as meeting you in the middle. Oh yeah, we didn’t have time to do the compounding, check UO Matters.
Mauer: Back to floors. Pool is 2%. You don’t know if that’s enough to get NTTF’s all to $36K?
Rudnick: We’re looking at different groups individually and looking at other possible permutations on how to fairly set floors. They’ve run a bunch of scenarios. Their sense is it’s enough to get to a fair outcome.
Mauer: What if there’s money leftover? Rudnick: We’d spend it on beamers for the administration.
Braun: Can we see your scenarios? Rudnick: Starts waiving her hands, it’s back of the envelope, … It’s just somebody in accounting doing if this and that.
Braun: But it did inform your proposal? Cecil: I’ve seen assertions that admin is saying it would be unreasonable to pay RA’s $36k?
Rudnick: UO research grants are falling, less than came in last year, might lead to layoffs. Rudnick starts passing around her spreadsheet, with costs, talking about it. She shortchanged us on copies, I’ll post as soon as I get one. She babbles on.
Pissed off looking faculty start leaving the room, making calls for outside offers.
Rudnick: Post-tenure reviews will be reviewed outside the department, by Gottfredson, before you get the 8%.
Retirement: Rudnick asks union for ideas on how to deal with the pickup. Uh, they did that already, Sharon.
In conclusion:
Rudnick: President and Provost are putting themselves on the line for this proposal. It will take reorganization, re-prioritization, maybe even cuts or postponement of hiring of new strategic communicators and brand manager hires. She was just kidding on that last part, I’m sure.
Caucus break.
Cecil stays, gives the ~40 or so remaining faculty an impressive off the top of his head talk on bargaining, dissecting the admin proposal, comparing it with what the union is asking for.
They’re back. 6 die hard faculty observers left.
Contracts: Snoozer. And no, it’s not because it’s about the NTTF’s, it’s because Cecil and Mauer are on this. Just kick back folks, they have your back.
Wait – Blandy is going to reduce the amount of notice and pay they need to give NTTF’s. Current policy is too expensive. So, are you going to do the same for administrators, Doug?
7/31/2013: Back in July 2011 UO got in trouble with the State auditors for post-dating Frohnmayer’s retirement contracts and no bothering to specify what work he’d done for the money. Then Bean got in trouble with Davis for hiring his buddy John Moseley for an extended post-retirement gig without bothering to write a contract. Davis had to write another retroactive one while Bean was on sabbatical, and she chewed out Bean for it. Then in April 2013 Gottfredson announced Bean would “return to the faculty effective 7/1/2013” And now Bean is working for UO without a contract – if he’s still working for UO that is. From the UO Public Records Office yesterday:
The university does not possess documents responsive to your request for “a copy of the current employment contract(s) for James C. Bean“. The office considers this information to be fully responsive to your request, and will now close your matter. Thank you for contacting the office with your request.
My April 2012 request for docs on the unusual deals between Bean and Moseley, including the retroactive contract and Davis email, was quickly followed by Bob Berdahl’s clampdown on public records releases, which has continued under President Gottfredson. I did get the response above without having to pay a fee, but it took 11 days.
Long back and forth between Cecil and Rudnick on job security, raises for NTTFs. Not a word from VPAA Doug Blandy, who is supposedly in charge of all this. Bizarre.
Q: Do all UO departments give NTTF’s the opportunity for career-track jobs?
Rudnick: Pres wants the flexibility to replace NTTF’s with TTF’s.
Cecil: So, if we come back with a proposal that says you can cut for that, but no other reasons, will you agree to it?
Rudnick: Seems to be saying no.
Next session this Friday – not sure if it starts at 9AM or 10AM.
From: [ ]
Sent: Monday, July 01, 2013 5:01 PM
To: President Gottfredson
Subject: Trash Can CoversPresident Gottfredson,
Referring to yesterday’s RG, was it really necessary for the athletic department to mock our sister university in Corvallis by portraying it as “trash” on the new garbage can covers at the la crosse field, of all places? I’m a UO alum who is concerned about the Athletic Department Tail wagging the University Dog, and this is yet another example of the lack of adult supervision readily apparent across the river. I urge you to remove those embarrassing covers. It is so juvenile and so unrepresentative of the kind of university from which I thought I graduated. The favor of your reply is requested.
[ ]
From: President Gottfredson <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 9:47 AM
Subject: RE: Trash Can Covers
To: [ ]Dear Mr. [ ]
Thank you for sharing your concerns about the inappropriate depiction of our rival mascot on some UO campus waste cans. I share your disappointment, and assure you that this does not represent the level of discourse and behavior we expect of our university. The images have been removed.
Athletic rivalries add to the spirit of our institutions, but they must never overshadow the collegiality, collaboration, and healthy competition that define our educational and research missions.
Sincerely,
Michael Gottfredson
President, University of Oregon
8/31/2013: A UO alumnus shares his 8/2 letter to President Gottfredson, and Gottfredson’s response:
From: chuck desler
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, August 02, 2013 5:26 PM
Subject: u of o alum thinks you have lost your reason/way/marblesNY Times, Oregon Football Complex is Glittering Monument to Ducks’ Ambition
One of the comment on NY Times site was simply “obscene” to which I would agree.
Knight recently built the Jaqua Center For Academic Studies for really stupid football players something we used to call a LIBRARY.
If this is what the University of Oregon stands for now, all I can say is you people are really sick.
Chuck
charles desler architect california
BA Oregon 1968
BArch/MArch Tulane 1975
President Gottfredson’s response:
Nothing.
I’m guessing he got many hundreds of emails like this. More than 4 weeks later, with a major capital giving campaign on the horizon, and Gottfredson doesn’t even have a canned response to send out to angry alumns? Maybe Howard Slusher hasn’t signed off on it yet? Just how far down in the Johnson Hall administrative bunker is our president hiding?
8/31/2013: Phil Weiler was demoted for the “University of Nike” debacle? That’s the implication of the story in the RG today. Rearranging the deck chairs in the Strategic Communications Office is not exactly the sort of bold leadership Gottfredson needs to show, a year into the job. Apparently the only way to get Gottfredson to do anything is to embarrass him in public, and even then is all he does is demote a public relations flack.
8/30/2013: Brand backtracking: Diane Dietz reports in the RG that the Ducks have backed off rules that effectively excluded local firms from selling Duck t-shirts, after considerable pressure on Gottfredson. Meanwhile, University of Nike t-shirts are available here. Omnia Fumabamus.
8/24/2013: Pintens loses control of the Duck brand: This country needs a law against newspapers reporting what PR people don’t want reported. The call was from the ZGF architects of Nike’s new football Quack House, to Duck PR guy Craig Pintens. The subject was how the Register Guard had out-maneuvered UO’s efforts to control the media message:
8/24/2013: 2 Duck branding hires in 1 day, while OSU hires for Science:
While Gottfredson loads UO up with communications administrators to push the U of Nike Duck brand, those country hicks up at Oregon State are hiring for Science, Technology Engineering and Math:
Science/Education Research/Administration: Oregon State University seeks a skilled and visionary leader to direct and grow its Center for Research on Lifelong STEM Learning established in 2012 with a mission to enhance understanding of how individuals become lifelong STEM learners, practitioners and researchers. Unique among its counterparts, The OSU Center focuses on learning research across all settings (in and out of school) and across the lifespan. Ph.D., 5 years conducting STEM relevant learning research, and a track record of successful fund raising are required. For more information go to: http://stem.science.oregonstate.edu. For full consideration apply by October 21, 2013. Position #0011233.
We are so screwed.
8/23/2013 update #2: Must be time for the roundup. I’m no vaquero, but I bet the assistant gets the dirty wollies and the ass end of the job while the three VP types stand around looking important:
Title: Executive Assistant to the Assoc. VP Communications, Marketing, & Brand Management
Department: University Advancement
Reports To: Assoc. VP Communications, Marketing, & Brand Management
Term: 1.0 FTE for 12 months (renewable annually)
Salary Range: $40,000 – 50,000
Review Date: Search will remain open until filled. Search committee will begin reviewing applications Sept. 9, 2013
Start Date: As soon as possible
8/23/2013: Another day, another branding administrator
Title: Senior Director of Public Affairs and Communication
Department: University Advancement
Reports To: Associate Vice President, Communications, Marketing and Brand Management
Term: 1.0 FTE for 12 months (renewable annually)
Salary Range: $100,000 to $120,000
Review Date: Search will remain open until filled. To ensure consideration, please submit an application by September 18, 2013
Start Date: As soon as possible
8/22/2013: No money for the faculty, of course.
Title: Associate Vice President, State and Community Affairs
Department: University Advancement
Reports To: Vice President for University Advancement
Term: 1.0 FTE for 12 months (renewable annually)
Salary Range: $110,000+
Review Date: Search will remain open until filled. Search committee will begin reviewing applications Aug. 15, 2013
Tim Clevenger to leave Alumni Association to work on branding:
8/20/2013: News to me. Mike Andreasen promoted him in March. Because what the U of Nike needs most is more communications and branding administrators?
He was hired in 2011, hiring announcement here. Job add for a replacement is here:
Title: Associate Vice President (AVP) for Advancement/Executive Director (ED) UO Alumni Association
Department: University Advancement
Reports To: Vice President for University Advancement
Term: 1.0 FTE for 12 months (renewable annually)
Salary Range: $150,000+
Review Date: Search will remain open until filled. Search committee will begin reviewing applications September 17, 2013.
Start Date: As soon as possible
7/29/2013: Great news. The university has finally published a comprehensible budget, a strategic plan, and information on future spending priorities. 114 pages, starting with a fact-filled letter from the President, followed with detailed reports on what has been achieved and what remains to be achieved from the 2009 academic plan. There’s even a chart showing what still needs to be done to get faculty salaries up to the targets. In addition, the athletic department has agreed to send $3 million back to the university, to use for academic scholarships.This is what UO Matters has been trying to get the UO administration to do since I started blogging in 2009.
Mission Accomplished – while this blog will remain up for historical reasons, I see no need for future posts or public records requests.
It’s really quite impressive:
The full financial and strategic plans and reports are here, press release on the athletic payments here. They’ve even released a 44 page evaluation of the president’s first year on the job, here:
The president waived confidentiality, releasing the full evaluation:
Pretty impressive for his first year. Lots of much needed attention to faculty retention, pay, research. Important to get off to a strong start on that.
Oh wait, never mind. These documents are from President Eli Capilouto at the University of Kentucky, not from UO’s Mike Gottredson.
Here in Oregon, our academic plan was abandoned by former interim Provost Bean, after his desultory efforts ended with a 2009 draft plan. There have been no updates or meaningful progress reports. There’s been no formal process for the faculty to provide feedback for an evaluation of our president. From what I can tell he’s had no evaluation at all.
After a year on the job, President Gottfredson’s most transparent statement to the faculty on budget planning is this:
After months of additional pressure from the faculty union, UO VPFA Jamie Moffitt finally released this mishmash of outdated, irrelevant, incomprehensible, and poorly scanned pdfs:
Then she walked out of the meeting when the faculty negotiators tried to get her to explain where the money had been going. At the most recent meeting the faculty team asked if they could see the complete UO budget. The hired negotiator for the administration, Sharon Rudnick, said “You can go ahead and ask. See what you get.” Snap.
The UO Senate has been trying since 2000 to end athletic subsidies and get the UO athletic department to start helping with academic scholarships. Meanwhile their budget has tripled, to $90M. More than at UK. To his credit President Gottfredson has at least responded to the latest effort by the UO Senate, in May 2013. But there’s still no transparent process to get there, much less any action. And our President Gottfredson has allowed Randy Geller and Dave Hubin to put UO’s public records into complete lockdown, with combination of hefty fees, long delays, and excessive redactions. So unfortunately this blog is going have to go on for at least the 2013-2014 academic year.
2.A.11 The institution employs a sufficient number of qualified administrators who provide effective leadership and management for the institution’s major support and operational functions and work collaboratively across institutional functions and units to foster fulfillment of the institution’s mission and accomplishment of its core theme objectives.
Hubin’s March 2013 accreditation report, submitted one week after Bean resigned and was replaced with Scott Coltrane, said:
The University of Oregon employs a fully sufficient number of outstanding administrators who provide effective leadership in accordance with this standard.
Hmm. The accreditor’s response to UO’s 2007 self-study report had taken Johnson Hall to task for shared governance and administrative failings:
Commission criteria assume that there will be a commonly understood and uniformly employed set of institutional policies, rules, practices, and procedures that are employed at every level of administration. These policies should foster open communication and goal attainment. However, the Committee is concerned that the University of Oregon does not currently have these operational policies in place and that campus based decision-making procedures appear to be idiosyncratic and not uniformly applied. Therefore, the Committee recommends that the University of Oregon take steps to enhance internal communication and to review its operating policies in regard to Standard 6, Governance and Administration; Standard 4.A, Faculty Selection, Evaluation, Roles, Welfare andDevelopment and Standard 7.C, Financial Management.
That didn’t happen – in fact Tomlin even stopped publishing a faculty handbook. But the Senate did then implement the policy library and constitution, which Hubin points too as being responsive to these problems. And now we’ve got a faculty faculty union that is doing the rest of the grunt work, as volunteers serving under constant sniper fire from Rudnick and Geller, to make up for the failings of Johnson Hall’s outstanding administrators.
6/30/2013: The new academic year starts July 1, which means it’s time to make public records requests for the contracts President Gottfredson has given our administrative leaders. Under Lariviere I could get these in a few days at no charge, but I’m expecting this year Gottfredson and Hubin will use delays and fees to keep these secret as long as possible. Anyone want to see any names in particular? For reference check Gottfredson’s “Executive Leadership Team” and the provost’s org chart:
6/3/2013 update: Here’s the mic check video, from a helpful commenter. The guy in the middle is Frog, or maybe Bean, after an administrative sabbatical paid for with student tuition increases. Say, what is Bean going to teach next year?
5/31/2013. The ODE reports from the investiture:
Another concern that [UO Student Jeremy Hedlund] mentioned was that UO faculty members are one of the lowest paid university members in the American Association of Universities, with some of the faculty not even getting a raise in pay since 2008.
“The money that they’ve been charging us has clearly not been going to the faculty members,” Hedlund said.
No shit. The total wage bill for bargaining unit faculty is about $96M. UO’s tuition revenue increased $29M last year. Average salaries for assistant and associate professors *fell*.
The RG reports on what seems to have been a remarkably respectful protest:
During Thursday’s ceremony, about 50 students gathered on the arena steps to protest tuition hikes for next school year. Fifteen went inside and briefly disrupted the ceremony, asking Gottfredson to freeze tuition; meet with students; and be a leader, “not a bureaucrat pushing Phil Knight’s agenda.” The students said Gottfredson had turned down their requests for face-to-face meetings three times.
The students then apologized for disrupting the ceremony before a campus policeman walked along with them as they left the building.
I like that apology. “Sorry. But how did you expect us to react to being ignored?”
5/24/2013: The OUS F&A committee has unanimously voted to endorse the tuition increase proposals and send them to the full OUS board for approval in June.
Meanwhile Zillow has just increased it’s estimate of the market value of Pernsteiner’s soon to be vacant Treetops mansion to $1.3M. No word on recent maintenance costs.
5/23/2013: Students gotta pay for Pernsteiner’s severance, Bean’s sabbatical, and the Jock Box tutoring. Betsy Hammond has the latest in the Oregonian.
154 page OUS F&A committee docket here. Jamie Moffitt’s big idea for saving money? Merge the UO kitchen and wood-shop. Sounds tasty, but I think I’ll stick with the Noodle Head.
Some data: Over the past 5 years UO has added
Why isn’t President Gottfredson having discussions with the faculty and the Senate on how to get UO’s spending priorities back in balance?
Sharon Rudnick, when delivering the administration’s counter-offer last week:
“You can argue whatever you want. This is what it is. This is our best offer. You can make all the accusations you want.”
The union’s slightly more temperate response:
Our proposal would redirect 2% of the university’s total operating budget by fiscal year 2015. Their proposal would equate to around 1% of the total operating budget for the same period. The difference is not monumental. Yet the administration’s bargaining team was stubborn in its insistence that our proposal is too expensive.
Vice-President Moffitt explained at great length the university’s revenue streams, its expenses, and its unrestricted net assets. What she did not explain specifically is what the fixed expenses cover; what the administration’s spending priorities are; and what principles guide the university’s budget policies. The information she provided gave no evidence that the administration has been rethinking the way it distributes funds. Instead, she and her colleagues propose to raise tuition in order to raise salaries. Well, tuition has been rising every year for many years, and it hasn’t resulted in increases to the instructional budget in general or faculty salaries in particular.
We believe that a re-examination of how funds are presently distributed within the university would lead to different solutions. Finding these solutions together would be a much more productive way to spend our time at the bargaining table than having to listen to reasons why, for example, the administration finds it hard to create one printed copy of the Faculty Handbook (to which they finally agreed) or why they think defining “University” as “University of Oregon” solves our (and the Senate’s) objection to their calling themselves the “University.” But since the administration isn’t having that conversation, the union will start collating the many ideas we’ve been hearing from across the UO community—NTTF, TTF, ORs, OAs, staff, and students—for saving money and rethinking the budget. …
The University of Oregon is ranked 9th out of 9 AAU comparator universities in salaries, and the administration’s meager proposal will not change this fact. We acknowledge their team’s willingness to discuss adding back compression/equity and salary floors, but we do not accept their assertion that they have no other resources to put towards our proposal. We reject their premises and methodology. We will be pushing them to take seriously the need to rethink their spending priorities and to work with us to make faculty what they say we are: the top priority. We welcome your support and encourage you to attend our next sessions on Tuesday, May 7, and Thursday, May 9.
4/29/2013: The guy that Jamie Moffitt sent to the Thursday bargaining session to answer questions about how UO couldn’t afford to pay its faculty? He got an 18% raise over the past 2 years:
Nov 2010:
I’m sure he’s earning it. Probably more than Moffitt earned her own 75% raise – which she got after a failed search for an outside VPFA. She was on the search committee that made the call. No conflict of interest there!
Nov 2010:
Nov 2010:
While President Gottfredson came in at a $540K salary. For comparison, the chancellor of UCLA gets $425K, after 6 years in the job.
I commend the 5,000 higher education workers of the Massachusetts Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 615. These men and women, led by Massachusetts SEIU Higher Education Director Wayne Langley, commissioned four of the most trenchant, clear reports on the foibles of higher education finance since The Jungle muckracker Upton Sinclair self-published The Goose-Step: A Study of American Higher Education in 1922.
These articulate, footnote-laden documents investigate questions that must, but may never, top the public agenda of any discussions of college access for years to come.
While the reports ask familiar questions, my thrill is that these powerful questions come from a new voice, an influential union, outside the higher education policy circles -– the 2.1 million voter, I mean, member, SEIU.
I spent Wednesday visiting our state legislators – including Phil Barnhart and Lee Byers, in an event organized by SEIU, AFT, AAUP, and OSA. The UO administration and the UO boosters obviously have a lot of influence in Salem, but these groups are also very organized and well funded.
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