Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts tagged as “Research money”

No correlation between UO grad program rank and full professor pay

11/20/2019 repost: These are old data, but I doubt they’ve changed much.

8/9/2015: My understanding is that UO administration bargainer Bill Brady has said that the reason full professor pay for some UO departments lags the AAU averages is that some UO departments just aren’t that good. So I got curious if there was a correlation between UO department quality and pay.

The horizontal axis is the National Research Council’s 2010 ranking of UO PhD programs, see below for methodology. The vertical axis is average pay for UO full professors by department as a percentage of average pay at AAU publics for 2014-15. From UO IR, here.

I’m no econometrician, but the slope coefficient looks like zero to me. And lets not talk about the variance. There’s probably better data for department rankings but I doubt it changes the conclusion much: whatever system the UO administration is using to set faculty pay, it’s not about quality.

Screen Shot 2015-08-09 at 5.37.57 PM

The National Research Council rankings were released in 2010, the data was from 2007. Quoting from a description of the methodology here, “The NRC used 20 variables that it considers “indicators of program quality.” Variables include measures of faculty research activity, student support and outcomes, and faculty and student demographics. The indicators come from the extensive data provided by the institutions themselves as well as some data collected by the NRC (e.g., faculty awards, publications, and citations).” US News has more recent rankings for departments, but in contrast to their data driven undergrad rankings, the grad rankings are crap – entirely reputational, and the survey has simplistic questions and very low response rates. UO has current data on productivity from Academic Analytics by department (and faculty member) for ourselves and comparators, but the UO administration has chosen to keep even the UO department data secret. Maybe the administration’s bargaining team will show it at Wednesday’s bargaining session though, in an effort to justify their low-ball raise proposal?

9/29/2010: Idiots guide to NRC rankings of graduate programs:

UO’s federal research funding barely tops Duck spending, after their subsidies

9/14/2015: UO announces $115M in research funding for 2014-15 Interim VP for Research Brad Shelton’s office has just released the 14-15 fact sheet here. $103.5M in federal grants: The University of Oregon has more than doubled its research funding over the last twenty years to a total of $114.6 million in sponsored projects…

Shelton reports that Espy brought in a 13% increase in UO research grants

9/21/2014 update: That may even have been more than the latest increase in the athletics budget. The report from UO’s astonishingly well paid new VP for research Brad Shelton is here. Oregon State has a real-time dashboard showing their data, here. If anyone knows where the full UO report is please put the link in the comments, thanks.

5/20/2013 updated Updated: Beavers crush Ducks in Civil War for research money, with athletic spending number chart, and at the bottom, some salary and consulting payment info from Espy’s office.

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.)

 

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…

Campus cops get guns, money

Updated 2/10/2012: Becky Metrick of the ODE has the scoop: The guns, which are being used solely for training purposes, were ordered back in November after Lariviere signed a directive that authorized the creation of an official police force. “Part of that document required DPS to acquire firearms for the…

Science start-up debacle

1/28/2012: From an anonymous commenter: Having squandered millions in excessive administrative budget increases, remodeling their offices, golden parachutes, and other brilliant ideas, Johnson Hall’s solution for science startups is to spend against reserves in the humanities and social sciences. Despite having the least funding per student on campus, these programs…

Huron, part iii

1/11/2012: Here’s the latest dump of Huron contracts and invoices. I don’t have the stomach to read these anymore – but from a quick glance, the hemorrhaging continues. Comments from more courageous readers welcome.