Report to the State Board of Higher Education February 19, 1999

 President Imeson, Members of the Board, Chancellor Cox:

 Like my predecessors, I want to begin by expressing gratitude to you for your openness to the faculty and to me personally. I think that from the first we have had a good working relationship with Chancellor Cox and this Board, and that is not a trite or conventional observation. It has definitely been less true of previous Boards and previous chancellors, with concrete and unfortunate results for the system. So I commend you for what I see as both a generous and a wise policy. Faculty can bring a very useful perspective to dealing with the issues that confront you. We do, after all, work at the point where your policies result in concrete action.

The last meeting of the IFS was an extraordinary one. Normally, we meet on one of the campuses on the first Friday and Saturday of every other month, but in February our Friday meeting was held in the State Capitol. We spent the morning lobbying members of the legislature, and in the afternoon we were addressed by Senate President, Brady Adams, and by Senator Ginny Burdick, a member of the ad hoc legislative coalition for higher education. Our message to the legislators was simple. We reminded them of the cuts that higher education had received between 1993 and 1997, we asked that the damage be repaired as much as possible by full funding of the new budget model, we expressed our support for that model, and we asked for a continuation of the tuition freeze. It was clear, from what we learned from Senators Brady and Burdick, that this was the right message and that we were right in delivering it. Senator Adams summarized his budget, arguing that he can fund the $80 million dollar increase in the OUS budget even if the kicker kicks in, as it now appears that it will.

 At our Saturday meeting, we spent most of our time discussing what we have so far observed concerning the implementation of the new budget model on our respective campuses. Attitudes to the new model varied considerably, from enthusiasm to anxiety. The enthusiasm came from those who liked its clarity, in contrast to the BAS model, who saw that overworked departments might finally get some relief, and who believed that it would focus efforts on students and teaching. The anxiety came partly from the regional universities, who felt most vulnerable. Not only is it difficult for them to achieve the economies of scale that the market model encourages, but they are concerned about the way that the model gives less support for undergraduate education, which some feel that they do particularly well. It was clear, of course, from Governor Kitzhaber's original address to the board when he said that no institution will be allowed to fail that the market model is not to be applied blindly. But there are concerns that we all shared, that I know are shared by some of you. To put it simply, we fear that what should be academic decisions might be made simply for economic reasons. Our concern is precisely parallel to that of those HMO physicians, who feel that patient care is being determined not by them but by accountants. To give a specific and actual example, a history department claims that, without a specialist in modern European history, it is not able to offer the range of courses that the discipline requires, but it should not ask for one because, applying the calculus of the new model, it is a money-losing department. Moreover, the analogy of students with customers is not perfect. While the customer is always right, I can testify from my examinations that my students have a great capacity for being wrong. Socrates pointed out two thousand years ago that pastry cooks have a competitive advantage over physicians who dispense bitter medicine, and in education equally quality does not equate to market appeal. At the end of the meeting, we passed the resolution of which you have a copy, in which we summed up our support for the new funding model and our willingness to make it work, consistently with the goals of the system.

Finally, I will not disappoint you by failing to mention faculty salaries. This is a disinterested comment, because I plan to retire soon. Faculty salaries are, however, still the greatest problem for the system, particularly in some disciplines. For example, it should not add to our state pride to know that we were outbid for an organic chemist by Alabama. We are still in the bottom twentieth percentile nationwide for most ranks. At the last executive meeting of the board, President Frohnmayer made the point that I would like to endorse. Speaking for the University of Oregon, but, I think, by implication for all of us, he said that the good things that he hope to accomplish will not happen without improvement of faculty salaries. He also addressed, at the same meeting, a concern that we on the faculty share, namely that the areas of responsibility and authority between institution and system need to be defined. We look forward to the results of the work of the strategic planning committee so that we can know where decisions will be made, for example, who will take on the responsibility for reaching the benchmark of raising faculty salaries to the midpoint of our comparitor institutions.