Let’s start this week’s editorial with a little backstory. Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, in June 2011, signed into law the establishment of the Oregon Education Investment Board, originating as Senate Bill 909.@@http://gov.oregonlive.com/bill/2011/SB909/@@ Within that bill, a 13-member board is to be created to, as The Oregonian wrote at the time, “oversee all levels of state education from preschool through college.” Further, the OEIB allows the state to hire a Chief Education Officer — because any other acronym would be too easy for journalists — who would overlook this system and make it easier to maintain the Oregon’s education system.
Now, a bill is on the table — SB 1581@@http://gov.oregonlive.com/bill/2012/SB1581/@@ — to codify what that person can do. Consistent with the mission of overlooking Oregon education, here’s who the present version of the bill says this person will overlook: the Commissioner for Community College Services, the Chancellor of the Oregon University System, the executive director of the Oregon Student Access Commission, the Early Childhood System Director, the executive director of the Higher Education Coordinating Commission and the Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction.
The remainder of the bill serves to set out the new relationship this creates between these bodies and this new state position.
But for a state plagued with pomp and circumstance and administrative levels, is another level really necessary? Rep. Peter Defazio has been calling for the removal of the OUS Chancellor position for years, and the governor’s solution is to put another person in charge of the chancellor@@sounds like kitz does want to take the heat for firing him himself@@?
Much has been made by an anonymous contributor to the UO Matters blog of current Chancellor George Pernsteiner’s lavish benefits, including a $280,000+ yearly salary and a Eugene mansion. On top of largely making this position more obsolete than it already is, it helps whoever accepts this CEO — see? — position rake in a similar salary, as the position is also expected to have a more-than $280,000 salary.
The central problem with this bill — now waiting in the Senate Ways and Means Committee — is that, in addition to codifying the tasks of this position, it codifies an idea that really doesn’t work for certain universities in this state, and mostly this one.@@such as…?@@ We can’t grow as a university that is irrevocably connected to the state’s whims, under two levels of bureaucratic authority when we continue to receive single percentage points of state support each year.
This bill takes our university in absolutely the wrong direction in both funding and governance. Not by any ill intentions, though — indeed, the attempt to fix Oregon’s education system is quite admirable. But adding people to the process and joining them with bloated salaries is not the way to go about it.
They say that the very definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again, while expecting an alternate result. So what do you say about doing the same thing over and over again, until one year when you do the same thing plus one person and $280,000 in costs and try to call it a solution?
Kitzhaber has proven already he doesn’t have the University’s best interests at heart, and this czar just cements his power in this arena. This bill may be good for OUS (or may not be), but it’s certainly not good for the University.