Our state universities get more money when more students attend them. Each institution competes in what can be compared to a market system, and if you look at the Oregon University System in this manner, the customers in the market are the students. In this scheme, one could argue students are what drive our state universities and their success.
Knowing this, campuses enterprise to attract students by providing access to what we hope is a quality post-secondary education. If the education provided is not perceived to be of high quality, institutions have a more difficult time attracting students. Students know this, too, and search for the right high-quality education to suit their needs, both financially and academically. That is, students weigh the financial access opportunities as well as considerations of the academic reputation of institutions before choosing a particular school.
Reputations are developed over long sustained investments in education and, once achieved, dramatically increase the ability of a university to prosper both academically and financially through fundraising. So there is a relationship between the success of a university and its ability to attract good students. What contributes to each of these factors is related just the same, in that providing an accessible high quality education depends on sustained investments.
Currently, what has been proposed for our universities is a $94 million cut and an 8 percent increase in tuition over the next two years. We are being asked to pay more for less and more for money we will never see. That 8 percent increase will generate $25 million in student money, often hard-earned or borrowed dollars, that will essentially be funneled outside higher education into some other place in the government, such as corrections or the Oregon Department of Transportation.
That is the trouble we face as Oregonians, and in light of our economic transition from agriculture to high tech, this is a trouble that could haunt us. Without a commitment to our universities, we will never get what we want out of them. Without sustained investments, we will never realize our universities’ full potential, and those students most capable in this state will simply follow the market trend — out of the state.
As consumers this is our reality, but as citizens this is our responsibility to change. Private sector giants such as Intel understand this and are going to bat for students, not necessarily out of the goodness of their hearts — although one could argue that — but because this is their labor pool we are talking about. In a more broad sense, this is the labor pool for the whole state, and the capability of those in this pool to succeed and prosper has a relationship with the prosperity of the state. In fact, one could argue that they are one and the same.
The well-being of the educated workforce of tomorrow starts today. What Oregon will be like in 20 years is being crafted now, and if we ignore the importance of that, we are ignoring the future.