According to its official Web site, Campaign Oregon is intended to “preserve the excellence of the University of Oregon.” This mission is at once simple and immensely complicated: a coordinated campaign to raise $600 million in private donor gifts; this long-term attempt at donation gathering is meant to improve donor relations by giving the private donors a say in where their money goes and to incorporate smaller donation goals along with the overarching goal.
This is an admirable campaign – and, as President Frohnmayer explicitly states in his letter to potential donors, the intention is to transform lives and to inspire a love of learning and pedagogical achievements.
Campaign Oregon has already raised millions of dollars, including more than $10 million for faculty support and a $1 million gift to the School of Dance and Music – in all, it has surpassed the $500 million mark and is well on its way to reaching its goal of $600 million by July 2008. These types of donor campaigns are relatively common and help universities meet fiscal goals over the long-term – in the University of Oregon’s case, it will have raised $600 million in seven years. Although common, they are not intended to be the sole means of creating a competitive and sustainable campus. This is, after all, a public university.
Still, Frohnmayer has practically rested his career on the success of the campaign, saying, “I regard this campaign … as the most important legacy of my UO presidency. The university is at a turning point.” He also states that it will become a common trend to rely heavily on philanthropic resources as a source of investment capital.
This may be a realistic way of looking at the future, but it is also slightly disappointing. Many Oregonians rightly say that Oregon’s public universities are looking increasingly like private universities as tuition increases as government support wanes. It would be unfortunate if Oregon’s public universities became private entities as a result of dwindling state resources, but it would also be unfortunate if public universities were forced to rely, to a near-burdensome degree, on philanthropic assistance. It turns academia into a money-hustle, as administrators spend an inordinate amount of time with their hands out, looking for a dollar.
Fundraising campaigns should be about raising money to help take an institution to the next level, not to pay professors a competitive wage or to conduct building maintenance. Unfortunately, the state’s underfunding of higher education has forced the University into this position. In 1985, 33 percent of the University’s funding came from the state, 22 percent was from students and 19 percent was from donors. In 2004, students paid for 33 percent of the University’s funding, 29 came from donors and 14 percent came from the state.
The scary thing about operating a university largely with donations is that donors can give money with strings attached, and they can do it anonymously. With such loose guidelines, it’s unclear when a university ceases to become public-run and starts becoming one that is guided by the dollars of the wealthy.
Nevertheless, we applaud the University for setting such an unprecedented goal and working diligently to achieve it. With the money raised from the campaign, the University will be a more complete educational institution. We hope, though, legislators will get the message that they aren’t holding up their end of the deal.