Former University President Dave Frohnmayer called for radically restructuring the governance model of Oregon’s large public universities in a report issued to the Oregon University System on Tuesday.
Titled “The Coming Crisis in College Completion: Oregon’s Challenge and a Proposal for First Steps,” Frohnmayer’s report suggests making Oregon’s top three research universities — Portland State University, Oregon State University and University of Oregon — independent public corporations, which the report says would result in greater fiscal and structural autonomy.
Under Frohnmayer’s proposal, the OUS would still impose academic standards and goals and supply funding, but each school would have its own board of governance responsible for “overseeing all university operations, setting institutional tuition rates, admissions standards and managing its own costs and revenues.”
“These actions would leave Oregon’s public research universities better positioned to meet the formidable challenges of collegiate degree attainment and research discovery that are crucial to our future,” Frohnmayer wrote.
The structure would be very similar to Oregon Health & Science University’s, which is a public corporation.
The report’s proposal is wide-sweeping, but some, including Frohnmayer, believe that in many ways it has been a long time coming.
State funding for higher education has been dropping in Oregon for the better part of 20 years. This year, only about 8 percent of the University’s funding came from the state — an all-time low.
Current University President Richard Lariviere said in a phone interview that, in addition to funding problems, the governance structure of the OUS is problematic because of the varying needs of the seven universities in the system.
“Universities like Oregon, the Oregon Institute of Technology and Eastern Oregon are all so different in their student bodies, missions and responsibilities,” Lariviere said. “It’s almost impossible to come up with policies that apply effectively to all seven.”
The Daily Vanguard at Portland State University reported that PSU President Wim Wiewel talked about the proposal in an address to the PSU student government yesterday, echoing many of the same concerns as Frohnmayer and Lariviere.
“On the whole, the current model has not served us well,” Wiewel said, although he said the proposal wasn’t a cure-all for Oregon’s higher education woes.
“The (public corporation) model would by no means be the salvation,” he continued. “It wouldn’t necessarily create more money for the University in itself, but would give more flexibility in order to address the looming financial challenges.”
As to the merits of the proposal, Lariviere said the public corporation model is “a very good starting point” to the discussion, but the University is not in a place to advocate one way or another yet. He said the University would be preparing a position sometime after Jan. 1.
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