On Dec. 1, Oregon Governor Kate Brown released the FY 2017-19 budget proposal for Oregon’s seven public universities. The proposal is made for flat funding among the seven Oregon public universities.
Boring? So what, who cares?
Well, if you are any part of the UO community, whether past, present or future, you should care. This proposed budget indicates that there will be more rises in tuition costs, limits in departments’ budgets and causes difficulty among the UO programs.
On Dec. 12, UO President Michael Schill and Senior Vice President Scott Coltrane sent an email outlining the effects of this proposed budget.
First, the email addresses the letter in which all the Oregon public universities crafted and signed for government consideration. The 47 page letter outlines that “For universities to keep tuition increases below five percent and also preserve current financial aid and student support services, state investment in the Public University Support Fund (PUSF) would need to increase by roughly 15 percent—or $100 million—in the 2017-19 biennium to $765 million.”
Moreover, the letter also illustrates the universities are aware that without a sufficient budget, students and staff will lack “adequate benefits, wage and protections,” and students will face higher tuition rates.
But with the proposed budget, Schill and Coltrane express that it will be impossible to keep rises of tuition rates under five percent. Thus present and future students must be prepared to fall into deeper debt if this proposed budget becomes a reality. What a fearful, anxiety inducing thought that is.
According to Lendedu, a student loan refinancing program, the average debt per borrower is $28,400. This number is obviously on the rise and we can see one of the main factors for the increase: the government is unable to provide enough funding to keep universities affordable to the public.
Furthermore, the UO email claims that  during the past 20 years budget cuts have evolved to putting “the burden of paying for a college degree to students and families.”
Moving on from the impending doom of tuition debt, the email explains that the UO was initially predicting that the UO expenses would “…increase approximately $25 million next year largely due to salary increases contained in our faculty and staff labor contracts, rising health-care costs, and the extraordinary increase in our required contribution to the state’s unfunded pension (PERS) liability.” With the insufficient projected budget, UO will be $27.5 million short to cover increased costs, forcing the university to find other areas to bring in the extra money — that is, through raised tuitions and fees, and by seeking expense reductions.
Nonetheless, the email reminds the readers that people are continuously working to balance the budget and that such is ongoing work. This signifies that the university has not accepted their financially incompetent future, signaling that neither should the UO community.
The email informs that “The Tuition and Fees Advisory Board began meeting last month to consider the budget situation and potential tuition and fee increases.”
The email further reads:

Within the next few weeks, the president will appoint an ad hoc budget advisory task force to provide advice and ideas for raising additional revenues and reducing expenses. The task force will include members of the Senate Budget Committee as well as administrators, faculty and staff members, and students. It will begin meeting in early January.

What’s more, the UO administration urges that hiring of new personnel is to be done only if the position/person in question is “absolutely essential”, or if it can be “delayed until July 2017.” Furthermore, the email claims that UO will address the budget issue with the idea that “…it will be better to handle these expense reductions through attrition rather than through layoffs or contract nonrenewals.”
Therefore, these precautions that the university is taking illustrates the university’s integrity in keeping higher education accessible. They are doing much more than just raising tuition or laying off important staff in order to compensate for the possible budget.
Lastly, the email expresses that the proposed budget not only depends on an agreement of a revenue plan by lawmakers, but also on the voices of the community.
The email stresses that this is a proposal and thus all members of the UO, past, present and future, are encouraged to speak up and make the government understand the debilitating position the proposed budget has, and will continue, to put the UO and other public universities in if those who are affected are not considered.