Two months’ worth of rent. One hundred fourteen pitchers of Drop Top at Sakura. Two hundred twenty-eight movie rentals from Blockbuster.
These are just a few of the things the average resident undergraduate, taking 15 credits per term, could pay for with $682.32, the newest number in the latest of University tuition hikes.
The increase, likely to be approved and take effect this fall, will raise annual tuition and fees to more than $6,000 a year. Just four short years ago, a student wouldn’t pay a cent above $4,000.
So what happened?
Well, the economy tanked and people lost jobs. Others couldn’t find work. Tax money the state expected didn’t exist. The budget the state planned to implement was useless. Cuts needed to be made, and higher education became an easy target. With less state funding, schools in Oregon had to make ends meet. Tuition went up.
Around the same time, the incompetent State Board of Higher Education hired its new leader, the soon-to-be-gone Richard Jarvis.
Jarvis, who handed in his resignation a week ago and will be out of his chancellor position June 30, was selected less than two years ago to head the Oregon University System.
The board could have selected Warren H. Fox, who said his main goal was to keep education accessible. Or it could have selected Peter S. Hoff, who said his main goal was to find a balance between the access to and the quality of education.
Instead, the board hired Jarvis, who was chancellor of the nation’s only online university system. That system went bankrupt.
Jarvis planned to increase OUS enrollment to 100,000 students by 2010 (Jarvis had been successful in his efforts to increase Nevada’s enrollment, where he also served as chancellor).
He also quickly proposed “The Deal,” an absolutely absurd plan that asked the state — in the middle of gross financial woes — to foot 50 percent of the costs of higher education.
“It’s the game in town right now,” Jarvis said in October 2002, somehow managing to keep a straight face. “We’re looking for this to be our campaign in the Legislature next spring.”
Two weeks later Jarvis, while on campus, defended the plan, saying, “We don’t want to pre-judge and imagine that bad things could happen.”
In the winter of 2003, voters rejected Measure 28 and tuition went up. Later, the Legislature made cuts to the current biennium’s higher-education budget. In the winter of 2004, voters rejected Measure 30, and now tuition is set to go up again.
While Jarvis can’t be solely blamed for the increases (the Legislature had a little something to do with the situation), OUS in general should shoulder much of the responsibility. The board hired someone with a suspect history in terms of financial stability at a time when money management was key. Board members resigned late last year (an essential firing by Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski).
Resignation was the only option for Jarvis, who stubbornly stuck to his “innovative” ways and did nothing to address his fiduciary responsibilities.
Here’s what Jarvis had to say when he announced in November that his vision, “The Deal,” had died: “We’re doing the best we can because the state revenue picture kept getting worse. That led to bigger cuts and bigger tuition to fill in those cuts.”
Looks like, perhaps, someone should have done a little “pre-judging.” Looks like that “game” was a little wack, too.
Well, Mr. Jarvis, we’ll be doing without shelter, entertainment and beer thanks to your lack of recognizing the painfully obvious. Please — and we do mean this — don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya.
With new leadership in the State Board of Higher Education and cuts planned at the Chancellor’s Office, let’s hope we’re headed in a new direction. Oregon’s next chancellor needs to be proficient in the art of belt-tightening, and he or she needs to understand and be committed to doing what Jarvis did not. He or she needs to listen to what students want more than anything else — affordable education.