At a very well-chosen time last week, the Oregon State Board of Higher Education unanimously approved a summer tuition increase for several Oregon public universities, including this one.
The board says @@checked@@the aim of the hike is to bring summer costs closer to every other term’s.@@er…what?@@ That with more students attending classes in the summer months, they are compelled to raise those prices.
But as much as summer classes have become more mainstream, there’s no argument that they are not — and can not be — equals with other term’s classes. ASUO President Ben Eckstein argued the same when speaking with the Emerald after the news came out.
“We are losing sight of the priority to make higher education affordable,” he told the Emerald’s Sam Stites.
We agree, but here’s the thing: Occasional tuition increases have to happen. The University is a partly owned subsidiary of an organization that currently contributes to operations in the single-digit-percentages. This is by no means a single fault of the University, but can be fully linked back to us being trapped within the neolithic Oregon University System.
History
There was, in 1929, a proposal approved to create a single Board of Higher Education for Oregon. According to the Oregon University System’s website, it was @@checked@@a “new approach,” one replicated nationally as a model for higher education. U.S. Commissioner of Education William John Cooper said in a letter @@checked@@to the first president of the Board that the action was regarded “as a mandate to put the state interest first.” He continued, writing that the mandate “demands frank recognition of the one university of the State of Oregon, with units, for the present at least, located at Ashland, Corvallis, Eugene, La Grande, Monmouth and Portland.”@@serial comma is in letter written@@

The three current directional universities when the Board was launched were Oregon Normal School, Southern Oregon Normal School and Eastern Oregon Normal School (now Western Oregon, Southern Oregon and Eastern Oregon universities, respectively).
And the recommendations from the federal office in 1931 were to divide lower division courses, teacher training classes and upper division courses among the different campuses by administrative fiat.@@i think these last two sentences need to be removed, as they don’t add to the argument at all@@
Back to the present
We can not work in a system that makes all Oregon public universities behave as “one university of the State of Oregon.” As long as we are treated as such, we will suffer from our University’s growth rather than be able to reap its benefits.
Our tuition increases are the fault of an old system which binds the successes of the State’s flagship campus with the failings of its lesser ones.@@hmm@@
This is not to argue that an individual governing board for a more independent University would decrease tuition levels or even keep them the same level. There will likely still be tuition increases with an individual board. But if we keep ourselves tethered to the state budget and Board, we have a far reduced ability to control or predict that growth.@@what?@@
So, as the news of a summer tuition increase festers around in your head this week, recognize that this is more than just an issue with the University. The tuition growth is based on the failing structure and governance of the OUS.