The biannual battle for funding is underway in this year’s legislative session, and the University and student associations have a special opportunity to hold the line on higher-education budget cuts.
Gov. Ted Kulongoski recommended an increase in funds for higher education of more than $14 million from the state’s general fund. If passed, the added funds would be the first increase since the 1999-2001 biennium and would reportedly limit tuition increases to between 5 and 7 percent annually for resident students.
An annual 5 to 7 percent tuition increase is much closer to normal than the increases of more than 10 and 9 percent over the last two school years.
“We will only ask to go above (increases of 5 to 7 percent) if we don’t get the governor’s budget,” Senior Vice President and Provost John Moseley said. “Our top priority is to get the students funded.”
Sources say the governor’s budget is a step in the right direction, but still not enough to fix the state’s education problem.
“We believe in a seamless education that runs from birth to graduate school,” state House Rep. Phil Barnhart, a Democrat, said. “Oregon is not anywhere near the kind of program we need to do an excellent job in education.”
Barnhart said the general fund allocation for higher education in the governor’s budget is slightly better than current funding.
Higher education hasn’t fared well in previous legislative sessions.
“We actually have fewer dollars per student to spend on your education today than we had 10 years ago,” Moseley said. “The state has basically pushed a major part of a college education off on the students.”
A pay freeze for all state employees has affected the salaries of university faculty and staff in the Oregon University System, making it more difficult for the University to attract employees.
Kulongoski hopes to lift the freeze — he granted pay increases of about 1 to 2 percent per year in his budget proposal.
“It’s not enough,” Moseley said of the pay increases. “I think it’s the best he could do under the circumstances, (but) I think the governor would say that it’s not enough.”
In 2003, the legislature passed a bill that required the OUS to pay more than $14 million, primarily in student tuition and fees, back to the state to help balance the budget, a move that Moseley characterized as an “attack on tuition.”
“I think that was the most unfair, egregious thing that happened in the Legislature, and it was done, basically, under the table,” Moseley said. “We didn’t even learn about it until a month after the session was over. The U of O had to basically write a check back to the state for $4.1 million of your money.” State funding has decreased consistently.
In the 2003-2004 school year, the percentage of state appropriations making up the University’s budget hit an all-time low of about 13.9 percent. That was down from more than 30 percent in the 1980s and a more recent peak of 20.2
percent during the 1999-2000 biennium.
OUS’s share of the Oregon general fund has sunk from 12.2 percent in the 1987-1989 biennium to 6 percent in the 2003-2005 biennium. Over the same period, the number of students in Oregon public universities has increased by 23 percent.
And since 1990, OUS students have gone from paying 29 percent to 56 percent of their own education cost in tuition and fees.
“The state has got to understand that it’s not going to get the level of services it’s been used to,” Moseley said. “Oregon is making some bad choices right now.”
Moseley cautioned that further funding shortages could alter the landscape of Oregon’s economy for the long term.
“Oregon’s population is going to grow,” he said. “Fewer and fewer of those (people) are going to be able to get into OUS schools. Therefore, fewer will ultimately get education to a bachelor’s degree and beyond, which is bad for the economy of the state.
“States with lower levels of average education have weaker economies than states with higher levels of education,” he added. “So if you shift the educational level of the state downward, its economy is going to weaken.”
Barnhart had similar sentiments.
“The universities are training tomorrow’s workforce,” Barnhart said. “(They’re) the economic generators of the future. Without (them), Oregon would be a lot poorer.”
The Oregon Student Association, a lobbyist organization consisting of the ASUO and student governments in other OUS universities, will be lobbying on behalf of the students.
“There’re a lot of folks asking for a lot of things in Salem, and (members of the state government) repeatedly, year after year, look over student issues,” OSA Campus Organizer Courtney Hight said. “We want to make sure that this year they stop doing that.”
OSA representatives believe that having hundreds of students in the capital for events will call attention to student issues in the legislature, Hight said.
The student association has four major priorities this year, ASUO President Adam Petkun said: the Oregon Opportunity Grant, student child-care program, tuition and state funding and fee remissions.
The governor’s budget proposal doubles the money in the opportunity grant — a grant that goes to students with the lowest incomes — to $91.6 million. OSA hopes to freeze tuition for two years, remove the cap on fee remissions, which are discounts on tuition, and extend the student child-care program.
Moseley said he hopes that more students will get involved in the legislative process.
“The quality of your education and your access to education is an important factor in determining what you’re able to do in the future for the rest of your life,” Moseley said.

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