The University of Oregon is a member of the American Association of Universities (AAU), a consortium of highly ranked research universities. These are our peers, the institutions with which we compete for faculty, students and research dollars. We compare ourselves only to the public institutions in the AAU, and even still the faculty salaries at the University of Oregon are the very lowest.
In the last 10 years our faculty salary competitiveness in the AAU has eroded, and the administration intends to erode it even further. This is not sustainable if Oregon wants to maintain its preeminent position as a prestigious, comprehensive, public research university.