We are invested in working collaboratively with the administration to identify alternative solutions that center the academic mission of our institution, as well as our students and fellow workers.

However, we want to emphasize that the UO administration has erected some serious barriers to our effective collaboration on this matter, including:

  • Lack of financial transparency: We don’t have the information to explain or see the details of the issues, so we are limited in proposing solutions. We can see that there are increases in spending on the operational side of things, but we are not told why these are more important than the educational side of the budget. So far, only a small, closed task force has been given access to the kind of information we all deserve to see.
  • Lack of broader context: Why the sudden urgency? If these issues are truly systemic, then why the sudden need to come up with what are certainly short-term solutions.? Can’t we work on closing the deficit without having to zero everything in one year? Certainly it’s not worth sacrificing fundamental academic values or programs for.
  • Lack of administrative accountability: The UO administration is trying to solve university problems as if we are a tech company by quickly cutting jobs and slashing units. Yet, at any tech company where a sudden $25M preventable hole was “discovered”, certainly the company’s CFO would come under scrutiny? Where does the buck stop for poor financial management decisions? Most other universities facing financial challenges have not resorted to the extreme tactic of eliminating tenured positions.

Nonetheless, while we do not have the same level of access to financial information that would enable us to articulate specific proposals—and while we do not accept the administration’s framing of this projected budget shortfall and the need to fully resolve it over the summer months—we do have ideas!

We are working with our allies to compile the key principles and considerations that our members believe should guide any actions to address projected budget shortfalls, as well as a shortlist of potential areas of savings that should be explored. In the meantime, some areas for financial review and potential cuts that we think should be immediately considered by the UO leadership include:

  • Instituting a small fee on all UO donations that would go directly to support academics (see Finance FAQs)
  • Salary cuts for highly-paid administrators (as happened during COVID, and as the president of Southern Oregon Univ. just accepted)
  • Freeze administrative and non-essential hiring
  • Offer optional buyouts for employees near retirement (as happened during COVID)
  • Defer non-essential maintenance for buildings
  • Sell unused real estate in Eugene and Portland
  • Suspend discretionary budgets for non-essential programming on campus, including vanity event budgets for upper-level executives
  • Run a short-term deficit in order to support efforts at targeted fundraising to maintain programs
  • Seek a transfer of funds from Athletics (as UO has transferred funds to athletics in the past) or the UO Foundation $1.63 billion endowment

Increasing UO’s focus on fundraising directed at core academic programs (not just sports and facilities) is also a critical step in solving long-term fiscal challenges. Other universities have created focused fundraising campaigns among alumni and other groups to sustain at-risk Arts, Humanities, Sciences programs. For example, Brown University recently created a Research Resilience and Innovation Fund which is designed “for incremental gifts outside the Annual Fund to offer direct, operational support for critical Brown research and essential scholarship facing delay or disruption due to the current instability in awarded federal funding.”