In August 2025, United Academics received many very credible rumors of a plan to lay off as many as 25 tenure-track and tenured faculty, and to close or reduce several CAS programs at the UO. Throughout August, we struggled against a rushed process that cut faculty voices out. We argued that the plan to make such drastic (and irreparably damaging) cuts was based on false urgency, and we pointed to the many times in the past that UO has run projected deficits without taking such aggressive pre-emptive action.

Through our collective action and the support of our allies, we succeeded in slowing down and interrupting some of the layoffs process to ensure UO meets its obligations to students, workers, and the public mission. Although the UO admin is still planning to cut some positions, the number of faculty and classified staff being laid off was greatly reduced and entire programs were saved.

We are still concerned about potential impacts to Career faculty, to the UO Libraries (which have been cut in previous years, too) and to graduate employment opportunities. And, while we are grateful to UO leaders for deciding to change course, this episode highlights the reality that the existing culture of “shared governance” and “financial transparency” at the UO needs to be reformed.

Highly controlled one-way communications, handpicked and highly confidential committees, and unilateral decisions concentrated with high-level administrators and executives do not constitute meaningful shared governance. Faculty (and other workers) have critical knowledge and expertise about their own units, and our voices are needed to ensure UO maintains a high educational and research quality.

Currently, major financial decision-making power at the UO is relatively concentrated in the hands of a few top executives and administrators. Below is some info about key financial decision-makers at the University of Oregon. We are still learning more about the specific processes by which decision-makers interface with one another.

If you’ve been at the UO for any amount of time, you’ve likely heard leaders talking about funds existing in different “buckets”. For example, capital construction and athletics are different “buckets” than UO’s main operational budget. The UO Foundation, which manages UO’s $1.63 billion endowment, is also independently managed and has its own CEO, CFO, and  Board. Some of UO’s largest “buckets” are private donations earmarked for specific purposes (like a building project).

Some of the “buckets” are more mysterious than others. We can see generalized budgetary information in UO’s public financial disclosures, but these lack the level of detail and context we would need to understand the assumptions built into UO’s projections—as well as UO’s actual resources and expenses (as opposed to budgets, which are more like guidelines than actual accounting). Often, expensive FOIA requests are the only way to acquire the kind of detail we are asking UO leaders to make voluntarily available. One notable funding “bucket”, the UO Foundation, is exempt from FOIA requests; as a result, we have little specific information about those funds and investments.

Financial reform at the UO (like what is outlined in our financial resolution) has the potential to change how some buckets interact with general funds. For example:

• The UO could return more funds from athletics to the core mission, rather than reserving this income for expenses like coach salaries and sports facilities. While UO admin insists that athletic and educational missions are separate, this boundary was permeable in the past when athletics needed more funds. For example, in 2010 the UO shuffled funds in order to accommodate large-scale increases in coaches’ salaries for the purpose of retention. According to The Oregonian in 2010, “for at least nine years, athletics has used hundreds of thousands of dollars annually from the university’s general fund to cover the cost of academic support for athletes”. This only reinforces the idea that UO has money available, but is NOT using it to prioritize the educational mission. University admissions itself reported that success in athletics is NOT a key motivator for attracting out-of-state students, which are UO’s target recruitment demographics.
• The UO could reform how we handle private donations. The UO Foundation currently charges a 5% gift fee from every donation. According to the Foundation, “Revenue generated by this gift fee helps offset these costs and provides necessary resources to grow constituent engagement and encourage philanthropic support for the University of Oregon”. Some universities require that a portion of each private donation goes towards the core mission—UC Berkeley has a non-research gift fee of 7.5%, with 5% going to the Chancellor (discretionary funds and deferred maintenance) and 2.5% going to institutional departments (direct operational capacity). A graduated scale that decreases as the amount of the gift increases could also be implemented to ensure donors are not deterred (which is the primary objection raised by President Scholz during his June 3 Town Hall on UO’s finances).

The UO Foundation is a legally separate nonprofit charged with managing, investing, and otherwise stewarding UO’s $1.63 billion endowment.

The UO Foundation has its own CEO, CFO, and Board. The Foundation is exempt from FOIA requests, so we don’t have much specific information about those funds and investments beyond what the UO Foundation chooses to disclose publicly. 

In addition to questions about investments and how/why funds are (or aren’t) returned to the UO’s operations from the endowment, we have questions about the personal raises of leaders in combination with the outsourcing of the management portfolio. According to IRS 990 forms, the UO Foundation President Paul Weinhold received a 116% raise between 2011 and 2023 (including a 23% raise in 2022-2023) for a total salary of $642,673, even though the bulk of the active management of the UO Foundation’s assets has been outsourced to Jasper Ridge Partners.

UO’s Executive Leaders have been consistently unclear about the university’s budget model. After the UO activity-based budget model was rescinded, there was a long period of uncertainty in which deans and other administrators were basically without guidelines on how to improve their unit’s situation. The upper admin has stated that they are afraid to share such information because they are worried that it would lead to unit leaders trying to game the system.

As pedagogues, we know that people learn best when they are told the motives and rationales behind the goals that instructors are trying to achieve. A good budget model incentivizes desired behavior. A lack of a shared budget model means people will be trying many different approaches without consistent guidance.

During previous administrations, the UO was more transparent about the budget model. For example, During Brad Shelton’s tenure, there was a website with updates to the budget.

United Academics is challenging the notion of a broad “structural deficit” at the UO. The administration only began speaking publicly of structural deficits during the last few months of spring term, and the level of deficit reported by the UO has fluctuated significantly (which raises more questions about the UO’s fiscal management). We are doing (and will continue to do) what is within our power to push back against this new threat. 

In public financial reports, the UO states that “The 2023–24 fiscal year saw increases in total funds raised, the number of gifts, and total donors over the previous fiscal year.” United Academics strongly believes that with the second-largest incoming class ever and with an endless series of fundraising victories trumpeted by the UO administration, the real structural deficit is not economic, but a business-as-usual attitude on the administration’s part.

After immense public pressure against the initial plan for a second round of major layoffs in August 2025, the UO administration pivoted towards newly discovered “creative” solutions to help alleviate budget challenges. We still have questions about why these creative solutions weren’t solicited and considered prior to the plan for more significant layoffs (including program eliminations and laying off tenured professors).

We are continuing to document Alternatives to Layoffs, as UO is still laying off some workers (although, fewer than we expected). These include solutions like buyouts, salary reductions for top officials, or fundraising endeavors that sustain the university’s core educational mission.

Overall, UA is proposing to shift the burden of cost-cutting away from the people who fulfill the university’s fundamental educational and research missions, and towards non-mission expenses such as administrative bloat and non-essential vanity spending. Cuts to core faculty, programs, and workers to protect a bloated admin will do everlasting damage to our institution; whereas, shared sacrifices will help us move forward together as a stronger institution.

The most important thing to understand is that UO leadership’s false urgency to solve the budget deficit immediately almost led to much messier, more harmful cuts than were ultimately necessary. It was only through the collective action of faculty, staff, students, elected officials, and press that the UO avoided this outcome.

One theory for why cuts were rushed is that there may be an issue with the university’s bond rating, which might be lowered if the university takes on too much debt. Still, President Scholz seems to have been able to shuffle around several million dollars at the end of the school year to reduce units ‘debt. This action suggests that some money was held in reserve or targeted for other things.

A major problem with attempting to close projected deficits quickly is that a rushed process does not lead to holistic solutions. Middle-level administrators are being told to magically solve the budget while being given less to work with. But, the operational budget involves more than just the schools led by Deans; it involves detailed, complex decision-making about how best to preserve core functions of the university more broadly.

It is true that the Oregon legislature has continued to underfund higher education in the state in general, and the University of Oregon more specifically.  This is consistent with a long-term trend across the United States that reflects the idea that the market, and not government, should fund public (especially higher) education. 

Oregon funds two-year higher ed institutions slightly better than the national average, but funds four-year institutions at only 63% of the national average.

The UO specifically receives the least amount of state funding for Oregon four-year higher ed institutions. Why?

• There may be a perception that UO has more money than other schools due to our major sports program.
• There may be a perception that UO is more elite, and may not serve average Oregonians.
• There may be a perception that UO leaders are not good stewards of public taxpayer dollars. Historically, the UO has sought more autonomy (own board) after receiving less state funding, which may feed into this cycle.

What is most important is that all of the UO community come together to demand greater public investment into our institution’s core mission. We can work together to change the perception among citizens that institutions should be dominated by competitive market dynamics, rather than the public good.

The UO leadership could work with other Oregon universities to engage students and alumni in a campaign to lobby state representatives for more funds—but they have not done so thus far.

The UO leadership could also agree to be more financially transparent, and to share financial governance more democratically with the community to build public confidence in their fiscal management strategy.

See the different “buckets” FAQs for the long answer. The short answer is, maybe. 

We do know the return on investment was 10.5% in 2024. For a $1.63 billion endowment, this would yield an annual profit of over $170 million. One would certainly think this could cover a $2 million budget gap (as UO initially reported), or even a $30 million budget gap (as UO later reported).

But, we are told these funds are inaccessible because—yes, you guessed it—they’re different “buckets”.

That being said, some funds are returned each year from the endowment to UO’s operations, but it seems that this is up to the discretion of Foundation leaders. UO’s leaders insist they have little to no influence over this process. Previously, we have attempted to learn more about the UO Foundation and its operations through lobbying the legislature for the Sunshine Bill. This bill seeks to change the existing limitations on public records disclosures from the UO Foundation, and it is a legislative effort we plan to support if it is renewed in the coming session.

Gift fee reform is another option we want to explore. See: “Could the funding buckets be reformed?”

UO leaders are justifying planned cuts by pointing to a national trend of budget shortfalls at US universities. However, despite UO’s own website listing 21 examples of other universities facing budgetary challenges, none of the other universities that UO compares itself to are currently considering the extreme tactic of eliminating tenured faculty.

In many cases, other universities are addressing much larger budget deficits. For example, the following 8 universities from UO’s list are all facing significantly larger deficits than the UO:

• Boston University (5% proposed reduction)
• Brown ($41.9M deficit in fiscal year 2024, 3.28% of total budget)
• Michigan State (9% cut over 2 years, including 6% this coming year)
• Stanford ($140 million in cuts, 1.4% of total budget)
• UCLA (operating loss of $144.2M, 1.3% of total budget)
• University of Chicago ($288 million deficit, 11.08% of total budget)
• UNC-Chapel Hill (~70M budget reduction)

Despite facing a much smaller budget deficit (25 million or ~1.7% of its overall $1.45 billion budget), the University of Oregon is the only university on the administration’s list proposing laying off tenure related faculty through program reductions and eliminations.

NO OTHER R1 UNIVERSITIES HAVE ATTACKED TENURE THIS YEAR. The only confirmed case of mass tenure terminations at an AAU university was at Tulane in 2005-2006 following Hurricane Katrina. Attacks on tenure, in general, are not widespread, with a few notable cases even being overturned in the ~2010s. In recent years, there are only two notable cases of attacks on tenure similar to what is happening at the UO:

• The University of Milwaukee laid off tenured faculty members in August 2024 when they closed their College of General Studies and eliminated an entire campus (a much more severe situation than the UO is now facing). Milwaukee leaders have faced intense backlash in the time since, and have been required to support all faculty who were laid off well into 2025.
• West Virginia University also laid off tenured faculty members in 2023 following an overall 10% enrollment drop (far worse than the national average or UO’s current situation). According to all reports, the university is “still bleeding faculty, administrators” as a result of this action, including several administrators who pushed cuts being forced out or choosing to leave the institution within a year.

At the same time that other universities are facing larger financial problems, they are using much more precise (and, often, less damaging) tools to make cuts. Other institutions have pursued financial solutions including:

• Decreases in graduate admissions
• Hiring freezes
• Voluntary buyouts
• Elimination of vacant positions
• Reductions in non-personnel spending
• Program eliminations not involving faculty layoffs

These rare cases where tenured faculty have been eliminated show us the likely results if UO leaders continue with their current plans. UO stands to lose more faculty and administrators, and face permanent reputational damages that may further impact enrollments. In this sense, making rushed cuts now may ultimately contribute to an even more vicious cycle of financial hardship for the UO in the end.