News

(Portland, Ore.) May 12, 2010 – Oregon must change the way it finances and operates its public universities to improve higher education in the state, Portland State University President Wim Wiewel and campus leaders said at a forum this week.  Several panels of students, faculty, staff, and alumni have been studying the possibility of restructuring the university system since Wiewel called for fundamental changes in a white paper in November 2009.  

PSU’s discussion is part of a push by state higher education leaders for more authority to manage their own money and operations. They say more flexibility will allow them to function more efficiently with tight state funding for higher education. At the campus forum, Wiewel told a standing-room only crowd that he has not determined the right governance model for the state’s universities, but change is absolutely necessary. The current system is “a road to a state that will have nothing but an undereducated population that will have low-income jobs,” said Wiewel.

“We need a long debate to make sure that we do not destroy the things we are trying to do in terms of maintaining access and maintaining quality,” said Wiewel, “because providing a cheap education that is no good does not help you at all.”

Lindsay Desrochers, vice president for finance and administration, presented a stark history of higher education funding in Oregon. In the past two decades, enrollment has doubled to 28,000 students, while state support has fallen by about 50 percent, from $5,511 per student in 1989-90 to $2,834 per student this year.  If the trends continue, she said, the University should plan for less state funding and higher tuition. Katie Markley, a political science major and president-elect of the Associated Students of PSU, said students know the governance system is not working and that something has to change. “Restructuring right now is a little bit of an unknown,” Markley said. “But we do know that if we continue on the path that we are, students are going to be pushed out because we can’t afford to continue.”

The goal of the state Board of Higher Education is to raise the education level in Oregon in an affordable way, said George Pernsteiner, chancellor of the Oregon University System. To do that, he said the university system needs a new compact with the state government. As it stands, the universities have to ask the Legislature for permission to spend their own tuition money. The Legislature can also keep the interest on tuition and sweep the universities’ unspent money back into the state budget at the end of the fiscal year. “No one has figured out the legislative strategy at this point,” said Dalton Miller-Jones, a PSU professor and member of the state Board of Higher Education. “But I think we have a role here, and it is advocacy.”

University leaders are gearing up for a statewide debate about higher education finances and operations when the Legislature meets in 2011 to build the state budget for the next two years.  

About PortlandStateUniversity

Portland State University (PSU) serves as a center of opportunity for over 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Located in Portland, Oregon, one of the nation’s most livable cities, the University’s innovative approach to education combines academic rigor in the classroom with field-based experiences through internships and classroom projects with community partners. The University’s 49-acre downtown campus exhibits PortlandState’s commitment to sustainability with green buildings, while many of the 125 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees incorporate sustainability into the curriculum. PSU’s motto, “Let Knowledge Serve the City,” inspires the teaching and research of an accomplished faculty whose work and students span the globe.

# # #