Straws in the Wind - Part 355

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: ...The University of Oregon announced Thursday that a “significantly lower” number of first-year out-of-state students have enrolled for next academic year, resulting in $65 million in necessary cuts. The university will also freeze hiring and pay, and limit non-essential travel.

President Karl Scholz had warned last month that cuts may be on the way, noting that the competition for out-of-state students was “fiercer than it has ever been.” At the time he also cited international-enrollment challenges and “rising costs due to geopolitical tensions.” ...

Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/liveblog/finance-live-updates-union-warns-layoffs-are-coming-to-muhlenberg-college.

Straws in the Wind - Part 92

From Inside Higher Ed: Less than a month before the start of the semester, Ph.D. students at Columbia University in New York were told with little explanation that they would no longer be teaching this fall. The catalyst for this change is unclear. The university said it’s an effort to reduce the teaching load on Columbia graduate students and allow them to finish their degrees in six years rather than seven. The students said it’s a move to weaken the labor power of their union, which is in the middle of tense negotiations with the university to renew its contract, which expired June 30. The students, who are members of the graduate student union Student Workers of Columbia, will still be paid. However, instead of receiving a biweekly teaching stipend, they’ll get a lump sum at the start of the semester. 

To pay both the Ph.D.s and their replacements, “the cost to the university likely runs to millions of dollars,” estimated Michael Thaddeus, a mathematics professor at Columbia and vice president and acting president of the Columbia chapter of the American Association of University Professors... 

To fill the now-vacant teaching jobs, Columbia is recruiting for one-year lectureships and advertising the roles to adjuncts, postdocs and New York–based graduate students at other universities...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/graduate-students-and-postdocs/2025/08/27/columbia-ends-some-teaching-roles-grad.

Note: Private-sector grad student unions - as at Columbia - would likely lose their legal protection were they to file unfair labor practice charges at the current NLRB. In the case of UC, which as a public institution is not under the NLRB and is regulated by the California PERB, this issue does not arise directly. On the other hand, higher ed is a field in which everybody looks at everybody. So if Columbia and other private institutions take aggressive stances, UC administrators will be watching the results.

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From Lookout Eugene-Springfield: Faculty frustrations with potential layoffs and program cuts at the University of Oregon came to the surface on Friday, Aug. 29, during a testy question-and-answer session with two top university officials.  The University Senate’s executive committee held an emergency virtual meeting at noon and invited UO President Karl Scholz and Provost Chris Long to answer questions from faculty members on rumored terminations coming the week of Sept. 7. The meeting, which peaked at 200 participants, came hours after faculty members protested against the potential cuts in a campus rally organized by the faculty union, United Academics of the University of Oregon. The union claims that UO will terminate 25 tenured and tenure-track faculty next month, on top of the 42 employees who got layoff notices in June.

Scholz and Long opened the meeting with back-to-back statements, then answered questions from faculty members. Throughout the session, some attendees directly responded to the officials’ remarks with sharply critical messages in the meeting’s chat feature and with emoji reactions.  In his statement, the president reiterated the university’s reasoning for the cuts: insufficient state funding, “overly generous” pension payments and expensive health benefit costs, labor contracts, and competition among universities to grow student enrollment. All of those factors converged to create a $25 million to $30 million projected budget gap when enrollment numbers came in lower than forecasted on May 1, Scholz said...  He said the university is making “very extensive” administrative cuts, but didn’t provide further details. Scholz said at a town hall in June that he didn’t want to cut administrators’ pay due to the competitive job market in higher education. 

The faculty union has argued that budget cuts disproportionately affect faculty and staff...

Full story at https://lookouteugene-springfield.com/story/university-of-oregon/2025/08/29/faculty-press-uo-leaders-protest-over-looming-layoffs/.

Straws in the Wind - Part 85

From Inside Higher Ed: The Department of Education released guidance... discouraging colleges from using Federal Work-Study funds to pay students to work on voter registration efforts and other activities it deems political. The department announced the change to work study provisions in a Dear Colleague letter signed by acting assistant ED secretary Christopher McCaghren. “Jobs involving partisan or nonpartisan voter registration, voter assistance at a polling place or through a voter hotline, or serving as a poll worker—whether this takes place on or off campus—involve political activity because these activities support the process of voting which is a quintessential political activity whereby voters formally support partisan or nonpartisan political candidates by casting ballots,” McCaghren wrote... 

Education Secretary Linda McMahon echoed that sentiment in a... social media post, writing that the department is “done funding political activism on college campuses!” She added, “Under the Trump Administration, taxpayer dollars will be used to prepare students for the workforce.” McCaghren’s letter also warned colleges about “aiding and abetting voter fraud.” ...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/08/19/ed-clamps-down-student-voting-work.

From the Daily Emerald: Deans and department heads at the University of Oregon are under mounting pressure to identify budget cuts amidst a university wide budget deficit. The cuts have led to multiple rounds of layoffs in recent months. In June, UO laid off 42 positions within the College of Arts and Sciences, including 11 career faculty. Five of those 11 were language faculty within the Schnitzer School according to a newsletter published by United Academics, the university’s faculty union.

Despite a recent donation of $25 million by the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation to support the School of Global Studies and Languages, many of the language programs will shrink amid these cuts. Once the next round of layoffs go into effect in September the school will reportedly no longer offer regular courses in Portuguese, Swedish or Swahili, according to the newsletter. The newsletter also alleges that CAS Dean Chris Poulsen has indicated that the school could eliminate the German and Russian language programs entirely. The cuts could reportedly affect tenured and non-tenured faculty alike. Under the UA Collective Bargaining Agreement the school would have to provide faculty with a one-year notice of termination meaning that the cuts would not fully impact the program until September 2026...

Full story at https://dailyemerald.com/168880/features/uo-to-reportedly-cut-multiple-language-program-amid-university-wide-budget-deficit/.

18 friends... But not UC

From Forbes: A group of the nation’s leading research universities has requested that a federal judge allow them to file a legal brief supporting Harvard University’s lawsuit against the Trump administration over more than $2 billion in frozen federal grant money. The 18 institutions requesting permission to file an amicus curiae (or “friend of the court”) brief are:

Boston University; Brown University; California Institute of Technology; Colorado State University; Dartmouth College; Johns Hopkins University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Michigan State University; Oregon State University; Princeton University; Rice University; Rutgers University; Tufts University; University of Maryland, College Park; University of Oregon; University of Pennsylvania; University of Pittsburgh; and Yale University.

The request was granted on Friday by Judge Allison D. Burroughs, who is presiding over the federal lawsuit. The schools have not yet filed the brief, but in their request they state that each of them “has received millions of dollars in federal investments in scientific research over the decades.” ...

Full story at https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2025/06/07/18-research-universities-back-harvards-lawsuit-against-funding-cuts/.

Could UCLA pass the Oregon test?

From Courthouse News:

A putative federal class action filed by women student-athletes at the University of Oregon survived a motion to dismiss on Friday, and their Title IX claims that male counterparts receive more favorable treatment will proceed.

The plaintiffs — 26 current and former student-athletes on the university’s varsity beach volleyball team and six current student-athletes on its club rowing team — make three main claims in their legal filing.

The volleyball plaintiffs say the university doesn’t provide athletic treatment and benefits to women athletes that are equal to men and that it also gives male athletes more athletic financial aid. The rowing plaintiffs argue that the university is depriving all existing and future women students of equal opportunities to participate in varsity athletics, pointing to the institution’s failure to offer intercollegiate opportunities for both genders in numbers proportionate to their enrollment.

The university replied with three motions. It argued in its motion to dismiss that the volleyball plaintiffs have no subject matter jurisdiction, as they have no standing. It also asked for a judgment on the pleadings, as the volleyball plaintiffs didn’t state a claim for unequal treatment and benefits. Additionally, it requested partial summary judgment on a statute of limitations. U.S. District Judge Michael McShane granted in part and denied in part the motion to dismiss. He denied both the judgment on the pleadings and partial summary judgment motions.

“This is a huge victory for the women athletes at the University of Oregon,” said attorney Arthur Bryant, with the Clarkson Law Firm and lead counsel for the plaintiffs, in a phone interview with Courthouse News. “The case is going to move forward.” Attorneys for the university couldn’t be reached for comment as of publication time...

Full story at https://www.courthousenews.com/university-of-oregon-women-athletes-prevail-over-motions-seeking-to-scuttle-title-ix-claims/.

Conference-only

Pac-12 News Release: The Pac-12 CEO Group announced today that the fall season for several Pac-12 sports, including football, men’s and women’s soccer and women’s volleyball, would schedule Conference-only games, and that it is delaying the start of mandatory athletic activities, until a series of health and safety indicators, which have recently trended in a negative direction, provided sufficient positive data to enable a move to a second phase of return-to-play activities.  

The CEO Group made clear that it hopes to play football and all other fall sports provided that it can meet the health and safety needs of its student-athletes and obtain appropriate permissions from state and local health authorities.  Today’s decision will result in the start dates for the impacted sports being delayed. The decision is effective immediately across all Pac-12 member universities and was made following a meeting of the Pac-12 CEO Group (Friday)...

Full release at https://pac-12.com/article/2020/07/10/pac-12-ceo-group-announces-decision-schedule-conference-only-play-several-fall

Note (from the release): The Conference comprises 12 leading U.S. universities - the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of California at [sic] Los Angeles (UCLA), the University of Colorado, the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, Stanford University, the University of Southern California, the University of Utah, the University of Washington and Washington State University.
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From CBS Sports: The Pac-12 Conference will move to a modified, conference-only football schedule for the fall, with an announcement regarding 2020 college football season schedules to come no later than July 31. The news comes one day after the Big Ten announced its own conference-only schedule.

The conference will also delay the start of mandatory athletic activities "until a series of health and safety indicators, which have recently trended in a negative direction, provided sufficient positive data to enable a move to a second phase of return-to-play activities." Athletes who choose not to participate due to concerns about COVID-19 will continue to have their scholarships honored by and will remain in good standing with their team...

Full source at https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/pac-12-follows-big-tens-lead-moves-to-conference-only-college-football-schedule-for-2020-season/
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UPDATE: Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott has tested positive for COVID-19. The 55-year-old tested positive late this week after experiencing flu-like symptoms and is self quarantining at the direction of his doctor, according to a statement by the conference. Scott is continuing to carry on his duties as commissioner remotely...

Full story at https://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/The-Latest-Red-Sox-Jays-set-for-exhibition-15399431.php

At the top

Inside Higher Ed picks up on the poor-returns-to-endowments thing, with UC tied with Ohio State U for the top (worst) results.* Of course, all we have to do is get rid of the minus (-) sign and we could be at the bottom (best) along with Yale.
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*https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/09/30/low-endowment-returns-dont-stop-regulation-push
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Anyway, with all the concern about rankings, we're on top:

The More Things Change...

Dorothy Dehner (1901-1904)

A story appeared today in Inside Higher Ed about a decision by the University of Oregon to cancel an art class featuring nude models.  The Inside Higher Ed story was based on a local newspaper account:  [excerpt]

The University of Oregon’s mascot, the Duck himself, might walk around half-naked, but there will be no more free weekly figure drawing classes open to the public involving nude models at the UO after this Saturday’s session. A lack of funding and concerns about safety for the nude models are behind the decision, according to a letter provided Tuesday by the UO’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts, written by acting dean Brook Muller to participants of the long-running weekly drawing sessions...

But several people who have long been involved with what is known as the Saturday Figure Drawing Group, which has run in its current configuration since the mid-1990s, say they are unaware of any such problems.  “Figure drawing is a very mild activity,” said Will Mitchell, a local artist and the group’s volunteer coordinator for the past year. “Kind of slow and quiet. So I haven’t yet found out what the safety concerns are.”  Mitchell said he was told in a meeting last week with art department head Carla Bengtson that the group was being canceled and the last session would be Saturday.  Mitchell said Bengtson expressed concerns about liability, and that the general public might regard nude models as being “exhibitionist” or that artists at the sessions might behave inappropriately...

Full story at http://registerguard.com/rg/news/local/32199924-75/uo-to-discontinue-weekend-figure-drawing-class-with-nude-models.html

Inside Higher Ed version at https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/09/26/u-oregon-ends-community-art-class-nudes

I point to that controversy at Oregon because a similar event occurred at UCLA back in the 1920s when UCLA was located at its Vermont Avenue campus.  The noted artist and sculptor, Dorothy Dehner (shown above; also http://www.phillipscollection.org/research/american_art/bios/dehner-bio.htm) was a friend of my mother and related the event.  In the early 1920s, Dehner lived in Pasadena and attended UCLA, traveling by car.  She told me that there was a fuss at the time about an art class at the university over the use of naked models.  Whether the class was able to continue, I do not know.  Of course, our friends up north in Oregon are not living in the 1920s.  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

When Southern Californians are the Out-of-State Students

...as much as we enjoy your tuition.

Inside Higher Ed today has an article about Southern California students attending the U of Oregon.  The idea of attracting out-of-state students who pay full freight (and thus subsidize in-state students) is hardly unique to UC.  UO is doing the same thing.  And some folks are saying that the Southern Californians recruited by UO are not serious academics.  You can find the posting at:
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/11/12/scrutiny-californians-u-oregon

If you go to that post, you will find a link to a longer article about those Southern Californians:

SoCal students and other out-of-staters come from families who can write a check for their children to attend because families on federal grants couldn’t assemble the money to cover the comparatively steep out-of-state tuition, said Roger Thompson, UO vice president for enrollment management. Some of the newcomers are not as serious about school as their Oregon classmates who attend college by piecing together federal grants, loans and part-time jobs, said a UO junior from Oregon, Brandi Gardner.  It’s an attitude, Gardner said.  “Cs get degrees," she said. “It’s a pretty popular motto for people who are here to get the degree so they can get the job and don’t want to work that hard for it.”  The saying irritates Gardner and best friend Kristi Carr, a junior also from Oregon who pays for school in part by working the front desk at the Econo Lodge on Sixth Avenue...  The pair said they can see why it’s good for the UO to recruit students from California, because they pay three times as much tuition as in-state students and they spend a lot of money in the community...

Full story at http://www.registerguard.com/web/updates/28969094-47/students-university-oregon-thompson-enrollment.html.csp

Of course, maybe what has gone wrong is that the Southern Californians aren't used to all that Oregon rain:

University Autonomy Issue in Oregon

The current budget crisis seems to be pushing university system and campuses to press for more autonomy. Earlier posts on this blog have noted developments at the University of Wisconsin. Below is an excerpt of a report from the U of Oregon:

From Inside Higher Ed today:

…Governor John Kitzhaber and the president of the University of Oregon, Richard Lariviere, agreed Tuesday that the university would postpone for a year its push for legislation that would give it a new financing stream and an independent governing board separate and apart from the existing State Board of Higher Education. Under the agreement, which was memorialized in an exchange of letters, Lariviere said the university would throw its support behind the governor's plan to create a single statewide board to oversee pre-K to postsecondary education.

While Kitzhaber did not openly state in return that he would fully back the university's autonomy plan, Lariviere said in an interview Thursday that he was heartened by what university officials had heard in their discussions with the governor and his staff. "What we have received is as strong and as clear an endorsement of our ideas as we could reasonably expect at this stage," he said…

Full article at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/04/01/oregon_governance_debate_delayed_but_not_forestalled