Kitzhaber doubles down in support of OUS Board, UO community united in support of Lariviere

especially with great potential for growth, because employees in the less profitable ones would “feel bad”

I’m embarrassed for them. They have yet to make a rational statement. I expected nothing less, but I’m still shocked.

not exactly the same as revenue sharing and salary parity between public institutions in an underfunded system.

We shouldn’t be mad at the board or the governor for the firing

We’re from Oregon and we can be upset with any goddamn person and/or persons with whom we wish to be upset.
RL had a choice: Be the president of our FLAGSHIP UNIVERSITY or be a mouse…and it may cost him his job. It really didn’t HAVE to come to that. It was NOT what the bored (sic) did, it’s what they didn’t do and when push came to shove,
they pushed our president into a position where the only thing left to do was to give them the finger and precipitate the crisis.
With that precipitation comes anguish and anger, a natural result and to say that we “shouldn’t be mad” is a flaw that shows little understanding in conflict resolution, IMO.

Is about the same as UCLA’s chance of winning on Friday. Small pockets of sanity exist, of course, but as a group, we’re not committed to excellence, as long as it’s our dollars that are supporting that excellence. This is true from the college level on down, and I don’t see it changing any time soon.

If President Lariviere has come up with creative ways to promote excellence without costing taxpayers a dime, he should be encouraged and emulated. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would kick WOU’s president out of his office for asking for some ideas on how to increase endowments, and rather than dooming the other universities to failure, I believe his approach could help them be successful.

All you have to do is look at our football program: there aren’t a lot of programs who’ve just given up and announced that they’re quitting football because they’ll never match our speed (although some seem to be saying it on the field). Instead, they’re trying to get faster and more creative and, although Kelly will continually be one step ahead (I hope), he’s pulling everyone else along with him. They may have to change their personnel and their philosophies, but they can at least make the attempt to get it done. Why couldn’t the same happen at the university level?

“Fair?” There’s a reason PPS schools had to play that way: The poorest areas would get worse while the richest areas would get better. IOW the “darker” areas of town would suffer while the “lighter” areas would excel. This is completely apples and oranges. There are no differences in “admission requirements” between Wilson High and Roosevelt High. If you live in the area, you can attend the school. And you don’t necessarily even have to live in the area. And your assertion is preposterous anyway. How is it not “fair” to the other schools? PSU has a far higher enrollment number than UO. The people who go to Directional Oregon schools go there BECAUSE the tuition is lower, the req’s are lower, and maybe they don’t WANT to go to UO. Are they any more excluded if UO becomes more self-reliant?

but this very, very different.

In public education, the stated goal of every K-12 institution is the same; every school is designed to educate children of the same age (from the area) and give them the best possible opportunities going forward.

In contrast, the OUS consists of a number of universities whose stated missions are not, and should not be, even comparable. The U of O is a research university designed to attract quality researchers from around the world and to keep them here to educate our students. It is supposed to take in graduate students so that those students can learn from said researchers. It is also committed to undergraduate education, but at its fundamental level, the UO is supposed to be a research institution.

It makes no sense to turn directional Oregon schools into research universities. Students who want to go do research should be heading to a research school; those who want a quality undergraduate education, however, need not necessarily head to the same university where the advanced research takes place. This is where the directional schools come in. They are designed to be an alternative to the UO for those who want to focus on things at the undergraduate level (and stop there).

They are not supposed to be the same schools, and as such, they don’t attract the same faculty members. The problem is that research faculty are far more expensive than faculty who want to focus on teaching. This is, of course, because high-level researchers are highly desirable at all universities, whereas competent teachers are typically easier to find.

These schools aren’t supposed to do the same things. The fact that a board hamstrings the UO doesn’t serve to bring equity to the system; it just cripples the UO’s research mission.

He’s their boss, after all. Other than that, I think the current faculty are the only ones who are really going to be able to do much. It’s going to get pretty crazy over the next month, I’d imagine.

You’d think they would have picked a different school to mess with if they’d taken a look at the U of O’s history. You really thought this was going to go away quietly? REALLY?!