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The University of Oregon is proposing phasing out over a dozen graduate programs, largely in the humanities, reducing graduate employee funding and reorganizing several academic units to address a $63.3 million projected deficit.
The University of Oregon is proposing to end more than 15 graduate programs, eliminate more than 100 administrative and staff positions and consolidate several academic units to close a projected budget deficit.
The preliminary proposal, released Wednesday, Oct. 28, would cut 7.25% from schools, colleges and administrative units, a combined $43.4 million reduction. And it would find another $16 million in universitywide savings.
Officials project UO’s main operating budget, the roughly $700 million Education and General fund, will fall about $23 million short this fiscal year, and that gap will reach $63.3 million by 2031 without action.
University officials framed the possible reductions around investing in UO’s research strengths and undergraduate experience. Provost Chris Long told reporters Tuesday that the vision is to bring more faculty into classrooms and allow the university to support “signature” graduate programs that will become “truly excellent.”
“We still do intend to have a broad research focus at the University of Oregon,” Long said. “We just need to be more disciplined in how we execute on that.”
Officials developed the proposal with a University Senate committee of faculty and administrators established in May to give input on significant academic changes. It is not final, and resembles an “expansive approach” that offers a range of potential options.
The university is accepting feedback on the plan until late November.
UO President Karl Scholz will make final budget decisions in December.
“Today marks the beginning of a broader phase of feedback, not the presentation of settled decisions,” Long told members of the UO Senate Wednesday.
Under the current proposal, schools and colleges would cut $25.8 million from a combined $355.6 million budget. Administrative units would cut $17.6 million from a $242.1 million budget. Enterprise-level savings make up another $16 million. The remaining $3.9 million comes from prior deficit reductions.
UO attributes the deficit to falling out-of-state enrollment, heightened competition due to the demographic cliff, and a dependence on tuition due to limited state funding and the high cost of benefits. Officials modeled the plan on an assumption that future out-of-state enrollment will flatten after recent drops.
This year’s deficit comes after two rounds of budget cuts last year that included layoffs to more than 100 employees.
“What we’re seeing today is kind of the new normal,” UO Chief Financial Officer Jamie Moffitt said. “You could argue you should have taken it further down. The challenge with taking it further down is we’re trying to balance what is the right level of cuts to do on campus to try to come up with a financially sustainable situation?”
Academic changes
The budget proposal does not include cuts to tenured or tenure-track faculty. An unusually large number of planned tenured faculty retirements — 61 — and being “very disciplined” about not hiring back all of those positions will allow UO to get “strategically smaller over time,” Long said.
Some faculty had been told that the university was considering eliminating two tenure lines in the College of Education, but UO appeared to reverse course earlier this month.
Long declined to rule out layoffs to non-tenure-track faculty during a question-and-answer session on the proposal with the UO Senate.
“We also have been doing as much as we can to resist non-tenure-track faculty layoffs as well,” he said. “That categorical statement is not in my remarks because we need to see how the attrition process unfolds over the next few years here to see what we might need to do in that regard.”
UO is floating plenty of other changes on the academic side.
The university proposes phasing out more than a dozen graduate programs, largely in the College of Arts and Sciences like master’s and doctoral programs in history; German and Scandinavian; Romance languages; comparative literature; and folklore.
If approved, UO would suspend new admissions to those programs and “teach out” current students, closing the program when they graduate. The budget plan notes that many of these graduate programs grant fewer than five degrees per year.
“The possibilities we are considering in this proposed plan are painful,” Long told the UO Senate. “The possible loss they signal is difficult to shoulder. So many people have poured so much of themselves into making these programs transformational for students and for society. I know many of you are frustrated and angry.”
Officials also suggest pausing admission to other graduate programs, including the doctoral programs in architecture; landscape architecture; History of Art and Architecture; and Planning, Public Policy and Management.
The pause will “give time to evaluate costs and benefits of these programs,” per the plan.
All other graduate programs in the College of Arts and Sciences could see a “phased, differentiated” reduction in future graduate employee appointments.
Graduate employee funding in the college could fall by as much as 40% when program closures and other reductions are combined, according to the plan. The college now has about 830 general-fund graduate employees positions, said Keith Frazee, associate vice president for news and communications.
“The 40% estimate is also high, so we can consider as many options as possible during the feedback period,” Frazee said. “We will honor all existing official funding commitments to current grad students.”
The proposal is part of what Long described as a broader goal to “rely less heavily on our graduate students for the teaching mission” and focus funding on doctoral training and research instead of master’s programs. As a result, faculty could face a heavier undergraduate teaching workload.
“The idea would be to have smaller programs, more focused programs with fuller support for the fewer students in those programs,” Long said.
Long said there is a “very weak placement environment” for PhD students, as both a national phenomenon and a local one. “We think it’s really unethical to continue to just graduate students into a placement market that is contracting,” he said.
Consolidations and reconfigurations of departments and programs in the colleges of Arts and Sciences, Education and Design are also on the table. Most notable, as college leadership shared last month, the university is proposing merging the College of Design and the School of Music and Dance.
Julie Hessler, an associate professor of history, said her department has already experienced a “decade of disinvestment” that has limited faculty’s ability to shape their curriculum.
“I’m devastated at this prospect,” she said during the meeting.
See a more detailed list of the proposed academic changes here:
College of Arts and Sciences
College of Education
College of Design
Lundquist College of Business
School of Journalism and Communication
School of Music and Dance
Administrative cuts
The university proposes eliminating more than 100 officers of administration and classified staff positions, about one-third of which are currently vacant. Frazee described the figure as an “early-stage estimate” of positions that could be “affected.”
Officers of administration include supervisors, managers, administrators, advisors and professional academic support staff. Classified staff work in jobs like accounting, skilled trades, custodial, dining services and libraries.
“Across administrative areas we are likely to see reductions in staffing that affect particular services, rather than the elimination of entire departments,” the budget proposal states.
Library cuts — including cutting up to six full-time equivalent positions and reducing campus subscriptions — are also on the table at the UO Senate’s request and “in the spirit of collaboration,” the document states.
Annie McVay, a graduate programs specialist in the School of Journalism and Communication and the vice president of the union representing classified staff, questioned how a possible reduction in these positions would not negatively impact the student experience.
Enterprise-level actions
The university proposes $16 million in enterprise-level savings, mostly through three moves. The first is cutting $3 million in recurring Budget Advisory Group Strategic Initiative funds — a pot of money to invest in critical initiatives — and suspending the process for three years.
UO also suggests trimming $3 million annually from the $13.2 million annual Education and General fund transfer budget, which officials use for academic capital projects, required matches on federal financial aid programs and more.
“While this will help balance the E&G fund budget, it risks leaving the institution without sufficient funds to invest in critical capital projects, including necessary match funding to receive state support for academic building projects,” the budget plan states.
Finally, the university is proposing committing $10 million a year in Internal Bank strategic investment earnings to support operations in the Education and General fund.
