UO officials outline impacts of $29 million budget reduction

At the University of Oregon’s fall Board of Trustees meeting, Monday, Sept. 15, officials shared new details about last week’s budget cuts. 

Jamie Moffitt, senior vice president for finance and administration and chief financial officer, and Provost Christopher Long said the university eliminated 28 officers of administration, 21 classified staff members, six other staff members and five career faculty last week.

They had previously only provided figures that also included UO’s first round of personnel cuts in the spring and summer.

Officials also cut 59 vacant positions last week, 14 of which were tenure-track faculty positions. In all, personnel reductions accounted for $24.9 million of the $29.2 million total budget cuts.

“We’re going to turn to the presentation, and there’s going to be lots of numbers on a page, and this really was a lot more than about numbers,” Moffitt said. “It was something that we felt was absolutely necessary if we’re going to regain an ongoing viable financial organization.”

In contrast, the spring and summer cuts included 14 officers of administration, 28 classified staff and 15 career faculty members. Those cuts were mainly led by units that had ongoing budget deficits and needed to take “faster action,” Moffitt said.

Officials first announced a $25 million to $30 million projected budget gap for fiscal year 2025-26 in June. They directed UO’s nine schools and colleges to cut an average of 2.5% from their budgets, and administrative departments to cut 4%.

Moffitt said last week’s cuts will not all have impacts during the first year because officials are implementing them after the start of the year. 

“A lot of them do involve people, and people have notice requirements during which we keep folks employed and keep paying them,” she said. “That can vary from a month to a year, depending on the type of position.”

Long then ran through a list of ways last week’s cuts will impact campus.

• UO Police Department will eliminate its Community Service Officer Program, except for those who support UO housing and UO Portland. Under the program, unarmed, full-time members of UOPD handle tasks such as parking enforcement, special event security and responses to non-emergencies. Community service officers are one of four categories of staff within UOPD.
• Officials will “restructure and reduce” the size of the Information Services user support team. The team works to increase efficient use of IT support resources and consolidate support tools, processes and services, according to its website.
• The university will cancel all print journal subscriptions in the library and reduce library staffing “in some areas,” which will delay access to new material. 
• Long said UO will eliminate its Emergency Management and Continuity Planning Program in its Safety and Risk Services division. University spokesperson Eric Howald clarified on Tuesday that officials eliminated the director of continuity planning position, not the entire program — which helps the UO community “protect against, respond to, continue during, and recover from” natural and human-caused emergencies, per its website.

“The Emergency Management and Continuity Planning Program will continue to support Oregon Ready, the university’s business continuity planning software,” Howald said in an email. “However, it will be up to individual units to engage in continuity planning – a change from having the EMC being the one to bring units together.”

On Monday, Long said “many units” will have staff reductions that affect service levels, but didn’t say which ones.

“When you take a budget reduction like this, you’re going to see ‘service’ services change, and there’ll be fewer services accessible to us,” he said. 

Officials will also reduce graduate employee positions supported by the UO general fund in many schools, he said.

The university will honor commitments to current graduate employees, but will fund fewer new graduate employee positions in the future, which will result in fewer graduate degrees in “some programs,” per the presentation.

“This was one of the ways that some colleges were able to adjust their budget reduction targets,” Long said. 

There will be “selective increases” in class size and limits on course offerings, especially those offered to non-majors, according to the presentation. 

Long said officials will also continue to enforce minimum class sizes, which will “likely result” in tenure-track faculty teaching larger classes. The median class size at UO is 20 students, and the student-to-teacher ratio is 18 to 1, according to its website.

He said officials will also significantly reduce custodial cleaning of individual offices on campus, moving from a weekly to monthly rotation.

The university’s faculty union, United Academics of the University of Oregon, said Friday that at least four non-tenure-track faculty, 12 classified staff, and about 40 officers of administration received layoff notices last week. 

The union also said three of the eliminated career faculty members, three officers of administration and one vacant position came from within UO Libraries. 

The union wrote on its website Thursday that the library cuts will harm UO’s research, competitiveness and academic reputation, citing fewer staff to process grant applications, support researchers, and help students learn how to study specific skills.

“The elimination of librarians constitutes a form of institutional de-skilling with far-reaching consequences,” the union’s website reads.

Members of all four labor unions on campus — United Academics, graduate teaching fellows, student workers, and staff members — plan to raise concerns about UO’s financial transparency and shared governance during public comment at the Board of Trustees meeting Tuesday.