Finally, there seems to be some progress for higher education in Oregon. In December, Governor Ted Kulongoski approved a budget for Oregon universities that is $95 million more than the higher education budget for the 2005-2007 biennium.
The budget is a definite improvement over the current situation-which forced millions of dollars in cuts to Portland State alone-yet millions of dollars have already been stripped from the Oregon University System’s original September proposal.
Now it’s up to the Oregon Legislature to do the right thing and approve the budget without reducing it further-a budget that is meekly surviving at less than 7 percent of the entire state’s budget-or to take away from other deserving and necessary state programs.
The Legislature must realize the important role that higher education plays in the realm of the entire state. And higher education would be nothing without one fundamental and often disregarded aspect: faculty.
The OUS budget requested a $29 million increase in faculty salaries, but the governor reduced the amount to $8 million with an additional $12.5 million in emergency funds to cover cost of living adjustments.
If the state legislature decides to lower faculty salary increases at all, let alone exclude them from the state budget, higher education will continue on the downward spiral it has seen over the last decade.
Oregon schools cannot afford more reductions to money earmarked for faculty salaries. There is already a disturbing and growing trend of teachers leaving state schools for greener pastures, which is no surprise considering that pay for Oregon educators ranks in the lowest 10 percent nationwide.
It is just as disturbing that capital repair and construction was fully funded at $83.5 million, up from $23.7 million for the last biennium. By no means is it wrong to revitalize the deteriorating OUS buildings, but as a state, we must be willing to define public higher education by the quality of our instructors, not the buildings they teach in.
It is often easy to view the wants of a population in terms of numbers. Thousands of Oregonians commute each day requiring constantly improved roads and accessible parking, but only hundreds of faculty members want a raise.
If faculty members don’t see increased salaries, the quality of education will drop. If that happens, it will affect more than a few hundred faculty members-it will affect every student in Oregon higher education.
In a state where there are already strong disincentives to teach at public institutions, further reducing the governor’s budget would bring disastrous consequences