Student lobby picks its battles with Legislature

It may be more than a year away, but the state’s largest student lobbying organization is already gearing up for the 2007 Oregon legislative session.

Compared to other states, Oregon’s public university system has struggled over the past decade to keep up in terms of school funding, tuition levels and financial assistance for students.

Oregon ranks 46th in the nation in funding per university student, according to an Oregon University System report, the result of a gradual decline in funding per student between 1990 and 2004. Between 2001 and 2005, tuition also increased about 50 percent at the state’s universities. Oregon universities’ faculty salaries are also on average 15 percent lower than their national peers.

In the 2005 legislative session, however, public university students did win some victories in terms of tuition levels and accessibility to higher education. State lawmakers voted to cap a tuition increase at 3 percent, despite an OUS board plan to raise tuition by 6.7 percent. Funding for the Oregon Opportunity Grant, the state’s only need-based grant program, was also increased to a level that allowed all students eligible for the grant to receive it. Previously, only 72 percent of eligible students received aid.

Behind the scenes of both of these legislative victories for students was the Oregon Student Association, a nonprofit lobbying organization that coordinates student governments across the state to create a unified campaign for student issues in the state government.

Apart from OSA, there are few other statewide lobbying organizations advocating on behalf of public university students in Oregon, making the association by far the loudest voice for students in the capital when state lawmakers are making decisions impacting higher education.

Portland State’s student government plays a major role within the OSA. PSU student body President Erin Devaney is chair of the OSA board of directors, the association’s governing body, which consists of representatives from Oregon’s community colleges and seven public universities.

Members of the association view the successes during the 2005 legislative session as a major leap forward for students. In 2007, the Oregon Legislature will meet again, and vote on funding and tuition levels, among other things, for the state’s public university system. The OSA hopes to expand on the successes of 2005 in the upcoming session.

“Students won huge victories in the last legislative session,” Devaney said. “This legislative session is incredibly important because we need to maintain and build on the victories we won in 2005.”

In the eyes of OSA’s leadership, despite some successes, Oregon’s public universities are still in dire straits. At a bare minimum, they want to ensure that the gains made in 2005 are not lost during the 2007 session.

“We’re at a place where Oregon has de-prioritized funding universities and in the end they have turned to students to bear the burden,” said Melissa Unger, OSA’s executive director. “We really need to say, ‘enough is enough, let’s fund higher education.'”

After eight months of development, the OSA has determined three major priorities for the next legislative session: funding and tuition, need-based aid and ASPIRE, a high school outreach program.

“We looked at the ability of OSA to work on these campaigns and to win real, effective victories for students in the next legislative session,” Devaney said. “The issues we chose are ones that we can mobilize students around and are winnable.”

In terms of funding level, the OSA wants the Legislature to fund the university system at the “Essential Budget Level,” meaning the funding level necessary for the system to continue delivering the same level of services as were offered during the previous biennium. According to OUS staff, maintaining this funding level would require a 13-15 percent funding increase for the system in the 2007-09 biennium.

In order to achieve essential budget-level funding, OSA acknowledges that some tuition increases may be necessary. However, the organization would only support tuition increases at or below the increase in median family income.

Achieving full funding for the Oregon Opportunity Grant was a major success for the OSA in 2005, and they hope to ensure that the grant remains funded well enough in 2007 for 100 percent of eligible students to continue receiving aid.

“We need to make sure that we don’t slip backwards,” Unger said. “We believe that we need to maintain a presence on need-based aid to make sure they continue to fund all students, and make sure the case for the issue is made during this legislative session.”

For the first time in many years, the OSA has also chosen an issue that doesn’t directly affect current college students as one of its major priorities. The Access to Student assistance Programs in Reach of Everyone (ASPIRE) program works to educate high school students, particularly disadvantaged students, about opportunities and programs that assist with access to Oregon universities. The program, which is administered by the Oregon Student Assistance Commission, currently receives all of its funding through grants from non-governmental organizations. The OSA is asking the state to invest $3.1 million from the state’s general fund to provide reliable funding for the program.