Legislature passes landmark higher ed budget

2007-2009 budget gives biggest increase of funds to higher ed in nearly a decade

By: Nick Vardanega

Posted: 7/4/07

The final day of Oregon's 2007 legislative session marked a victory for higher education funding with the passage of a budget that gave the Oregon University System over $100 million more then the previous cycle.
On June 28, surrounded by lawmakers and proponents of higher education on the steps of the Capitol Building, Gov. Ted Kulongoski signed the higher education budget for 2007-2009.
The budget was heralded by attendees of the signing ceremony as well as education proponents as an historic re-investment in higher education in the state of Oregon, which many say has been ignored by the legislature for nearly a decade.
Under the new budget the Oregon University System will receive $870.4 million from 2007-2009, a raise from the $706.5 million spent in the 2005-2007 cycle and $678.9 million from 2003-2005.
"It's a really exciting day for college students and for all Oregonians," said Courtney Sproule, communications director for the Oregon Student Association said at the June 28 signing. "[This budget] represents the biggest re-investment in colleges in this state in over a decade."
OSA held several rallies at the capitol and other demonstration during the 2007 session lobbying on behalf of higher education.
The budget also reverses the trend of students having to pay an increasing higher percentage of the share of higher education state costs with less help from the state.
Under the new budget, students share of the cost will be 53 percent with 37 percent being provided by the state and 10 percent being provided by other sources. State help is up from the last biennium, 2005-2007, when students paid 55 percent of the costs and the state paid 35 percent, with 10 percent coming from other sources.
Until the current budget the students' share had been steadily increasing from the 1999-2001 cycle, when the state paid for 51 percent of the costs while students paid 41 percent and eight percent came from other sources.
"It's a great first step," said Monique Teal, OSA president and a student at Southern Oregon University. However, she acknowledges the budget was "just a first step," and it would take a continued effort to achieve the kind of attention she thinks higher education should have.
"Right now we're holding steady and I'm grateful for steady, because Southern [Oregon University] is declining fast," She said. "It's not a sprint, it's a marathon."
Teal credited the efforts of OSA and other student organizations in helping to bring attention to the issue, but said others, like the business community and social services also helped-recognizing that having an educated workforce was in their best interest as well.
"They really rallied around us," she said.
Oregon is currently one of the worst states in terms of funding for higher education, ranking 45th in per capita public spending.
"We came in with a plan for [raising higher education funding] when we were campaigning on this and other issues last fall," said Russ Kelly, spokesman for House Speaker Jeff Merkley. "We made a commitment to restore higher ed funding...we saw it as not only a piece of the education continuum but as one that really plays into the economic stability of the state."
Kelly cited economic instability as one of the factors that caused higher education spending to be ignored for so long. She the recession that hit Oregon in 2001 made it hard to spend money on education.
"We are just now coming out of the recession... we're back up to those previous levels, so we have more money then we had last year," Kelly said about where the extra for higher education would come from.
OSU will also receive extra funding in several specific areas under the new budget.
According to the Oregon University System, OSU will receive $ 6 million for construction of the National Wave Energy Research Center as well as money for various construction and renovation projects for campus buildings and athletic facilities.
The budget also includes a $15 million increase in funds ($37 million total) for the Engineering and Technology Industry Council, to increase the number of engineering and computer science graduates.
And statewide public services like OSU's Agricultural Experiment Station, Extension Service, and Forest Research Laboratory, received increased funding.
Kelly said investing in these services was an effort to boost industries vital to the economy and set up a partnership between universities and private corporations.
"Oregon is very well placed to be a leader in developing new industries and redeveloping old industries," Kelly said.
Thayne Dutson, dean of OSU's College of Agricultural Sciences, said the biggest effect of the increase in funding will allow them to get closer to the number of faculty and other employees they had before they started to decline.
In 2001 they had approximately 394 "full time equivalents," under the 2005-2007 budget they had around 336. Now with the 2007-2009 they will be able to increase that number to around 360.
"Most of the money goes into hiring researchers and extension personnel who bring in outside contracts and grants for research they do," Dutson said. "We are very pleased with increased funding, it will get us partly where we need to be but not all the way."