Rep. Pam Marsh (D-Ashland) is cosponsoring a bill to plan for the future viability of Oregon's higher education system.
The bill would direct the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission to evaluate the distinct objectives of each institution as well as opportunities for collaboration, restructuring or integration. It could also evaluate how academic programs support workforce needs, whether programs are unnecessarily duplicated and how institutions are addressing affordability.
"We do not have time to sit around and twiddle our thumbs. We have to turn this system quickly," Marsh said. "I'll be doing everything I can to make sure that this is not a pro forma study, but it's actually big picture outside-the-box thinking about what higher ed can look like."
Oregon’s universities have recently faced rising personnel costs for benefit programs, such as retirement and health insurance, declining enrollment and what university leadership describes as inadequate state support.
This bill follows a recommendation in a recent report from the HECC, which the leadership at Southern Oregon University has pushed back on. They say the problem is not inefficiency, but chronic underfunding.
The report also recommends periodic program review and a separate salary pool for essential compensation increases, among other things.
"We have proposed new strategies to help the public system contain costs in a challenging fiscal environment so that they can continue to deliver affordable, quality education to Oregonians, and avoid passing financial burden on to students and families," HECC Executive Director Ben Cannon said in a statement. "If the Legislature asks us to develop integration proposals, we would work closely with institutions to consider various degrees of integration, which could range from programmatic partnerships to deeper shared services to formal affiliations or mergers."
Marsh said the bill was developed with input from the commission, and Oregon needs to reevaluate its vision for higher education.
"It is a harsh thing to say, but it is also true that our system has essentially lost the confidence of the public, and frankly, of a lot of legislators who are trying to figure out why the costs of higher ed seem so unconstrained," she said.
Regarding the bill, SOU President Rick Bailey said he is open to discussing solutions but wants the legislature to remain focused.
"What I don't want us to do as a state is take our eye off the ball and distract ourselves from what the real core issue is here in this state, and that is a chronic, decades-long underfunding of colleges and universities," he said.
If the bill passes, the report would need to be prepared by December, with the goal of lawmakers acting on any recommendations in 2027.
Oregon Public Broadcasting's Tiffany Camhi contributed reporting.
JPR is licensed to Southern Oregon University, but our newsroom operates independently. Guided by our journalistic standards and ethics, we cover the university like any other organization in the region. No university official reviewed or edited this story before it was published.
