Southern Oregon University is on track to receive $15 million in emergency state funding after the HECC voted Thursday to begin the process of releasing the money.
The funding would provide a lifeline for the struggling university, which is operating with a $12.5 million deficit. Without it, the institution would not have enough cash to survive through the end of the next fiscal year.
The HECC must first submit a request to the legislative joint emergency board to release the funding. It would be distributed in two parts, one this summer and one this fall.
A prerequisite for receiving the money is that the university must have a long-term financial plan.
SOU's Board of Trustees is scheduled to vote Friday at 5 p.m. on a proposed report from Deloitte Consulting.
Commissioner Jennifer Smith said she didn't want the HECC's vote to be considered an endorsement of Deloitte’s proposal, which she called "concerning" and said had "many errors."
"I’m really hoping their board of trustees considers deeply about the flaws in the recommendations," she said.
Commissioner Devon Lawson agreed, saying he voted to release the money only because the alternative — SOU’s possible closure — is worse.
"It’s not an endorsement of any specific program elimination, layoff structure or organizational redesign contemplated in the Deloitte plan," he said.
There’s been community pushback about the quick timeline to approve Deloitte’s report and about some of its content, which includes cutting $20 million, slashing academic programs and restructuring university operations.
The state legislature established the timeline and process when it approved $15 million in special appropriations under HB 5204 earlier this year.
"Transformation of higher education is difficult under any circumstance," HECC Executive Director Ben Cannon said Thursday. "To have to make those types of changes under this sort of timeline, both for the planning and execution, is really, really extraordinarily difficult. And it's one of the things I think that creates a lot of risk to the university’s ability to execute."
Commissioner Demetrius Davis-Boucher, a student at SOU, spoke about the university's regional importance.
"For our students in the Rogue Valley, many of whom are first generation, like myself, Pell eligible or coming from rural communities, SOU isn't just a choice of many. But it is the choice," he said. "It is the only accessible gateway to higher education and upward mobility in this part of our state."
Before the commission's final vote, Chair Greg Hamann raised concerns about the possibility of finding itself in this situation again.
"While I certainly hope this is not the case, it is plausible that we could be facing a similar situation with another institution in the future," he said. "We need to be thinking in terms of what kind of precedent we're setting."
Deloitte's report attributes many of SOU's financial pressures to external factors, including shifts in federal funding and fewer students enrolling in college. It also notes Oregon ranks 46th in state funding per four-year student.
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.
