Oregon University System

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Governance Reform

The critical need to educate more Oregonians to meet coPSU campusmmunity and workforce demands prompted the State Board of Higher Education in 2010 to seek governance changes for the Oregon University System to allow the system to better fulfill its statewide mission while meeting the demands of our competitive, global economy. A package of reforms, included within Senate Bill 242, was passed by the 2011 Legislature and now allows OUS the flexibility it needs to operate in a changing environment, while being held accountable for performance.  We’re excited about the opportunities that this legislation allows the OUS and the state to reach the important 40-40-20 goals for improving educational attainment in Oregon and helping all students succeed.

In a time of increased enrollment demand and shifting demographics, these changes will provide the catalyst to more effectively deliver educational opportunity, protect tuition for uses that benefit students, educate more students, and invest in programs and research that strengthen and grow Oregon’s economy. Most of these reforms are effective on January 1, 2012.

Overall, the benefits for students, the state and the OUS include:

  • Tuition accountability: Ensures that tuition paid by students and interest earned on tuition will actually go to support student instruction and support, not to support other state agencies.
  • Access and affordability enhanced: The Board of Higher Education will continue to set tuition, with more student involvement in the process, and explicitly include consideration of affordability.
  • Accountability broadened and refocused: Funding and long-term planning will be aligned with performance outcome measures set by the System, Legislature and Governor.
  • Creating advantages, efficiencies, and cost control through structural change: Changing from a state agency to a statewide public university system provides a simplified “block grant” budgeting approach and greater control over costs and tuition revenues, freeing up funding to educate more Oregonians in future biennia.
  • Statewide focus remains: The Board of Higher Education and Chancellor’s Office will remain in place to govern the System and ensure oversight. 

Key components of SB 242 legislation now in effect include (most components of SB 242 are effective on January 1, 2012):

  • Creates a Higher Education Coordinating Commission that will develop state goals and accountability measures for all of postsecondary education in Oregon – community colleges and OUS – and a strategic plan for achieving these;
  • Changes OUS from a state agency to a Public University System, consisting of the Office of the Chancellor, the seven OUS institutions and related offices and activities. The State Board of Higher Education will continue to carry out its duties, and OUS will remain an instrumentality of the state and a governmental body;
  • Tuition revenues can be fully utilized to fund student instruction and support services, as well as university operations, and not be subject to "expenditure limitations" which hamper the campuses' ability to spend the tuition students have paid without returning to the legislature for authority; this will improve campuses ability to plan longer term knowing what available revenues will be within any given biennium;
  • Tuition revenues in campus reserves will no longer be able to be utilized by the state to fund other agencies;
  • Affordability is increased, with interest earned on tuition revenues remaining on campus to fund additional student financial aid rather than being returned to the state;
  • Students are more broadly involved on university-based committees which develop tuition rate proposals sent to the Board of Higher Education for approval each year;
  • Accountability is increased, with a new performance compact that will provide measurable education and research outcomes, on which funding will be based;
  • Adopts a simplified “block grant” budgeting approach – rather than the thousands of line items which currently make up the OUS budget – which is driven by outcomes and accountability, and moves from a compliance focused system to one focused on achievement;
  • Decreases costs for OUS, including enabling it to:  purchase lower cost risk insurance rather than being in the state pool; explore healthcare options with a labor-management group; eliminate certain assessments levied by the Department of Administrative Services; retain its own legal services, no longer using Department of Justice attorneys and services; and overall enables the universities to function more effectively as education institutions rather than within the pool of other state agencies; and
  • Eliminates the need to seek legislative authority on capital construction projects that exclusively use private donor/external funding.

OUS will continue to follow public records/meetings laws just as other public bodies do today. Besides public records, OUS will also continue to pay assessments for and be engaged with: Secretary of State for audits, archives and administrative rules; Ethics Commission; Central Government – for Legislature and Governor’s Office; Minority, Women-Owned and Emerging Small Business; and Treasury for banking services.

Documents used to support governance change in the OUS included:

Proposal:

Support:

Sample of Editorial Support of OUS Proposal

Posted Thu, 12/30/2010 - 5:31pm