Who Chose This for Portland State?

This PSU-AAUP President’s blog illustrates how PSU’s current restructuring — the Article 22 retrenchment, the eight-to-six college consolidation, and the centralization of administrative functions under Operational Excellence — operationalizes a specific reform ideology: the New American University model developed at Arizona State by Michael Crow, exported through, the Crow-affiliated, University Innovation Alliance, and carried to PSU by a president whose entire prior career inside that network has been at institutions of a very different kind. The financial premise being offered for the cuts is contradicted by the administration’s own data. The model being applied was built for conditions PSU does not share. The decisions being made are choices and ideological commitments, and they can still be reversed.