The Chronicle of Higher Education
September 15th, 2015
The University of Oregon’s mascot, a Donald Duck knockoff in yellow and green, is a pure distillation of the university’s iconic brand. This is a place, the duck assures us, of unapologetically splashy sports and irrepressible good times. The image sells remarkably well to undergraduates, whose numbers have increased by 25 percent in the past decade alone.
What has been more difficult, however, is for Oregon to remain competitive with the top-tier research universities that it has for decades described as its peers. Save a few marquee programs, Oregon often fails now to measure up to higher education’s heavy hitters, which bring in more federal grants, produce more doctoral degrees, and boast higher graduation rates.
Oregon falls behind for some good reasons, most notably its relatively modest array of academic programs. Without cash cows like engineering, medicine, and pharmacy, Oregon cannot expect to generate the kind of research dollars that the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor or the University of Washington might.