Oregonian
July 18th, 2015
Even for a year that started with the Ducks getting drilled in the national championship game, 2015 has signs of a good year for Oregon higher education. With the overall 2015-2017 state budget up by 11 percent, state support for its universities went up by more than 22 percent and for community colleges by 18 percent, both numbers unseen for at least two decades. The Legislature also considerably increased funding for the state Opportunity Grants scholarship program and sizably funded higher ed construction. It's a major investment in Oregon's colleges and universities, the first actual cash-based support for the state's proclaimed 40-40-20 goal, a significant effort to slow our tuition levels from shooting upward like illegal fireworks.
It's enough to haul out the pompoms left from the championship game and give three cheers for the Legislature.
Well, maybe two cheers.
The increase is impressive and welcome, but we need to remember where our higher ed budgets started. It was "a very good session," agrees Ben Cannon, executive director of the Higher Education Coordinating Commission, but "the context includes cuts of equal magnitude, and a long trend of disinvestment."