Dive Brief:
- Oregon’s Senate on Wednesday passed a measure that would require the Higher Education Coordinating Commission to review the state’s public colleges and recommend ways to put them on better financial footing.
- Those recommendations could include restructuring colleges and reviewing academic programs to ensure they aren’t being duplicated across the state. Under the bill, the commission would have to produce the final report by April 2027.
- The bill now heads to Gov. Tina Kotek’s desk for signature. However, some faculty groups have raised concerns with the measure, arguing that giving the commission authority over program reviews would undermine shared governance.
Dive Insight:
The bill aims to address increased competition for the state’s students, including from online and out-of-state colleges. Some public Oregon colleges have been struggling financially due to enrollment and other challenges.
That includes the state’s flagship institution, the University of Oregon, which laid off roughly 120 employees last year as part of a push to close what was projected to be a $25 million to $30 million deficit for fiscal 2026. Officials attributed the budget shortfall in part to declining enrollment of out-of-state students, which typically face higher tuition sticker prices than their in-state peers.
The bill would require the state’s higher education commission to review all seven of the state’s universities and 17 community colleges and make recommendations “for the design, implementation and operation of a viable and superior institutional framework.”
The commission would be required to make recommendations for how colleges could collaborate, restructure or integrate to meet those goals. It could also advise on how colleges can develop academic programs to meet student and state workforce needs, and for creating criteria for reviewing “unnecessary program duplication” across the state’s public colleges.
Lawmakers introduced the bill last month after the Higher Education Coordinating Commission approved a report with some similar policy proposals meant to improve efficiency across the state’s seven universities.
The chief recommendation was for Oregon’s Legislature to direct the commission to develop proposals for integrating the seven universities, which could range from fully merging two or more colleges to sharing certain programs across institutions, according to the report.
In testimony submitted against the new bill, the chair of Eastern Oregon University’s board slammed this recommendation. “This approach assumes inefficiency where discipline already exists and could impose one-size-fits-all solutions on institutions with fundamentally different missions, scales, and geographic realities,” Charles Hofmann wrote. He also noted that Eastern Oregon recently cut its operating budget by 8.4%.
The commission’s report also suggested that the Legislature require it to regularly review programs — similar to the provision that ultimately made it into the bill’s language.
The Oregon Community College Association urged the commission to take a “nuanced approach” to reviewing programs and whether they were unnecessarily duplicative.
“A program designed for working adults attending part-time may look similar on paper to one serving traditional, full-time residential students, yet fulfill a distinct and necessary role,” the association said in a public comment. “The study should also carefully consider local and regional access, particularly for place-bound students, when evaluating questions of duplication.”
Meanwhile, the Interinstitutional Faculty Senate, which represents faculty from the state’s seven universities, said in February that it opposed the bill as written. It argued that the state’s higher education commission doesn’t currently have the staff expertise to evaluate programs.
“Faculty at each institution must retain a predominant role in decisions about academic programming and curricular change, and any study or restructuring recommendations must respect this core area of faculty governance and expertise,” the group said.
