Excellent as always. Keeping families and future generations in Oregon means having affordable higher education. As a mom of two children in college, one at UO and the other at OSU, I was very invested in what you wrote and the issues that need solving.
Agree with Rebekah. Your clarity on the history of how short term thinking puts us all at risk long term is impressive. Increasing the full freight admitee count may help the fiscal situation immediately but it diminishes the impact of your state’s ability to educate its own. Sets the table for a nativist backlash and the ebbs and flows of “the market”. Keep up the good work Marty. Your newsletters are awesome.
Thanks! To be fair, the Frohnmayer model has done OK for 30 years. I doubt he thought it would be permanent and there weren't a lot of other options available at the time. That being said, Scholz has his work cut out for him to build a long-term, sustainable model in collaboration with the students, faculty, and staff.
I appreciate your July 7 post giving the history of the UO's budget crisis. Yes, the Frohnmayer model identified, enticed, and (hoped to) enroll those out-of-state students who pay more tuition, as well as international students. For decades the UO put lots of money -- admissions recruiting, language labs, housing for international students -- into augmenting those populations' enrollment and getting their $$$.
The rising cost of UO tuition, the pandemic, online access and quality home-state schools and continual improvement in internationally recognized schools in China, all contributed to the plan's ever-ebbing success. You've got that right.
As for sports bringing students to the UO, no survey has ever had students list sports as their major reason for attending the UO. If you happen to have data to share, I'd love to see it.
Secondly, "liberal arts" undergird all higher education. There's a good reason for that: universities were founded in the 12th century to provide education centered on the trivium and quadrivium. The trivium -- LOGIC, GRAMMAR, and RHETORIC -- encompassed the "arts," i.e., practical analysis -- of thinking, analyzing, and speaking. The quadrivium were the theoretical arts/practices: ARITHMETIC, GEOMETIC, ASTRONOMY and MUSIC.
Have a look at the Wikipedia article on the liberal arts to get a sense of their history and different locutions used for them. Here's something to think about from the article: "In addition, most four-year colleges are not devoted exclusively or primarily to liberal arts degrees, and offer STEM programs. In fact, STEM graduates at liberal arts colleges have been demonstrated to be more likely to apply to graduate school in STEM than their peers and make up a higher proportion of National Academy of Science members than would usually be expected for the number of STEM graduates produced by an institution."
Both the facts and my own experience as faculty at the UO honors college underline the necessity for the liberal arts. Interview successful students -- those who "count" for you by going onto employment or graduate school -- and to a person they'll credit their ability to think, and they’ll attribute their successs writ large to their liberal arts classes. Moreover, it seems to me, in the age of AI, that we need humanities more than ever. Human beings are not machines, not robots. While AI might be the last human invention (that's quoting Thomas Friedman), it is still limited by what it gleans from the internet/published sources. AI doesn't think. The human quotient, informed by the liberal arts (don’t discount the word “arts”; definitely don’t discount the word “liberal”) are needed now more than ever.
Give my best to your momma Mary and happy to continue the conversation. All best, -Louise
Excellent as always. Keeping families and future generations in Oregon means having affordable higher education. As a mom of two children in college, one at UO and the other at OSU, I was very invested in what you wrote and the issues that need solving.
Agree with Rebekah. Your clarity on the history of how short term thinking puts us all at risk long term is impressive. Increasing the full freight admitee count may help the fiscal situation immediately but it diminishes the impact of your state’s ability to educate its own. Sets the table for a nativist backlash and the ebbs and flows of “the market”. Keep up the good work Marty. Your newsletters are awesome.
Thanks! To be fair, the Frohnmayer model has done OK for 30 years. I doubt he thought it would be permanent and there weren't a lot of other options available at the time. That being said, Scholz has his work cut out for him to build a long-term, sustainable model in collaboration with the students, faculty, and staff.
Dear Marty,
I appreciate your July 7 post giving the history of the UO's budget crisis. Yes, the Frohnmayer model identified, enticed, and (hoped to) enroll those out-of-state students who pay more tuition, as well as international students. For decades the UO put lots of money -- admissions recruiting, language labs, housing for international students -- into augmenting those populations' enrollment and getting their $$$.
The rising cost of UO tuition, the pandemic, online access and quality home-state schools and continual improvement in internationally recognized schools in China, all contributed to the plan's ever-ebbing success. You've got that right.
As for sports bringing students to the UO, no survey has ever had students list sports as their major reason for attending the UO. If you happen to have data to share, I'd love to see it.
Secondly, "liberal arts" undergird all higher education. There's a good reason for that: universities were founded in the 12th century to provide education centered on the trivium and quadrivium. The trivium -- LOGIC, GRAMMAR, and RHETORIC -- encompassed the "arts," i.e., practical analysis -- of thinking, analyzing, and speaking. The quadrivium were the theoretical arts/practices: ARITHMETIC, GEOMETIC, ASTRONOMY and MUSIC.
Have a look at the Wikipedia article on the liberal arts to get a sense of their history and different locutions used for them. Here's something to think about from the article: "In addition, most four-year colleges are not devoted exclusively or primarily to liberal arts degrees, and offer STEM programs. In fact, STEM graduates at liberal arts colleges have been demonstrated to be more likely to apply to graduate school in STEM than their peers and make up a higher proportion of National Academy of Science members than would usually be expected for the number of STEM graduates produced by an institution."
Both the facts and my own experience as faculty at the UO honors college underline the necessity for the liberal arts. Interview successful students -- those who "count" for you by going onto employment or graduate school -- and to a person they'll credit their ability to think, and they’ll attribute their successs writ large to their liberal arts classes. Moreover, it seems to me, in the age of AI, that we need humanities more than ever. Human beings are not machines, not robots. While AI might be the last human invention (that's quoting Thomas Friedman), it is still limited by what it gleans from the internet/published sources. AI doesn't think. The human quotient, informed by the liberal arts (don’t discount the word “arts”; definitely don’t discount the word “liberal”) are needed now more than ever.
Give my best to your momma Mary and happy to continue the conversation. All best, -Louise