{"id":5917,"date":"2017-05-03T08:00:58","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T16:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=5917"},"modified":"2017-05-02T16:27:31","modified_gmt":"2017-05-03T00:27:31","slug":"plan-future-dont-quit-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/plan-future-dont-quit-fight\/","title":{"rendered":"Plan for the future, don\u2019t quit the fight"},"content":{"rendered":"
By: Jade Rayner\r\nNews Editor<\/pre>\n
On Wednesday, April 26 the Board of Trustees met to discuss various topics pertaining to Western, including the recommended tuition range for the 2017-2018 academic year.<\/p>\n
According to the meeting minutes, it was important to set a tuition range for the 2017-2018 academic year because of upcoming Higher Education Coordinating Commission deadlines.<\/p>\n
The proposal for the tuition range was presented by Western\u2019s Vice President for Finance and Administration Eric Yahnke.<\/p>\n
The minutes relay that \u201cTrustee Martin described how a tuition range could be used to continue conversations with students. Shetterly added that a range could be used to continue conversations with legislators \u2026 Baumgartner called for a motion to approve the 2017-2018 tuition range (5-10% increase for resident undergraduate variable rate tuition and 10-20% increase for resident undergraduate Western Promise rate).\u201d The motion passed 7-2.<\/p>\n
In an interview with President Rex Fuller the following day, he was asked what plans Western had to increase student enrollment. President Fuller replied, \u201cone of the things that\u2019s happened in Oregon is the Oregon Promise, which has provided funding for students to go to community colleges at a lesser cost than they would the four years. And that actually has led to a number of students going to the two year colleges that otherwise may have come to the four years. So, Chemeketa alone, over a thousand students enrolled under the Oregon Promise last fall.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went on to say, \u201cone of the things we are trying to do is because those students are now at the two years, is trying to refresh and revise the way in which a student would transfer from the two years to the four years to finish their degree \u2026 on top of that we continue to work the high school graduating class \u2026 so we are seeing a downturn in new freshmen, we are trying to replace that with an upturn in transfers.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Fuller, Western signed a dual admission program with Clackamas Community College this year, which will create an easier path for transfer students.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing back to March of last year, the university submitted to the Higher Education Coordinating Committee a unified budget for all seven institutions, and we identified the amount we would need just to cover our cost \u2026 our total budget for all universities needed to go up to $765 million. The governor’s budget right now is $667 million, which leaves roughly that $100 million gap,\u201d Fuller responded when asked what students could expect to see in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe latest response by the joint Ways and Means Committee,\u201d Fuller explained, \u201cis that they\u2019ve added about $20 million to the governor\u2019s number \u2026 what our Board of Trustees approved yesterday with a vote to go forward is basically a sliding scale, which says that our tuition will be between 5 and 10 percent, and it will depend upon how much of that gap gets closed; so the gap\u2019s $100 million, and we say \u2018for every $20 million that gap gets closed, we\u2019ll lower that increase by one percent\u2019 \u2026 essentially our approach mirrors what University of Oregon did which is created a set of tradeoffs.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the April 26 issue of The Western Journal, President Fuller\u2019s guest column left the question, \u201cis this a blip or will the legislature maintain their investment?\u201d Referring to the decrease in state funding to the university.<\/p>\n
To elaborate on that question, Fuller said, \u201cI\u2019ve been here two years now \u2026 in the year I arrived there actually was an increase in funding for higher education, and we deeply appreciated it \u2026 to maintain that level of funding was that $765 million figure, because that covered our cost, the inflation plus cost. So if we don\u2019t fill that gap, we then fall behind again, and so that\u2019s the big challenge … Whether this is a blip or not is going to depend on that lobbying effort. We\u2019re trying to convince the legislature and the governor that that investment that was made in 2015-2017 needs to be sustained.\u201d<\/p>\n
As of now, it\u2019s too soon to determine whether or not additional funding will be provided to sustain the investment. According to Fuller, the process will continue through the academic year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe continue to try and meet with legislators,\u201d stated Fuller. \u201cOn May 16, there is going to be what\u2019s called True Day \u2026 there\u2019s going to be a full day of lobbying in the state house, in the capitol.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fuller encouraged student involvement in the event and said, \u201call students are welcome. There will be a chance to be put into teams; there will be some talking points that we all agree on that are being prepared, the idea is to go have some face to face time with legislators and say \u2018your investment in higher education matters.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Reflecting on True Day, he concluded, \u201cthe impact we had last year with an all-university day was profound \u2026 I think those are effective demonstrations of voice, and to have students be numerous in that voice and also telling their own story frankly has more impact than if I say it \u2026 you are the future of the nation and the state, and in that sense you have in many ways more credibility than I do as an employee.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fuller stated that students with questions about True Day can ask ASWOU for more information, or can contact him with questions about the event.<\/p>\n
Contact the author at journalnews@wou.edu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By: Jade Rayner News Editor On Wednesday, April 26 the Board of Trustees met to discuss various topics pertaining to Western, including the recommended tuition range for the 2017-2018 academic year. According to the meeting minutes, it was important to set a tuition range for the 2017-2018 academic year because of upcoming Higher Education Coordinating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":937,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/937"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}