Finance FAQs

Faculty (and other workers) have critical knowledge and expertise about their own units, including the best ways to make cuts without compromising educational or research quality.

To date, most of the UO’s efforts at “collaboration” and “transparency” have been highly controlled one-way communications. The rushed process towards layoffs has cut faculty voices out. The UO has run projected deficits many times in the past without taking such aggressive pre-emptive action. Thus, we want to slow down the process to ensure UO meets its obligations to students, workers, and the public mission.

Currently, major financial decision-making power at the UO is relatively concentrated in the hands of a few top executives and administrators. Below is some info about key financial decision-makers at the University of Oregon. We are still learning more about the specific processes by which decision-makers interface with one another.

If you’ve been at the UO for any amount of time, you’ve likely heard leaders talking about funds existing in different “buckets”. For example, capital construction and athletics are different “buckets” than UO’s main operational budget. The UO Foundation, which manages UO’s $1.63 billion endowment, is also independently managed and has its own CEO, CFO, and  Board. Some of UO’s largest “buckets” are private donations earmarked for specific purposes (like a building project).

Some of the “buckets” are more mysterious than others. We can see generalized budgetary information in UO’s public financial disclosures, but these lack the level of detail and context we would need to understand the assumptions built into UO’s projections—as well as UO’s actual resources and expenses (as opposed to budgets, which are more like guidelines than actual accounting). Often, expensive FOIA requests are the only way to acquire the kind of detail we are asking UO leaders to make voluntarily available. One notable funding “bucket”, the UO Foundation, is exempt from FOIA requests; as a result, we have little specific information about those funds and investments.

Financial reform at the UO (like what is outlined in our financial resolution) has the potential to change how some buckets interact with general funds. For example:

• The UO could return more funds from athletics to the core mission, rather than reserving this income for expenses like coach salaries and sports facilities. While UO admin insists that athletic and educational missions are separate, there have been instances over the years in which suggest that this separation is permeable. For example, in 2010 the UO shuffled funds in order to accommodate large-scale increases in coaches’ salaries for the purpose of retention. This only reinforces the idea that UO has money available, but is NOT using it to prioritize the educational mission. University admissions itself reported that success in athletics is NOT a key motivator for attracting out-of-state students, which are UO’s target recruitment demographics
• The UO could reform how we handle private donations. The UO Foundation currently charges a 5% gift fee from every donation. According to the Foundation, “Revenue generated by this gift fee helps offset these costs and provides necessary resources to grow constituent engagement and encourage philanthropic support for the University of Oregon”. Some universities require that a portion of each private donation goes towards the core mission—UC Berkeley has a non-research gift fee of 7.5%, with 5% going to the Chancellor (discretionary funds and deferred maintenance) and 2.5% going to institutional departments (direct operational capacity). A gradated scale that decreases as the amount of the gift increases could also be implemented to ensure donors are not deterred (which is the primary objection raised by President Scholz during his June 3 Town Hall on UO’s finances).

The UO Foundation is a legally separate nonprofit charged with managing, investing, and otherwise stewarding UO’s $1.63 billion endowment.

The UO Foundation has its own CEO, CFO, and Board. The Foundation is exempt from FOIA requests, so we don’t have much specific information about those funds and investments beyond what the UO Foundation chooses to disclose publicly. 

In addition to questions about investments and how/why funds are (or aren’t) returned to the UO’s operations from the endowment, we want more transparency into the UO Foundation’s leadership significant outsourcing of fiscal management and personal raises.

According to IRS 990 forms, the UO Foundation President Paul Weinhold received a 116% raise between 2011 and 2023 (including a 23% raise in 2022-2023) for a total salary of $642,673, even though the bulk of the Foundation’s management has been outsourced to Jasper Ridge Partners.

UO’s Executive Leaders have been consistently unclear about the university’s budget model. After the UO activity-based budget model was rescinded, there was a long period of uncertainty in which deans and other administrators were basically without guidelines on how to improve their unit’s situation. The upper admin has stated that they are afraid to share such information because they are worried that it would lead to unit leaders trying to game the system.

As pedagogues, we know that people learn best when they are told the motives and rationales behind the goals that instructors are trying to achieve. A good budget model incentivizes desired behavior. A lack of a shared budget model means people will be trying many different approaches without consistent guidance.

During previous administrations, the UO was more transparent about the budget model. For example, During Brad Shelton’s tenure, there was a website with updates to the budget.

United Academics is challenging the notion of a broad “structural deficit” at the UO. The administration only began speaking publicly of structural deficits during the last few months of Spring term. We are doing (and will continue to do) what is within our power to push back against this new threat. 

In public financial reports, the UO states that “The 2023–24 fiscal year saw increases in total funds raised, the number of gifts, and total donors over the previous fiscal year.” United Academics strongly believe that with the largest incoming class the university has ever experienced and with the endless series of fundraising victories trumpeted by the administration, the real structural deficit is not economic but a business-as-usual attitude on the administration’s part.

The administration has so far failed to engage in any creative thinking or shared sacrifice to alleviate minor budget deficits—such as buyouts, salary reductions for top officials, or fundraising endeavors that sustain the university’s core educational mission. Thus, UA is proposing to shift the burden of cost-cutting away from the people who fulfill the university’s fundamental educational and research missions, and towards non-mission expenses such as administrative bloat. Cuts to core faculty, programs, and workers will do everlasting damage to our institution. We must avoid this outcome at all costs.

The most important thing to understand is that UO leadership’s false urgency to solve the budget deficit immediately is leading to much messier cuts which are more likely to harm the UO in the long term.

One theory is that there may be an issue with the university’s bond rating, which might be lowered if the university takes on too much debt. Still, President Scholz seems to have been able to shuffle around several million dollars at the end of the school year to reduce units ‘debt. This action suggests that some money was held in reserve or targeted for other things.

A major problem with the current strategy to meet projected deficits quickly is that a rushed process does not lead to holistic solutions. Deans are being asked to handle it on their end, when the operational budget involves more than just the schools.

The truth is that certain faculty could be absorbed in other roles or funded using alternative models; instead, middle-level administrators are being told to magically solve the budget while being given less to work with.

It is true that the Oregon legislature has continued to underfund higher education in the state in general, and the University of Oregon more specifically.  This is consistent with a long-term trend across the United States that reflects the idea that the market, and not government, should fund public (especially higher) education. 

Oregon funds two-year higher ed institutions slightly better than the national average, but funds four-year institutions at only 63% of the national average.

The UO specifically receives the least amount of state funding for Oregon four-year higher ed institutions. Why?

• There may be a perception that UO has more money than other schools due to our major sports program.
• There may be a perception that UO is more elite, and may not serve average Oregonians.
• There may be a perception that UO leaders are not good stewards of public taxpayer dollars. Historically, the UO has sought more autonomy (own board) after receiving less state funding, which may feed into this cycle.

What is most important is that all of the UO community come together to demand greater public investment into our institution’s core mission. We can work together to change the perception among citizens that institutions should be dominated by competitive market dynamics, rather than the public good.

The UO leadership could work with other Oregon universities to engage students and alumni in a campaign to lobby state representatives for more funds—but they have not done so thus far.

See the different “buckets” FAQs for the long answer. The short answer is, maybe. 

We do know the return on investment was 10.5% in 2024. For a $1.63 billion endowment, this would yield an annual profit of over $170 million. One would certainly think this could cover a $2 million budget gap (as UO initially reported), or even a $30 million budget gap (as UO later reported).

But, we are told these funds are inaccessible because—yes, you guessed it—they’re different “buckets”.

That being said, some funds are returned each year from the endowment to UO’s operations, but it seems that this is up to the discretion of Foundation leaders. UO’s leaders insist they have little to no influence over this process. Previously, we have attempted to learn more about the UO Foundation and its operations through lobbying the legislature for the Sunshine Bill. This bill seeks to change the existing limitations on public records disclosures from the UO Foundation, and it is a legislative effort we plan to support if it is renewed in the coming session.

Gift fee reform is another option we want to explore. See: “Could the funding buckets be reformed?”