(typographical error corrected 1/7/94)

This first part of the report contains the Executive Summary and Introduction, including a statement of goals.

Parts 2 and 3 contain the remainder of the report.

This Progress Report responds to Chancellor Thomas Bartlett's directive to create a campus plan for academic productivity and educational reform. It sets out the University of Oregon's productivity goals, together with proposals for meeting them. The report also raises key issues for further consideration.

The introductory section contains a short account of the University's context for productivity planning, and lists seven fundamental assumptions on which the University's plan will be based. It briefly describes several possible measures of productivity, and states goals associated with them. In essence, the three Primary Goals are to:

•  o Serve Oregonians Who Need University Educations;
•  o Capitalize and Build On Existing Strengths: and
•  o Create Financial Stability.

The main body of the report consists of conclusions and recommendations, largely resulting from an extensive planning process that has involved nine working groups and nearly 100 members of the campus community. Areas with promise of substantial productivity gains include the following.

•  o Mechanisms to Speed Progress Toward Degrees.
• o Summer School and Short Courses.
• o Credit for Achievement.
•  o Three Plus Two Degrees.
• o Enhanced Master's Programs.
• o Participatory Learning.
• o Group Learning.
• o Curricular Streamlining and Departmental Changes.
• o Increased Use of Technology.
•  o Off-Campus Programs and Distance Learning

Assessment and quality control are central to productivity planning. We propose the annual submission of a University of Oregon portfolio to document productivity progress. Additional measures, not included in the portfolio, will be used as well for internal decision making.

This report also touches briefly on the University's increasing academic emphasis on student learning and the associated cultural changes that will be required. It concludes with a brief quantitative look at how realistic the proposed plans are for meeting the University's goals, and with a discussion of future planning steps.

INTRODUCTION

CONTEXT The University of Oregon is a comprehensive research university and the only Oregon member of the Association of American Universities. Its programs of instruction are designed to provide the opportunity for students to obtain a high-quality education in the liberal arts and sciences as well as professional preparation. Its instructional, research, and public-service programs advance scientific and humanistic knowledge and serve the educational, cultural, and economic needs of all Oregonians. -- from the University of Oregon mission statement

Higher education in Oregon is faced with two realities. First, the State of Oregon is unlikely in the foreseeable future to provide general fund support for higher education at the 1985-89 level. Second, the number of high school graduates in the State will increase by 40% over the next decade. The problem is how to provide this increasing number of students with educations of acceptable quality, under the constraint of a severely diminished level of State funding.

In fact, from the perspective of a responsible higher education community, the quality of education must not only be "acceptable," it must be comparable with the best higher education in the world if Oregon is to compete in the international arena. Clearly, this difficult problem will not yield to easy solutions. In fact, there is surely no single solution, and the best strategy will consist of multiple approaches.

In this context, Chancellor Bartlett, in a memorandum of August 17, 1993, asked each campus of the Oregon State System of Higher Education (OSSHE) to prepare a plan for "Academic Productivity and Educational Reform," directed at producing results. The University of Oregon, as the State's only AAU liberal arts and sciences research-intensive university, is committed to responding to this challenge in constructive ways consistent with its mission and strengths.

Indeed, since 1991 the University has been increasing quality and productivity through implementation of the Oregon Model for undergraduate education, through internal reallocation of resources from administrative and support functions to academic programs, and through reductions of administrative and support costs. Simply intensifying these actions, however, cannot possibly meet the present challenge. In addition to continuing with the steps already taken, the University must go about its work in new ways, taking the lead in changing instructional methods to emphasize successful student learning. This progress report suggests a number of promising approaches to enhanced academic productivity at the University of Oregon.

Academic Productivity itself has many measures. For a fixed total resource, these include:

•  o Number of full time equivalent students enrolled;
•  o Success of these students in attaining their educational objectives;
• o Time taken to obtain the educational objectives;
•  o Extent to which educational and research programs meet student needs;
• o Extent to which educational and research programs meet the needs of the State;
• o Overall quality of the educational experience.

One of the greatest costs to students in higher education is the cost of lost earnings while attending school. Of course, a student can expect to recover these costs and much more upon attaining the degree, but each additional term in school beyond the minimum required represents a cost much higher than tuition, room and board. A second type of cost is the cost of failure--the immeasurable cost to both the student and the State when a student, for reasons unrelated to ability, cannot fulfill a desired educational objective.

At the University of Oregon, therefore, we set as one objective finding the best combination of enrollment, educational success, and time to attain the degree.

The last three factors listed above are less easy to quantify, and furthermore may change with time. They, too, are related to the cost of failure. We will address all of these factors in our productivity plan, with proposals for both increasing and assessing our productivity in these areas. We are committed to meeting the needs of both the students and the State by giving each student a high quality education that includes the needed specific skills and, more importantly, provides the abilities to think critically, to draw together information from multiple sources, to be a lifelong learner, and to compete in an international arena.

ASSUMPTIONS

A plan to increase productivity must start with assumptions about the resources that will be available, both for one-time investment and on a recurring basis. Our analysis assumes:

• o Total financial resources available for educational expenditures will remain constant over the next four years (increasing only at the rate of inflation);
•  o By the 1997-1998 academic year overall enrollment will increase by 1200 students;
• o The available resources will allow us to maintain the current faculty size and quality, and the current physical plant;
•  o Nonrecurring capital funds of about $10 million will be available over this period to allow investment in educational technologies and related areas that will increase productivity;
• o Beginning in 1997-98, financial resources will increase approximately proportionately with further increases in student enrollment;
• o On-campus head-count enrollment will reach approximately 19,000 students by the year 2002; of these students approximately 12,000 will be Oregon residents;
• o An additional 2,000 head-count Oregon students will be served through joint programs in Portland, and through distance learning;
• o Throughout this period, the proportion of the University of Oregon's total budget supported by State general funds will continue to decline, reaching approximately 15% by 2002.

GOALS

Proposals for increasing academic productivity, many of which have already come from the faculty, will be evaluated by how well they address the University's needs. We set forth our objectives as three primary goals, each supported by operational goals against which to measure proposals.

Primary Goal 1. Serve the increasing numbers of Oregonians who are qualified for and need university educations.

To a considerable extent, the University of Oregon is now maintaining the stability, quality and attractiveness of its programs through tuition income from nonresident students, a key source of continuing income. At the same time, we recognize that we must continue to admit all Oregon applicants who meet our admission requirements. Beyond admitting these students, we are responsible as well for providing them with the educational opportunities of a major university.

Operational Goals:

•  1 (a) Decrease students' time to degree;
•  1 (b) Retain a higher proportion of students to degree completion;
•  1 (c) Maintain and enhance the quality of educational programs offered;
•  1 (d) Provide courses of study appropriate to Oregonians' needs;
•  1 (e) Increase on-campus resident enrollment by 2000 students by the year 2002;
•  1 (f) Develop the capability to offer courses to 2000 Oregon students who are not present on the campus.

Primary Goal 2. Retain and build upon the University of Oregon's educational assets as a research intensive AAU university, while enhancing its "traditional college" environment.

The University of Oregon is fortunate to be able to offer its students a rare combination of the academic stimulation of a major research university and the personal scale of a college campus. This goal recognizes both the importance of an explicit institutional commitment to provide the benefits of advanced scholarship to as many students as possible and the retention value of close student associations with faculty and with their peers.

To meet the goal we plan to expand successful programs, such as the Honors College, International College, and Freshman Interest Groups, that build a sense of community into the learning environment. For the more advanced students, we will create additional opportunities to work closely with faculty members and to gain experience transferring classroom learning to significant projects.

Operational Goals:

•  2 (a) Develop more learning communities; increase personal academic interactions between students and faculty members, and between students and their peers;
•  2 (b) Increase participatory learning and student engagement in the learning process;
•  2 (c) Strengthen links between the undergraduate curriculum and graduate, professional and research programs.

 Both the University and our students must be able to plan over a period longer than one or two years. By financial stability we mean a predictably adequate supply of financial resources to carry out the University's mission. Predictability of funds is a prerequisite for program stability, faculty stability, and enrollment stability, as well as for implementing new programs in response to evolving student and State needs. Without financial stability, the University cannot hope to meet either of its other primary goals.

Although State support is important, the quest for financial stability is not simply a desire to have the State meet increasing instructional costs. Indeed, the University of Oregon's financial plan for the next six years anticipates a decreasing total cost to educate each student, although the cost to individual students will increase, owing to the decrease in State support. During this period we also plan to increase the quality of the education the student receives, to increase the proportion of students who receive degrees, and to decrease the time to those degrees. To meet these objectives and to maximize the use of the resources that are available, the University will continue its careful financial planning.

 Operational Goals:

•  3 (a) Recruit and retain capable students in sufficient numbers to meet productivity and budgetary requirements; 3 (b) Maximize State support by responding to the State's higher education needs;
•  3 (c) Maximize support from external sources, including private gifts;
•  3 (d) Assure students that programs in which they enroll will be stable;

The University has created an ad hoc productivity planning process that includes significant faculty participation. We believe those closest to the classroom, laboratory or studio are in the best position to suggest instructional innovations and to modify and adapt novel proposals to the realities of the academic world.

To visualize the structure of the productivity planning process, think of a wheel with spokes. At the center is a small core group of faculty and senior administrators working with the President. Radiating outward are nine working groups. The chairs of those groups, together with the core group members, form the steering committee for the productivity planning process.

The working groups include almost ninety people altogether, mostly faculty members, but with some students and administrators too. To help maintain communication and coordination between the working groups and the University's administrative structure, each dean is in at least one group, and each group contains one or more deans.

These groups' assignments are not mutually exclusive, so different groups sometimes look at the same topics from different angles.

•  o The Undergraduate Education and Policy Coordinating Council, a standing faculty committee, is acting as a working group to consider advising and the undergraduate curriculum.

•  o Learning communities, e.g., Freshman Interest Groups, the Honors College, International College and other arrangements for building a sense of community into the learning environment.
• o Participatory learning, our term for programs that give hands-on experience applying classroom learning or that foster scholarly collaboration with faculty.
• o Graduate and professional education and research.
• o Innovative teaching methods.
•  o The productive use of technology and facilities.
• o The summer program and continuing education.
•  o Articulation with other programs, including KP12, community colleges, other OSSHE institutions, and programs within our own University.
• o Assessment and measurement.

In spite of its complexity, the process has gone well so far. Members of the working groups have shown an enormous amount of energy, goodwill and dedication, and we anticipate a similar response from the departments when their turn comes, once they see clearly the stakes and opportunities.

(This is the end of Part 1. Part 2 contains Preliminary Conclusions from some of the working groups. Part 3 contains the remainder of the Preliminary Conclusions, including sections on Technology and Assessment, as well as an account of Next Steps and a Final Word.)

[Submitted by: Charley Wright
Fri, 7 Jan 94 11:05:20 PST] [Copyright 1993, University of Oregon]