May 16, 2002 Academic Council Report

at Portland State University

Submitted by Bob Turner

 

Present at the meeting:

Shirley Clark, Chair	Jim Arnold	Lorraine Davis, UO	Burt Betts, EOU
Nancy Goldschmidt	Vicki Falsgraf	John Mosley, UO	John Minahan, WOU
Yvette Webber-Davis	Holly Zanville	George Kartsounes, OIT	Lesley Hallick, OHSU
		Mary Kathryn Tetreault, PSU	Tim White, OSU
		Sara Hopkins-Powell, SOU
	Guest:	Bob Turner, WOU, IFS

 

 

Joint Meeting with Administrative and Student Affairs Councils:

Jointly chaired by Tom Andress and Shirley Clark

The joint meeting discussed, in order, tuition policies and budget priorities to present to the board at its June meeting, when it considers its 2003-2005 biennial budget proposal for the legislature. The OUS system officers hoped to arrive at statements that emphasized campus specific plans, but with common themes “for ease of sales to the board”. Most of the meeting was spent on tuition policies with very little time devoted to campus specific budget priorities and their impact on each other.

 

The tuition policy discussion opened with a poll of the preferences on each campus.

            PSU - tiered tuition rate increase for upper division students, eliminate the plateau, market

driven grad tuition, “break” on out-of-state tuition for Washington residents

SOU – tiered tuition rate increase for upper division students, “break” on out of-state tuition

for California residents, program specific resource fees, 5 to 7% tuition increase

OIT - eliminate the plateau, population/program targeted financial aid increases,

OSU – eliminate or adjust the plateau, population targeted financial aid increases, program

targeted resource fees

WOU – eliminate plateau, index core curriculum to that of community colleges (because they are

WOU’s competitors in this area), disinterested in program specific tuition or financial \        aid, increase financial aid, a single resource fee

UO - eliminate the plateau gradually, population/program targeted financial aid

increases, market based tuition for nonres & grad tuition, resource fees tied to services

OHSU – res medical school will increase 33%, total 8-10% tuition increase, maintain differential

tuition

EOU – tuition decisions must integrate with all activities on campus, reaching for 03-05 while

still trying to deal with 01-03

 

There was extensive discussion, without resolution, of resource fees. Two common themes were that students, legislators and institutions see a tuition-resource fee tuition and that students readily accept self-imposed, student controlled, resource fees. program targeted resource fees.

 

Legislative Report from Gratten Kerans elicited by the foregoing tuition discussion:

If Measure 13 passes, don’t bring up tuition; if it fails, “bring it on”. He would take the message to the June E-Board to report that OUS is increasing graduate and nonresident undergraduate tuition only with delegates from the requesting institutions. He referenced the March 14 Joint Council meeting minutes: “The Legislative Action Committee was unanimous in its opposition to a 2002-03 tuition increase given the current political climate. If the current conditions worsen and there is an additional budget reduction in June, then OUS would approach the E-Board fro the needed expenditure limitation to increase tuition.”

 

Campus budget priorities occupied the joint meeting very briefly:

            UO – without additional funding enrollment will fall, and UO would cut sections, not programs

            WOU – without additional funding either in tuition or financial aid, the issue will be which

students will be able to attend universities

            (Shirley Clark raised the possibility of programmatically different quality and was immediately

and emphatically informed that this was not a good idea)

from one of the provosts: current dollars/credit hour = 1991 in numbers of dollars (inflation!!)

this conversation turned to a variety of “downer” anecdotes, with a couple of comments from Provost Mosley that seemed to summarize the necessary actions

“the campuses must work together to get private sector supporters to go to legislators to change the relationship of the state to higher education or higher education will be fundamentally different in two years”

“the legislature should not cap expenditures on money they don’t give us”

 

            Additional points from the chairs of the joint meeting included:

            Draw the Board’s focus to RAM and cell values, let each campus choose how many students to

fully serve by RAM

 

The joint meeting staggered to an end with the proposal from the chairs to focus the Board at it’s June Budget Agenda setting meeting on an overview of the reduction planning process, and not on detailed reduction planning.

 

 

The Academic Council meeting began with lunch, which included cakes cut and served by George Kartsounes and Sarah Hopkins-Powell on the occasion of this, their last Academic Council meeting. Dr. Kartsounes is retiring to Michigan and Dr. Powell begins a sabbatical to Mexico and Ireland.

 

Shirley Clark announced that Jim Arnold is arranging a joint meeting with the community colleges and examining the possibility of meeting with the privates, possibly in November. Tomorrow’s board meeting will include a continuation of the Strategic Planning session led by Dave Longnecker – there was much discussion of the distribution, and lack thereof, of the Strategic Planning outcomes report. I will attempt to obtain a copy for IFS. The afternoon Joint Boards meeting will center on educating Board members on budgets and budget planning with the goal of a uniform submission from OUS and the community colleges.

 

The provosts then turned their attention to consideration of new program proposals.

EOU’s MBA proposal was presented and discussed at some length. Strongest support arose from the demand for such a program on the part of the local community, while negative comments focused on some of the weaknesses in the proposal and on the need of the program to meet Northwest Accreditation standards, particularly with respect to grad student space and resources. EOU’s Provost will receive e-mail comment from all other provost’s to incorporate into a revision of this proposal.

OHSU’s Physician’s Assistant MS proposal was considered next. This program, which has a strong off-site component, is directed mainly at those with Physician’s Assistant BSs earned before OHSU changed to a PA MS degree program. The proposal was moved forward with little comment.

OHSU’s Dietetics MS proposal was presented and moved forward, with commendation for the one paragraph summary of each of the faculty’s CVs in the body of the proposal and their full CVs as an attachment.

 

Yvette Webber-Davis latest iteration of the diversity report demonstrated reporting problems arising from different categories and survey methods on several campuses. She concludes that, despite reporting inconsistencies and the “feds” current holding pattern, students do attend to the available diversity numbers as a factor in their university selection process.

 

Dr Turner had to leave at this point to catch a plane, but has learned second hand that nothing exceptional happened the agenda items in a couple of days.