An Academic Reputation at Risk

The duck is always up in everybody’s face.

He shoves. He body-slams.

He demands to be noticed.

The University of Oregon’s mascot, a Donald Duck knockoff in yellow and green, is a pure distillation of the university’s iconic brand. This is a place, the duck assures us, of unapologetically splashy sports and irrepressible good times. The image sells remarkably well to undergraduates, whose numbers have increased by 25 percent in the past decade alone.

What has been more difficult, however, is for Oregon to remain competitive with the top-tier research universities that it has for decades described as its peers. Save a few marquee programs, Oregon often fails now to measure up to higher education’s heavy hitters, which bring in more federal grants, produce more doctoral degrees, and boast higher graduation rates.

Oregon falls behind for some good reasons, most notably its relatively modest array of academic programs. Without cash cows like engineering, medicine, and pharmacy, Oregon cannot expect to generate the kind of research dollars that the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor or the University of Washington might.

But few question that something must change here. After decades building an identity around a vibrant and alluring undergraduate experience, Oregon now wrestles with the sober reality that it must either elevate its academic standing or risk sliding further down the prestige ladder.

In recent years, the university has been known for all of the wrong things. Professors and administrators have been at frequent loggerheads, arguing over the outsize role of athletics at the university and the thorny issue of campus sexual assault. Many leaders have come and gone into the Oregon maelstrom, where five presidents, including two interim chiefs, have served in the past six years.

Faculty members and administrators hope that Oregon’s tumultuous times may be coming to an end, but many say the university has spent far too long diverted from addressing its seemingly tenuous status among higher education’s elite.

The story of the University of Oregon over the last quarter century starkly illustrates the broader trend of declining taxpayer support for public higher education in the United States. It is a tale of hard choices, born of economic necessity.

Research universities largely build their reputations on graduate programs and major discoveries, but Oregon’s preoccupation for a generation has been raising undergraduate tuition revenue to offset state budget cuts. Its strategy mirrors that of many other public flagship universities, including the University of Colorado at Boulder and Michigan, which have leveraged their national brands to recruit more full-paying students from increasingly faraway places.

The first signs of trouble for Oregon came in 1990 with the passage of Ballot Measure 5, which capped property taxes and catalyzed a steady decline of support for universities. The state has effectively shifted the burden of paying for college to students, who now cover 61 percent of the cost of attending Oregon’s public universities, up from 26 percent in 1990. Only a dozen other states ask students to pay more, according to the most recent national data.

“We couldn’t imagine Oregonians’ turning their backs on higher education, but they did,” says Daniel A. Williams, who was the university’s vice president for administration when Measure 5 passed.

The legislation forced the university into “survival mode,” Mr. Williams says. Desperate for revenue, Oregon began to aggressively recruit out-of-state students.

Today nearly half of Oregon’s undergraduates are nonresidents. They are far less likely than in-state students to demonstrate great financial need, and they pay annual tuition and fees of $32,000, more than three times that of state residents.

The university’s approach has been a boon for Oregonians. Students from California and Southeast Asia have descended upon the Willamette Valley by the thousands, acting as the primary subsidy for state residents. But Oregon’s business model has not provided for commensurate growth in the university’s graduate programs, which are more expensive yet critical to research productivity.

A report released by the university in late 2013 laid bare those facts with a series of provocative questions.

Who among our peers, Oregon asked, produces fewer doctoral degrees per tenured and tenure-track faculty member?

No one.

How many of our closest competitors bring in less federal money per professor?

None.

Oregon counts as its peers some of the nation’s most highly regarded research institutions, including Michigan, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Washington.

Administrators describe the report as principally a political document, designed to convince lawmakers of the necessity of greater investment. But its unvarnished assessment raised tough questions about the degree to which Oregon’s status among elite universities had already been diminished.

John T. Moseley, a former provost who helped orchestrate Oregon’s enrollment strategy, says the university “literally would have gone bankrupt” if it had not made undergraduate education a priority. But Mr. Moseley acknowledges that the university, having weathered a long economic storm, needs to change its focus if it hopes to remain competitive.

“There is no doubt,” he says, “that the U of O, to the extent that it can, should be putting more emphasis on the research and graduate programs — not just for some prestige, but for the good of the state.”

Yet Oregon still feels like a place with undergraduates on the brain. With a recent $50-million renovation, the Student Recreation Center has added a 16-seat hot tub and a climbing wall.

Erb Memorial Union, the university’s social hub, is due for a $95-million facelift. Chipotle is coming, along with a “campus pub.”

There have been significant recent capital investments in academics as well, including a $65-million science facility. But Carol A. Stabile, head of the department of women’s and gender studies, says she is concerned that the university, in its efforts to appeal to young people, has fostered a culture of entertainment that has nothing to do with improving Oregon’s academic stature.

“Part of what we’re doing is delivering a pleasurable social experience to undergraduates,” she says. The new student union “includes a bar,” Ms. Stabile adds, “which we need like we need a hole in the head.”

On a recent summer afternoon here, an admissions official asked a group of prospective students and their parents what they had already heard about the university.

Toward the back row, a young man said, “Big football team.”

“Nike,” another chimed in, citing the university’s longstanding affiliation with the company’s co-founder, Phil Knight.

“Track,” another said.

Luis Renteria, the assistant director of multicultural recruitment, tried to pivot away from athletics and the allure of the Ducks, pointing out, “We’re part of a small elite club when it comes to academic research.”

But it was clear what had brought these kids to the University of Oregon.

Indeed, no discussion of university priorities at Oregon has been as hotly debated as the role of athletics, which has come to define the public image of the institution. Even within the wealthiest “Power Five” athletics conferences, the Ducks are known for opulence and swagger.

There’s the Football Performance Center, where Oregon has upholstered chairs with the same leather that lines Ferrari interiors.

There’s the learning center known as the “Jock Box,” a cube-shaped, 40,000-square-foot facility bordered by a reflecting pool.

James W. Earl, an emeritus professor of English, is among those who have long argued that Oregon has let its academic core wither while athletics flourished. “For the last 15 to 20 years, it really has come down to a battle between the two forces, and athletics won,” Mr. Earl says.

That’s debatable. Oregon’s athletics program, which receives an annual subsidy of $2.2 million for academic support of athletes, is far more self-sufficient than most. In USA Today’s most recent analysis of spending within 230 public Division I programs, Oregon’s subsidy ranked in the bottom 20. No university generated more revenue than Oregon, which topped the list at $196 million.

Even so, spending on sports remains a powerful symbol of excess to those who see Oregon’s academic standing under threat.

While the university built its brand around football and expanding enrollment, some professors argue, Oregon neglected to hire the requisite number of tenured faculty members needed to uphold the research enterprise.

“Those hard choices have consequences, and now we’re facing those consequences that potentially affect our long-term academic reputation,” says Michael C. Dreiling, president of United Academics, a recently formed faculty union.

Of Oregon’s current faculty members, 60 percent are ineligible for tenure. That sort of lopsidedness is not uncommon in higher education, but it sets Oregon apart from its fellow members of the Association of American Universities, a prestigious cohort of research institutions.

Oregon’s 2013 benchmarking analysis, which rated the university against several members of the association and other prominent universities, acknowledged that Oregon’s 35-to-1 ratio of students to tenured and tenure-track faculty members was the highest of any of its 33 self-selected peers.

The university’s affiliation with the Association of American Universities, which dates to 1969, is deeply embedded in Oregon’s identity, and it has become synonymous with the university’s mission. Oregon’s academic plan, a 17-page document, mentions the association 20 times and states that Oregon’s values “are shaped” in part by its status in the group.

But continued membership in the association is not guaranteed. In 2011 the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, which was perceived as falling short on key research metrics, was booted out of the club.

Expecting a similar fate, Syracuse University voluntarily bowed out that same year.

The association’s increased scrutiny of its members has created some anxiety at Oregon, which is often in the bottom quartile of the collective.

“We made it a problem for ourselves by talking about it so much,” says Mr. Williams, the former vice president. “We set ourselves up to make that a more important indicator. We’ve made our bed.”

Michael H. Schill is the man expected to fix all of that.

The former dean of the University of Chicago’s law school, who was named Oregon’s 18th president in April, has been given the distinct charge of restoring the university’s competitive edge.

By all rights, Mr. Schill has one of the most precarious jobs in all of public higher education. The last couple of guys had a rough go of it.

Mr. Schill’s predecessor, Michael R. Gottfredson, abruptly resigned in 2014, under heavy criticism for the university’s handling of sexual-assault allegations against three players on Oregon’s men’s basketball team.

In 2011, Oregon’s now-defunct state board fired Richard W. Lariviere, a sharp-elbowed Sanskrit scholar who was criticized for awarding faculty raises against the governor’s wishes. He too spoke of the need to elevate Oregon’s research status, which Mr. Lariviere said would require a radical rethinking of financing the university by building an endowment with state bonds. (The plan failed to gain traction.)

If the ghosts of Mr. Schill’s predecessors linger, they are difficult to notice. A recent visit to the new president’s office finds Mr. Schill happily munching on chocolate malt balls.

“You must try one of these,” he says. “They will change your life. They have the perfect ratio of chocolate to malt.”

After a few more pleasantries, Mr. Schill acknowledges what he is up against. For a university that outwardly projects a spirit of whimsy, Oregon has shown a remarkable propensity for discord. A vocal cross section of professors have been profoundly suspicious of past administrators, describing them at times as overpaid, ethically compromised, and beholden to athletics donors, particularly Mr. Knight.

In Mr. Schill’s view, the university needs to break down barriers between professors and administrators. On the symbolic front, he has invited faculty members into his home, and asked them to stock his office library with their books. He has portrayed himself as a faculty member first, insisting that the title of “professor” appear alongside “president” on his business cards.

More substantively, Mr. Schill has signed off on a new contract with the faculty union, and he has agreed to settle a contentious lawsuit with the Oregon student who accused three basketball players of raping her.

“We need to end the circular firing squad,” Mr. Schill says, “and I think we’ve started that.”

If Oregon can avoid turning on itself, Mr. Schill says, the university can reverse the trends that have held it back.

Every promise Mr. Schill has made hinges on the success of a $2-billion capital campaign. The money will be used in part to hire 80 to 100 new tenured or tenure-track professors over the next four to five years.

Oregon has already begun a cluster-hiring effort, which will recruit small groups of two to five scholars in 10 key areas, including programs like biology and special education, which have strong track records of research productivity. Other hires are expected in genomics and sports-product marketing and design, which proponents have described as critical to the economic development of a state with hundreds of athletics companies — including that one known for the big swoosh logo.

The university’s hiring approach acknowledges that Oregon, which already lacks some of the programmatic breadth of its peers, needs to be even more selective about where it spends money.

Mr. Schill says that the university needs to honestly assess where its strengths are, and that a president has to stay in place long enough to capitalize on those strengths.

“I don’t want to sound too egotistic or narcissistic, but what was missing here was leadership,” says Mr. Schill, who is 56. “The last piece of the puzzle wasn’t here yet, which was a president who was going to stay and build a great university. I’d like to think I’m the person. History will look back and say whether I was.”

Expectations are high that Oregon’s independent governing board, which was formed in 2014, will play a larger role in fund raising. But any conversation about raising money in Eugene invariably turns to Phil Knight, the university’s supreme benefactor and the Ducks’ biggest cheerleader. Oregon officials will not say what his total contributions to the university have been, but the donations are estimated to exceed $300 million.

Mr. Schill says he spoke with Mr. Knight within days of being named president, and he has met with the Nike co-founder a couple of times since. The president is coy about the details of those talks, and Mr. Knight was not made available for an interview.

“I will say this: The man told me he had webbed feet, and that matters,” Mr. Schill says. “If Phil Knight didn’t give another gift, we’d be grateful to him, but I hope he’s going to give at least one more very big gift.”

Mr. Knight has donated generously to Oregon’s library and law school, but he is best known for the tens of millions of dollars he and his wife have given to athletics. Given his history, some at Oregon are concerned that the university’s chief donor will steer more money toward sports. Mr. Schill says that “everybody understands” that academics require the most support in this campaign.

Of the $827 million Oregon has already raised, 43 percent is designated by donors for athletics.

Across Oregon’s campus, there is a sense that the university is grappling with something larger than itself.

The challenges facing public higher education in the United States are profoundly manifest here, precisely because the university has begun to face its shortcomings with such candor. Oregon is a university that did what it needed to do to survive, and it has lived long enough to see the trade-offs that came with staying alive.

Peter A. Keyes, an associate professor of architecture, says he welcomes what seems a moment of reckoning for the university — a chance to decide what it is and what it is not.

“We’re in this moment,” he says, “where we’re fundamentally having to say, What is a research university? What do we expect them to do? How many can we afford? What is their mission? That’s all really in flux.”

Mr. Schill says Oregon has a chance to end the “saga of the public university,” which he sees as a tired tale of woe.

“If we succeed in this endeavor — let me rephrase that, when we succeed in this endeavor — we will show that a public university that has been disinvested by the state can still shine,” Mr. Schill says.

“Believe me, I wouldn’t have come here if I did not think that was true. I would not have come here.”

Jack Stripling covers college leadership, particularly presidents and governing boards. Follow him on Twitter @jackstripling, or email him at jack.stripling@chronicle.com.