Who is the 50 Million Donor?

Interesting article in the Chronicle for Higher Education about which state funded schools are leveraged by their reliance on tuition and auxiliary income ( dorms, food plans, athletics fees & income) in an era when students are in shorter than expected supply because of COVID ,

The Chronicle lists 7 Pac 12 schools in the top 100. Leading the charge at # 4: UO with 60.3% of its budget being student-reliant (as opposed to state funding, grants, indirect income, philanthropy) #8 Arizona State, 57.6%; #18 Colorado, 54.2% [Portland State @ 27–51.9%]; # 60 OSU, 42.4%. Zona, WSU and Cal are also in the top 100.

The story relates, as state support began to diminish in the 1990’s “diversified revenue streams were a way of hedging their bets,” quoting an official from higher ed. At the tactical level, this entailed luring out of state and international students to campus, since they pay multiples of what is charged for in-state tuition.

The primary case study cited for this development is UO: “The University of Oregon had hired a senior vice provost, Gerald R. Kissler, who had previously worked in California. That state’s master plan for higher education was beginning to strain at the seams. There were too few places for all the students clamoring–and qualified–for admission, particularly at the prestigious University of California campuses. If Oregon could recruit just a percentage of that population, the university could reap the benefits of higher-paying out of state residents, Kissler proposed. The question was, how? One piece of the answer turned out to be football. . . . Drawing the line between cause and effect is tricky, but it’s clear Oregon’s student body changed. In a single year, 1992, the number of Californians enrolled there doubled. By the mid-1990’s, four in 10 students were non-residents, now nearly half are from out of state.”

Elsewhere in the article: “Michael Schill, Oregon’s current president, has called athletics the university’s ‘front porch’, the welcome mat for prospective applicants. Even for students for whom sports is not a major reason for attending the university, the Ducks are frequently their introduction.”

From the foregoing, once can see the logic of OSU folding both a student health & wellness center and student welcoming center in the new football stadium. Nevertheless, a key line from the article stands out: “no one ever really considered what would happen to major universities if no one could come to campus.” In the short term, that’s a reference to Covid, but the succession of “birth dearths” in the demographic pipeline augur severe problems for the entire higher ed ecosystem.