Access to higher education is out of reach for many Oregonians. SEIU represents approximately 4,500 workers on our state’s seven public university campuses – many of them low-wage employees. Our classified members on campuses maintain grounds and campus spaces and support libraries, IT, health services, nutrition, and academic programs in most of the non-teaching and non-management positions on campus. At the same time, we see Higher Education issues from a second vantage point – over half of our 82,000 statewide members are low-wage earners, many without health care and retirement benefits. We all know that post-secondary training and education is the way out of poverty for their families, neighbors, clients, and loved ones.
Over the last decade, tuition at Oregon’s public universities has doubled and the average debt carried by students approaches $30,000. Our universities have misplaced their priorities, choosing to focus on administrative bloat, athletics, and capital construction projects over providing a quality, affordable education and good jobs.
Oregon’s public universities employ too many supervisors and they pay them out-sized salaries. Universities report 5.43 workers per supervisor. By way of comparison, Oregon’s state agencies averaged 10.3 non-supervisory workers per supervisor in August 2019. Presidents of Oregon’s largest public universities are paid more than $600,000 a year, more than six times as much as Oregon’s governor. Michael Schill at UO made $808,980 in 2020 — he’s the highest paid president in Oregon and 40th highest compensated in the country. Four university coaches have a base salary of $1 million or more – with three making more than $2 million a year. As of 2018, there were 70 people who made $400,000 or more, and 411 who made more than $200,000. SEIU prioritizes funding to the public university system to lower tuition and increase support for students and urges legislators to continue to hold the university system to be more transparent with their budgeting priorities.