oregon map money

Budgeting is a lot of what the Legislature does. Want state government to do more or less of something? In general, it takes more or less money.

It looks like Oregon wants less out of higher education.

The proposed Ways and Means co-chairs budget basically would trim higher education funding in the state by about 2.5% from what is projected to keep funding levels the same.

Current service level is what the budget would have to be if you make assumptions for inflation and so on. For higher education, that would mean $972 million in the Public University Support Fund.

The co-chairs budget framework contains $947 million for that fund, higher education officials told us.

Oregon will be doing less for higher education.

You could argue that the difference between $972 million and $947 million isn’t significant when spread out across the state. You could argue that current service level is not a good way to calculate budget needs. You could argue thatOregon’s universities should find new ways to cut costs.

Maybe.

The best argument for the cut, though, would be that the state has higher priorities elsewhere. Here are some of those choices in the co-chairs budget:

The state school fund — basically K-12 education — would get a 5.2% increase over current service levels.

Economic development, which includes things such as affordable housing programs, gets an increase of 7.5% over current service levels.

Natural resource programs in Oregon, such as the budgets for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Department of Environmental Quality and more, get an overall increase of 12.1% over current service levels.

The judicial branch of government, which includes courts, public defense and more, would get an increase of 15% over current service levels.

We could point to needs in those other priority areas and we are sure you could, too. So we can’t say absolutely that this budget is wrong – that Oregon gets its priorities wrong.

We can say Oregon is already 45th in the nation for state funding for public universities per student. Oregon also spends less than half on financial aid than most states per student.

The co-chairs budget would be more of the same for higher education in Oregon.