Check it out. I was amused by these posts:
From 2014: Crap-free UO homepage
From 2024: Provost Chris Long is paid $540K plus $130K per year start-up & alcohol budget
Columbia should have a crap-free homepage too! And the alcohol budget reminded me of this story from Columbia a few years ago.
UO Matters is run by economics professor Bill Harbaugh, who seems to be a busy person. Every city, town, and institution should have this sort of news outlet—or, ideally, more than one.
UO Matters is great! It’s been a remarkable source of information, especially in an era in which local news is hard to find. The irreverent tone is fun, too. Every university needs something similar. Harbaugh has retired, so the posting frequency has gone down, but there’s still good stuff.
Readers here might find two recent posts of interest. UO is currently in the middle of bargaining between the faculty union and the administration. Apparently, the administration created an unofficial (not uoregon.edu) web page with all the administration talking points, see “Why is UO posting its anti-union half-lies on a secretive .org domain?” A few days later, the union countered, “Faculty Union posts StrengthenUO.org response to Scholz’s anti-faculty website.”
Raghu:
On the plus side, university employees have a lot of freedom to complain without worrying that it will get them fired.
Thanks for this post Andrew – I was wondering where all the recent traffic came from!
Most of UO’s presidents have threatened to fire me or sue me for defamation at least once – I just post their emails on the blog and they shut up. In any case as of 12/31/2024 I made it over the wall and to the end of a dirt road on Orcas Island WA within rowing distance of Canada, where I am happily retired.
I keep the blog going out of solidarity with my many UO friends like Raghu, and because of people like the new assistant prof I met last year who told me he took the UO offer because as bad as I made the university sound, the mere fact that UO had a blog that posted stuff critical stuff made him optimistic. The poor fool.
Among other aspects, an enjoyable pun:
“UO Matters is a news and opinion blog about the University of Oregon. It is published by Bill Harbaugh, and registered with the Oregon Secretary of State as an “Institutionalized News Media Organization” (sic).
However, before I go overboard on yet another topic I am completely ignorant of, I turned to my new toy, ChatGPT and managed to misspell my question but it answered it coherently anyway:
what is “UO Matters” at the University of Oregon and why should it or should not be trustred?
Nevertheless, here is its reply:
————————————————————————————————————————
“UO Matters is a blog that covers topics related to the University of Oregon, including administration, finances, faculty matters, academic policy, and university governance. The blog is run by Bill Harbaugh, a professor of economics at the university, and is known for its sharp critiques of university leadership and transparency.
Why It Could Be Trusted:
Insider Knowledge: As a faculty member, Harbaugh has firsthand insight into university governance and policies.
Transparency Advocacy: The blog often focuses on promoting transparency in university decisions and financial management.
Documentation: UO Matters frequently cites official documents, public records, and meeting minutes to substantiate claims.
Track Record: Over time, some of the blog’s investigations and criticisms have led to broader discussions and reforms at the university.
Why It Might Be Viewed with Caution:
Editorial Bias: Harbaugh’s strong personal opinions and adversarial stance toward certain university leaders can color the presentation of information.
Tone and Style: The blog’s critical tone may come across as combative or unprofessional to some readers.
One-Sided Perspective: While it highlights problems and shortcomings, it may not always provide balanced views or the administration’s side of the story.
Personal Involvement: As an active participant in university politics, Harbaugh’s role could be perceived as a conflict of interest.
Conclusion:
UO Matters is a valuable resource for understanding internal debates and concerns at the University of Oregon, particularly for those interested in governance and transparency. However, as with any independent blog, readers should critically evaluate the information, cross-reference with other sources, and be aware of potential biases.
————————————————————————————————————————–
I asked other questions of ChatGPT but I will leave it to others to pursue this issue.
Paul:
No more chatbot outputs, please. This just pollutes our comments section. Thank you.
I’d like to hijack this thread.
Why do people post output from chatbots? There was one on the King thread yesterday of questionable validity, and now this one. I have a colleague whose email contributions to the discussion often consist of “I asked ____bot, and here’s what it said:”
I understand quoting a chatbot if the purpose is to illustrate something about the chatbot (remarkable performance, hallucinations) in the context of otherwise agreed-upon reality. But that’s generally not what seems to be happening.
Quoting chatbots without providing additional context seems equivalent to me to saying, “My neighbor two doors down, who stayed at a Holiday Inn last night, says…” But people don’t ever do that, unless they at the same time report that said neighbor has some particular domain expertise or experience.
Hence my question, which is a serious one. Is it novelty? Is it perceived authoritativeness? What’s the motivation? I know I’m missing something!
In this case, the ChatGPT message provided some useful context about the web site. The original post gave some links to that site, without much explanation.
Someday Gelman might be using an AI agent to post here, and most of the comments will be from AI agents of readers. Maybe ChatGPT can make my points better than I can. AI pollution is the future.
Thank you, Andrew, for that.
The headline for today is: “Muckraking at the University of Oregon”
There is of course a great deal of muck to be raked these days**, so here is where to find the origin of the phrase:
https://www.britannica.com/question/Where-does-the-term-muckraker-come-from
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** On second thought, are these days any different from days gone by? Is muck, like entropy, non-decreasing?
Thanks for citing Teddy Roosevelt. As it happens my father W H Harbaugh wrote the definitive 1960’s bio of him, “Power and Responsibility”. While Dad died before I turned to muckraking, I do not think he agreed with Roosevelt’s disparaging comment about it, at least in regard to universities. When I got hired at UO he gave me three pieces of advice: “Always be nice to the secretaries (sic), don’t teach in the summer, and never trust those bastards in the administration.”
Sounds like Chris Long forgot his Quaker background (I know a little about such things). There is an old saying around Quaker Schools that “the Friends came to do good and they did very well indeed”. If you know, you know.
As is often said (frequently by me), one can learn a lot on this blog. I wanted to compare the salary of the provost, Chris Lang, with the salary of the football coach, Dan Lanning, in order to show that the guns are perhaps pointed in the wrong direction. As it turns out, it seems that Lanning is not considered a public employee because his income is outside of the State system. Even if the alcohol budget is included, Lang’s pay is roughly 1/10 of Lanning’s.
The moral I draw from this saga is that–well, never mind. Obviously, most of the people who read this blog have chosen the wrong pathway of life.
$540K? Seems like pennies for a university president! The superintendent of Portland public schools, the helpfully POC-sounding Guadalupe Guerrero, made 65% of that ($342K) way back in 2023!
But lets dig for a little context.
Interestingly, the average faculty salary at the UofO is $110K, so Long is making 5x the faculty average; but the average overall salary at UofO is $48K, so he’s scoring about 11x the average employee wage. OTOH, the average overall salary at Portland public schools is $54K, so Guadalupe is only getting about 7x the mean salary of public school employees. That sounds like a better deal for Long, but I wonder what the average salary at U of O would be if you excluded grad TAs who’s wages are meager and it kind of makes sense to exclude them because there is usually no analogous job in the public schools. My sister, with the deep insight gained from her degree in fashion design, just retired from her career as a teacher’s assistant in public schools but, unlike grad TAs, she had all the same benefits and has the same retirement as the teachers.
Interestingly, just up I-5 in Seattle, Ana Couce, the president of the UW, is hauling down $900K vs employee average of $67K – 13x! But maybe she doesn’t have a booze budget? And Brent Jones, the superintendent of Seattle schools is grabbing only $335K, while the average wage in Seattle schools is a whopping $89K! He must feel terribly abused making only 3x the average of the entire district!
It’s pretty easy these days to find public figure salaries, so I’ll just leave this one link.
https://govsalaries.com/guerrero-guadalupe-175215841
It’s not clear that any of these salaries are out of (or in) line. What should people expect to earn? A friend who went on to teach Earth Science in junior high has always complained that she earns less than programmers and coders who “have the same degree” (e.g., bachelor), according to her. OTOH arguably Ragu, a prof of biophysics, has 5-10 times the education of the UO president but (I speculate) probably earns about 35% what the president earns.
Anyway, as I have suggested in other contexts, people get what they vote for.
My reply ended up in the wrong place (see below). But here’s an addendum: you might like this post I wrote, “Is Our University President Poorly Paid?” https://eighteenthelephant.com/2024/09/01/is-our-university-president-poorly-paid/
According to the strengthenuo.org website linked to by UO Matters, the “Average Faculty Salary” is $77,000, not $110,000, which would change those ratios noticeably. Different decisions about who counts as a faculty member and what counts as salary might explain the disparity. But the disparity does show that such comparisons must be rooted in a pretty strong knowledge of the University’s bookkeeping practices.
I put together strengthen.org from information gleaned from all the usual places by our (faculty union’s) Economics team. It is indeed difficult to compute an average faculty salary: who’s faculty? For us it’s tenure-track, non-tenure-track career instructors and researchers, librarians, postdocs, pro tems (adjuncts) and postdocs. This does not include the law school, or certain PIs. There are also people with multiple appointments etc. We did a bit of work to tally the multiple appointments and then provided the average of the January 2025 salaries we got from admin.
There are other ways to do this of course, if you adjust each job to the equivalent of 1.0FTE, you get a number closer to 89K. But this has its own problems, in particular there are some low FTE assignments with ridiculous annual salaries—assignments never meant to be 1.0 FTE and which distort the average. I probably should have gone with median.
At any rate, we’re trying to give accurate numbers with the caveat that choices are to be made, and the data provided by the university isn’t the most reliable.
He’s the provost, not the president. The UO president makes $725k, plus bonuses. I wish I earned 35% of that!!
I don’t see where it says that money can be spent on booze. Am I missing something, or is it common parlance in academia that startup funds are a slush fund that can be used for recreation?
Adede:
The linked post, “Provost Chris Long is paid $540K plus $130K per year start-up & alcohol budget,” has a copy of an official letter from the university to the provost (according to UO Matters, “He wouldn’t send me his contract but eventually Kevin Reed’s Public Records Office complied with the law and provided it: 2024-PRR-471”), which includes this sentence:
I think that if I wanted to spend my Columbia start-up funds on booze, I could. I’m not sure because I haven’t tried. But UO is a state university and perhaps the state has a law restricting how its funds can be spent. Also NSF has a rule, “No NSF funds may be spent on alcoholic beverages.” Also “Costs of entertainment, amusement, diversion and social activities and any costs directly associated with such activities (such as tickets to shows or sports events, meals, lodging, rentals, transportation and gratuities) are unallowable.”
Also, if you read the letter carefully, the money that can be spent on booze is not start-up funds. Dude was allocated “$130,000 per year for your first four years while you serve as provost.” The “Foundation allocation” is in addition to that. It’s intended for hosting guests, while the start-up funds are for research. Although maybe the provost doesn’t have much time left over for research, after all the time he spends not responding to requests for documents that legally have to be supplied.
OK, I see that. But the headline “$130K per year start-up & alcohol budget” comes across as disingenuous, because it implies that there is a sum of $130K that is completely fungible between start-up expenses and alcohol. So, I go to the document, see that the only $130K figure is for start-up only. The reality, is that he gets a $130K start-up fund (which is fine; maybe inequitable if other, better, professors get less, but that’s a complex question to adjudicate), and then there is a separate fund, of an unspecified magnitude, which may be spent on alcohol. How much is the Foundation Allocation? It’s a mystery, which I guess might be an issue (i.e. lack of transparency). But what if it only comes out to like $500? Not really anything to get worked up about. Somehow, I doubt it comes out to six figures. But I’m open to new information!
The whole thing about alcohol is really pretty silly. A lot of public universities have bizarre, puritanical rules that expenses for alcohol cannot be reimbursed with public funds. But having alcohol at dinners, parties, events, and the like–and being involved in these is part of a provost’s job, as it is with any high-level university administrator–is par for the course. This state of affairs can lead to bizarre situations–university employees pass the hat to pay the alcohol-related portion of the dinner bill of a guest (invited speaker, potential big donor or similar). Having a fund for the purpose of reimbursing expenses the state’s puritanical-bureaucratic regulations will not is part of facilitating someone’s job.
https://xkcd.com/773/
K:
To be fair, I think that some potential applicants to the university do want the virtual tour.
A $130k annual research budget to be a philosophy professor who’s working full-time as provost? Maybe he uses the $130k to hire another professor to do his philosophy research for him.