News update: WOU cuts and woes

[tsull]

https://www.opb.org/article/2021/04/...f-institution/

One of the lead stories on OregonLive and Oregon Public Broadcasting, the Salem paper (using the AP wire of course, too lazy to their own) and on an on and on. Disappointing.

So tired of the lax leadership at WOU under president Rex Fuller. The school under his watch has dropped 25% in enrollment in the last decade, while the state has gained 400,000 people in that time. He is on our board of trustees -- that seems like a major conflict of interest -- has a no-confidence vote from the faculty, yet he's treading water until he hits retirement in a year or two. Good grief, can't they usher in an early retirement?

Not sure what's going on there, it frustrates me that they can't pump up what I think is a great institution.

They can't seem to recruit or enroll new students, while the state is in the middle of a population explosion. The president hides behind Covid to shield the poor job he's done. I'm tired of the underachieving. The athletic department succeeds in spite of the bumbling of the university administration. (I posted here because other than a letter to the editor of a tiny weekly I wrote months ago, WOU has no place to be held accountable by its alums and fans.)

Newsflash: Supply greatly outweighs demand in college administration applicants. Find someone good, WOU, and hire them!

[Pounder]

https://www.oregon.gov/das/OEA/Docum..._trend2019.pdf

[tsull]

Fun with numbers, while the rate of children of number of children percentage wise is down from 10 years ago, there are still close to 400,000 more people in the state than 10 years ago! That means way more kids, period! Not all the 400K people are senior citizens or people who don't have kids. There are still more high schools -- Beaverton is building new high schools, so is Bend. There are more kids in the state. Why? Because there's a helluva lot more people! Bottom line, WOU isn't working it hard enough, period. Also, while community college enrollment dipped this year, there are still 229,000 community college students in the state; and I just looked at the trend: like the population of Oregon, there are a helluva lot more community college students in 2020 than there were in 2010. More people means more students.

They're not trying hard enough. The president doesn't care.

[Pounder]

Fun with numbers, while the rate of children of number of children percentage wise is down from 10 years ago, there are still close to 400,000 more people in the state than 10 years ago! That means way more kids, period! Not all the 400K people are senior citizens or people who don't have kids. There are still more high schools -- Beaverton is building new high schools, so is Bend. There are more kids in the state. Why? Because there's a helluva lot more people! Bottom line, WOU isn't working it hard enough, period. Also, while community college enrollment dipped this year, there are still 229,000 community college students in the state; and I just looked at the trend: like the population of Oregon, there are a helluva lot more community college students in 2020 than there were in 2010. More people means more students.

They're not trying hard enough. The president doesn't care.

[tsull]

I did read the link and there are still enough people in the state to get your enrollment cranked up. I don't want to bore anybody with the details on how to do it but I went to Western Oregon when they are contemplating closing the school in the 80s and within 7 years a quality president had doubled the enrollment.

There was a different vibe going on back then. The news coming out of the school was positive. The president and the administrators around him knew what the hell they were doing. His name is Richard Meyers, you can look him up if you'd like. That's how you run a small regional university. The latest group of administrators can hide behind covid and false demographics all they want. They are failing the school and shouldn't be excused for that.

[Wildcat Khan]

Fun with numbers, while the rate of children of number of children percentage wise is down from 10 years ago, there are still close to 400,000 more people in the state than 10 years ago! That means way more kids, period! Not all the 400K people are senior citizens or people who don't have kids. There are still more high schools -- Beaverton is building new high schools, so is Bend. There are more kids in the state. Why? Because there's a helluva lot more people! Bottom line, WOU isn't working it hard enough, period. Also, while community college enrollment dipped this year, there are still 229,000 community college students in the state; and I just looked at the trend: like the population of Oregon, there are a helluva lot more community college students in 2020 than there were in 2010. More people means more students.

They're not trying hard enough. The president doesn't care.

Except in Eastern Oregon? LOL It is good to see though that Hermiston is able to compete in the MCC with the Tri-Cities schools in both football and basketball. For them, CWU is the closest D2 or higher University which is a bit sad since it is out of state although I-82 goes between the two similar sized towns.

I'd expect most of the growth though to be in the I-5 corridor or Bend/Redmond, which you think would be good for WOU.

[tsull]

Except in Eastern Oregon? LOL It is good to see though that Hermiston is able to compete in the MCC with the Tri-Cities schools in both football and basketball. For them, CWU is the closest D2 or higher University which is a bit sad since it is out of state although I-82 goes between the two similar sized towns.

I'd expect most of the growth though to be in the I-5 corridor or Bend/Redmond, which you think would be good for WOU.

Eastern Oregon University actually has no out-of-state tuition for Washington and Idaho residents. The advertise a bit in the Boise area.

Stopped by downtown La Grande a few weeks ago and I was actually pretty impressed, I they had some nice stores. The university has improved their athletic facilities greatly. But you are right that area just does not grow.

I'm not buying Western Oregon's excuses, it comes from lack of leadership. I'm really tired of whenever I see some news on the university it's negative, other than athletics, which has been some of the few positive news out there. I don't have a problem with the athletic department. I'm tired of the school hiring weak presidents.

[Wildcat Khan]

Eastern Oregon University actually has no out-of-state tuition for Washington and Idaho residents. The advertise a bit in the Boise area.

Stopped by downtown La Grande a few weeks ago and I was actually pretty impressed, I they had some nice stores. The university has improved their athletic facilities greatly. But you are right that area just does not grow.

I'm not buying Western Oregon's excuses, it comes from lack of leadership. I'm really tired of whenever I see some news on the university it's negative, other than athletics, which has been some of the few positive news out there. I don't have a problem with the athletic department. I'm tired of the school hiring weak presidents.

I know Hermiston has been growing, but also Pendleton is shrinking. They are now similar sized, but Hermiston High School has almost twice the numbers Pendleton. I would never have imagined that growing up there and Pendleton High School is now smaller than when I went to Hermiston.

As for WOU, I agree with you on the presidents. The fact that Linfield is right there and Oregon State is also close by and support their athletics departments is something WOU should learn from.

[tsull]

I know Hermiston has been growing, but also Pendleton is shrinking. They are now similar sized, but Hermiston High School has almost twice the numbers Pendleton. I would never have imagined that growing up there and Pendleton High School is now smaller than when I went to Hermiston.

As for WOU, I agree with you on the presidents. The fact that Linfield is right there and Oregon State is also close by and support their athletics departments is something WOU should learn from.

Having gone through Hermiston and Pendleton of late, seems like Hermiston has more going on and is in a better locale that I didn't think about before, on the Columbia and close to Tri-Cities. Smart move to play Washington intercollegiate sports instead of being forced into long bus rides in Oregon.

For WOU, it is presidential. Outside of two very good guys (one who worked for the other), the last 30+ years has been a lack of leadership in Monmouth. They get these career admins who just don't care about the school, they aren't invested in it emotionally or even professionally. It's a disaster and WOU doesn't have enough margin of error to have poor leadership.

Athletically, you can talk to any of the coaches, Ferguson, Pifer, Walker, Sargent, etc., and they are totally invested into WOU to do their best. It shows as WOU has done a good job winning without a ton of scholarships. If the admins had half the passion of the coaches, WOU would grow as an institution.

[tsull]

Just heard the Western Oregon president and another very high paid administrator in Monmouth would not take pay cuts, while slashing other parts of the university.

Still wondering how quickly we can get this president out of there. The fact that he's on the board of trustees, a complete conflict of interest, does not help things.

* Sorry to bore non-Western Oregon football fans out there but this is the only place I know where to put this information.

[IronOre]

Just heard the Western Oregon president and another very high paid administrator in Monmouth would not take pay cuts, while slashing other parts of the university.

Still wondering how quickly we can get this president out of there. The fact that he's on the board of trustees, a complete conflict of interest, does not help things.

* Sorry to bore non-Western Oregon football fans out there but this is the only place I know where to put this information.

At this point I'm waiting for you to talk about the football program getting cut...

[tsull]

At this point I'm waiting for you to talk about the football program getting cut...

Don't think that's happening, good hint for message boards is to look at the topic and do or do not do the 1/2 second click. Very simple method.

[IronOre]

Don't think that's happening, good hint for message boards is to look at the topic and do or do not do the 1/2 second click. Very simple method.

Oh, I know it's not happened. But as we saw with HSU, an easy way to balance an athletic budget, if you don't care about the consequences, is to axe football.

[tsull]

Old president is retiring soon and he was not much. They need to mover and a shaker, rising enrollment lifts all boats. I'm thinking they need more of a mover and a shaker as the athletic director, too as the interim person I'm not sure on yet. I had a fundraising question and it immediately got moved to the foundation, which in the past when everything was moved out of the athletic department regarding fundraising it's questionable on how things get done. I'm not sure why an athletic director would not want to crank things up in the fundraising area but frequently it seems the university gets athletic directors who don't want that part of the job.

I can't speak for Central Washington but it seems like they do a good job there. Humboldt State didn't want to raise money came down to the boosters who had the money to keep football but they didn't want to do the hard work to get the money over to the university.

It appears Simon Fraser does a good job as they just built a stadium. It comes down to not being lazy and wanting to work it. The easy move is to slash sports, the tough move is to actually do the work.

Also in regards to nearly every division two school on the west coast with football or no football there is absolutely, no media pressure at all and no one is held accountable. Azusa Pacific can cut sports and no one in the local media blinks and the fat cat administrators still get their six-figure checks. They do things like this because they can.