About a month ago, Oregon State University president Edward Ray stopped by the Source offices. He was between visiting the proposed 10-acre site for the new Cascades campus and delivering his State of the University speech. Ray was animated about the reasons for and virtues of a four-year campus in Bend, which is currently in limbo as OSU waits to see if the state’s Land Use Board of Appeals upholds City Council’s approval of its site plan. Ray gave the expected arguments about the campus, but he also mentioned one argument that we’re surprised we haven’t heard more discussion about: That a four-year college will help stop the brain drain from Central Oregon.
Without a four-year university within a two-hour radius, Ray pointed out, students often travel over the Cascades to attend school in Portland, Corvallis, or Eugene.
Nationally, there are some pretty clear trends for what students do after graduating from high school: On average, about three-quarters of students stay within their home state for their college or university education. Although it should also be pointed out that location is not the primary motivator for many of the top graduating high school students; according to the Oregon State Board of Higher Education, more than two-thirds of Oregon high school students with a B-plus average or better leave the state for their college or university education.
But those numbers do not necessarily apply to Central Oregon, where 100 percent of students looking for a four-year university education must leave the area—and the immediate social consequences and long-term impacts to the intellectual base and supply line for the job force are immense.
Probably the closest analogy to OSU-Cascades’ proposed four-year campus is Southern Oregon University, a largely regional institution. It is smaller than the three biggest state schools—University of Oregon, Oregon State and Portland State—but is roughly the same size (6,000 students) that OSU-Cascades plans to become (5,000 by 2025).
What is interesting to note is that in the late 1950s SOU was scheduled to close when the Oregon state legislature allegedly dispatched Elmo Stevenson as the university’s president to close down the campus. However, according to lore, he was so smitten with the region and the faculty that he vigorously—and successfully—lobbied for its facilities to remain open.
That “what if” moment should be a curious contemplation for Central Oregonians. What if SOU had been closed in the 1950s? There are currently 6,000 students attending the campus—almost 50 percent from the immediate vicinity of Jackson County, where Ashland is located; add the adjacent counties and that is another 10 percent of the student population. Heck, even their football team, which last fall won a national title in their division, is largely fielded from players within 150 miles from the campus. Had the college closed in the 1950s, all of those students would have been forced to travel outside the region to pursue a four-year public education.
With graduation next week, it is an important moment to consider that Bend could enjoy the same retention of students. If the numbers for OSU-Cascades are comparable to SOU, then hundreds of current graduates from the Bend-La Pine School District who will travel next fall to Eugene, Corvallis, or Portland would stay here—and eventually be more likely to start their careers in Bend.
What if?
This article appears in Jun 3-10, 2015.
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In the June 4 Glass Slipper op-ed article you made an apt comparison of Southern Oregon University with the planned OSU-Cascades campus in Bend. OSU-Cascades is planning for roughly 5000 students, and SOU currently has 6000. However, there is a critical comparison you failed to mention. The SOU campus occupies 175 acres. I repeat, 175 acres. As in one hundred and seventy-five acres. For a comparable number of students, OSU-Cascades intends their campus to begin with 10 acres and expand to an additional 46 acres. The LaGrande campus of Eastern Oregon University, which also has a comparable number of students, occupies 110 acres. That’s 110 acres. Yet OSU-Cascades plans for just 56 acres? WTF? Do we want a first-class university in Central Oregon, or are we willing to accept this cobbled together insufficiently sized patch of old industrial land that’s being pushed down our throats, and that will result in a second-rate campus?
Viki Wooster’s post is a classic example of the anti-intellectual NIMBYs on the westside trying to twist facts to fit their meritless argument. So OSUC will have 10 acres and the SOU and EOU campuses, with comparable enrollments, are much larger campuses. So what?
SOU established its current campus in 1926, and EOU established its campus in 1929, nearly 100 years ago. University education and instructional techniques may have changed just a little bit since the 1920s. One obvious change is that all students used to live on campus, but now most college students live off campus.
Is there some reason why OSUC cannot thrive with a campus much smaller in physical size than traditional universities? Have the leaders and planners of OSUC missed some critical aspect of planning a college campus that requires thousands of acres? Does Viki Wooster know some secret that everyone from the Oregon Legislature to the President of OSU has missed?
In reply to NIMBYs Ruin Bend: First, I am not a NIMBY. I live in northeast Bend and would love to have a university campus in my back yard. Second, I have a masters degree and doctoral candidacy, pursue continuing education always, and am hardly anti-intellectual. Third, of the 1000 reported apartment units to be built in the near future in Bend, just 151 of them are on the westside. It’s likely that the majority of OSU-Cascades students living off campus will be living on the eastside. And I don’t believe for a moment that all of them will be riding bikes or taking the bus all the time, unless the bus routes and frequency are vastly improved. Fourth, none of us can predict what OSU-Cascades will be like in 30, 50, 100 years in terms of enrollment, programs and so forth. Why shoot ourselves in the foot before we even begin? And last, this is an opinion column. I have mine, you have yours.
This article plays right into the hands of OSUC’s marketing strategy. I have yet to hear more than 3 people voice their not wanting this school here. It’s about the location. Residents want the school! And I wish that folks would mellow their west side resident jabs. There are a number of people living on the west side who care about the impact on their neighborhood, who don’t have a ton of money. They work hard, raise thoughtful children, and just want this to not get away from us. Yes, people spin things, but be careful not to lump those who don’t deserve it into your pile of “anti-intellectual” throw aways. It does nothing but create a greater gap amongst us and we all deserve to have our opinions considered, no matter WHO we are. Every opinion heard is a chance to learn something you may not have considered yet. Or to disregard something else. Just listen, read, really think about it and move forward. As for this write up. I attended and worked at SOU (formally SOSC) for a time. I also currently have friends who are in leadership roles there and extended family who serve as professors and administrators. All of that said, it’s been fascinating to hear each and every one of them say how foolish it would be to cram this campus onto the west side, how much it will prevent any sort of well funded, highly desirable specialized programs and how it would impact the surrounding neighborhoods so negatively it would quickly change them. Campuses of this sort need space. Students need space. If they didn’t, they’d head to the busier cities. Students choose (when they can) based on environment as much as academia. We could be providing students a much different experience on the east side and that may be a better decision. Nothing is right or wrong here. We can only look closely and thoughtfully at everything on the table and see what solution we can find. I’m not a supporter of the site, not because of my home value but because of traffic, lack of housing for students, lack of jobs on the west side, and the overall experience I think they’d appreciate having. There’s a solution here but it won’t be found if we are distracted by OSU trying to convince us that we are either for the site or against the University being here at all. That just insults those who are truly trying to make sense of it all.
So, what I take from Viki Wooster’s response is that her opinion that the size of the planned OSUC campus is inadequate is based on nothing. She has no basis for her opinion that the size of the campus is inadequate, but she asserts that, as of right now, the majority of “new apartments” being built in Bend are not near the university site. But she then says we don’t know what will happen in the future. So even her housing excuse is inconsistent.
And abarnard says he has unnamed “friends” who claim the campus “will prevent any sort of well funded, highly desirable specialized programs” without any evidence to back up that. Has any academic, administrator, or public official publicly expressed the concern that the campus will restrict the kinds of programs that could be offered?
Hey OSU, stop creating “NIMBYs something something” accounts. It’s hilariously obvious.
Dear Doug, maybe address the substance of the comments. I have nothing to do with OSUC.