President Karl Scholz and Provost Christopher P. Long sent the following joint message to faculty and staff on Monday, August 18, 2025.
Dear colleagues,
At the end of last academic year, we promised to continue to communicate with you about the budget process and the work being done to redress our structural budget deficit. Since our town hall last spring, administrative leaders have been working to identify reduction plans in line with meeting a 4 percent average reduction target for administrative units. The deans, in consultation with the Office of the Provost, have similarly been identifying reductions in the schools and colleges to reach 2.5 percent average reductions. All units, administrative and academic, have also been asked to eliminate any pre-existing budget deficits and to fully implement balanced budgets by FY2027. Some units have taken important steps in closing deficits over the summer.
While there remains much to be done before we announce specific actions, we want to provide a timeline and the process by which we will resolve the structural gap in our finances.
Here is the planned sequence of events for the coming weeks:
- August 11-29: Deans and Vice Presidents provided recommendations to the president and provost for consideration. Appropriate steps that align with institutional guidelines and procedures will conclude before Labor Day. This will allow for those directly affected to be informed as soon as possible. Please note that the School of Law, which operates on a semester system, is following an earlier timeline.
- Week of September 7: Another message will be sent to the campus community outlining specific plans of action. Employees affected directly by the budget reductions will be notified of their job status.
We will make budget reductions in a strategic way, guided by the necessity of addressing the structural deficit and the principles and priorities outlined in the Oregon Rising strategic plan, while remaining true to the core mission of the university. We are committed to meaningful consultation throughout this process and are working through established structures and leadership teams in schools, colleges, administrative portfolios and with the University Senate Task Force on Budget Reductions. We are working to balance the importance of consultation with the need for confidentiality. Across higher education—and here at our university—a mix of influences shape our finances: rising compensation and PERS costs, increasing competition for students from other institutions, state appropriations below the rate of cost growth, and continuing uncertainty around federal actions. This confluence of factors has created a situation in which our expenses are rising faster than our revenue. You can find more detailed information about the context and causes of our structural budget deficit at strengtheninguo.uoregon.edu. We recognize this is a difficult period of uncertainty for our entire community. The decisions we must make are painful and they will have a real human impact. We are committed to approaching these challenges with honesty, respect, and a focus on the long-term health of the university. While the road ahead will not be easy, the hard decisions we are taking support the mission of the university and will sustain it for generations to come.
Sincerely,
Karl Scholz
President
Christopher P. Long
Provost and Senior Vice President