creative, team-centered learning environment, and bring in outside partners from the public and private sectors together to solve the city’s most persistent problems. AN ACTIVE HIKER, BIKER and runner, Cudd says she was drawn to PSU in part because of the opportunities for outdoor recreation in the area. She also admired the school’s mission of serving the city of Portland. “It’s a creative, innovative city. I was a big fan of Portlandia, of course,” says Cudd. “And Portland State is so entwined in the whole culture and ethos of Portland.” Cudd was also impressed by PSU’s affordability mission. Starting in the fall of 2023, PSU streamlined two of its financial aid packages to create a tuition-free degree program for students qualifying for the Federal Pell Grant. The PSU initiative is referred to as a “last dollar” program, meaning the school provides enough funds to ensure that the student does not have to pay tuition for their classes after a student’s federal and state financial aid is applied, rather than the school’s financial aid being applied first in the process. Cudd says the PSU program goes even further than the Pell-matching measures she helped institute at Pittsburgh, which reduced the average debt burden of Pell-eligible students by $4,000 and grew headcount 4% one year. Full-time enrollment at PSU dropped 11% between 2019 and 2021, costing the university $18 million. The decline in enrollment is part of a national trend — college headcount declined 8% nationally between 2019 and 2023, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Enrollment at PSU dropped by 3.7% during the 2022-2023 academic year, according to university data. PSU tuition also rose by 3.5% in 2023, compared to the average national increase of 1.8% during the 2022-2023 academic year. In June PSU’s Board of Trustees dipped into its reserves for $20 million to fund the school through the upcoming year and cut spending by 1.3% by reducing personnel costs by $14.8 million. The school commissioned an operational review by Hillsboro-based Huron Consulting Group in 2021, which found the school functioned on a fragmented operating model. The report also found a fractured student-services department reporting to five separate vice presidents; minimal career growth opportunities for PSU students; and outsized administrative spending that “outweighs all student services, enrollment, and academic program support combined.” Cudd says PSU’s tuition raises are part of a continuing decline after the college rates peaked during the Great Recession in 2011, and that the college is still affordable. When it comes to streamlining and consolidating functions at PSU, Cudd says she will be consulting the school’s departments and will study the culture, but that ultimately her decisions will be guided by the data collected by the Huron report — decisions that PSU board chair Benjamin Berry says have been kicked down the road by her predecessors. Berry, who is in his first year as chair of the Board of Trustees, says Cudd will be expected to streamline the school’s administrative arm, which has become bloated over decades of indecision by former leadership. “The reason we’re so decentralized at PSU is because various colleges and groups decided, ‘Well, we’re not getting it done through our administration. Let’s go ahead and hire these other people internal to the college, and then they’ll get it done,’” says Berry. “But by doing that, we are actually spending more money versus trying to standardize and consolidate.” While Berry is optimistic about Cudd’s ability to lead the school, the decision to hire her also came amid increased tension between faculty unions and the Board of Trustees. In May the PSU chapter of the American Association of University Professors published a blog post highlighting the impact of budget cuts on students and faculty, and mentioning a slide from an April budget committee meeting that proposed allocating a maximum of $10 million of its $20 million dip into its reserve funds to allow for flexibility to new university leadership — what the union described as a “startup fund” for Cudd. Emily Ford, president of AAUP’s PSU chapter, says the proposal, which the union’s blog post said was an example of “moral bankruptcy” on the part of the board, caused an outcry because of the pain faculty and staff are experiencing due to budget cuts. The school released an official response to questions about how it allocated finances, detailing its spending and ensuring trustees did not vote on the topic of a discretionary fund for President Cudd, nor was any such fund earmarked or established. Ford says even though that proposal didn’t advance, faculty and staff haven’t seen more funding. She expressed concerns about disciplines and majors being trimmed down by the college, including the world languages department, which saw its Chinese major eliminated in 2021. This year students in the school’s political science department launched a petition to save the job of a political science professor. “Because we spoke up clearly and loudly, I think the board responded, and one of their responses was to just eliminate any mention of flexibility or discretionary money. Unfortunately, people are still not able to graduate, classes are canceled and jobs are cut,” says Ford, who adds that the school’s cost-saving measures should focus on the bloat in upper management identified in the Huron report rather than the faculty and staff. According to Ford, academic advisors at the School of Business Pathways have reported caseloads three times the national average, while advisors in engineering, computer science, and math manage loads five times the national average — all while one-third of managers at PSU oversee fewer than three direct reports, according to the Huron data. Erica Thomas, an adjunct art professor at PSU and political action chair of the Portland State University Faculty Association, which represents adjunct faculty at PSU, describes the cuts as a disinvestment in the school. “If you cancel a class and a student has to go somewhere else to take it, or if you raise the class sizes and give them a poorer-quality education, that’s probably the worst possible way you could respond to a slight enrollment dip,” Thomas tells Oregon Business. As a former professor herself, Cudd says she understands the squeeze facing faculty. She’s also agreed to quarterly meeting with union representatives to maintain dialogue on issues facing the school. Ford says quarterly meetings with the president were already the norm and that she is hoping to add more frequent meetings to the president’s schedule. Cudd says the trend toward increased adjunct workloads is not necessarily a great thing, but that adjuncts who also work in their fields of study can provide students with an insider perspective. She says one role of her administration will be to bring the private sector into the classroom to create research partnerships. She says these arrangements “Many students are just not able to afford a great education, and yet a great education is really necessary for joining the middle class, or for coming up with the kind of innovative and creative ideas that our society really runs on.” DR. ANN CUDD, PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT 19
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTcxMjMwNg==