University of Oregon President: “It’s cellblocks or classrooms.”

The president of the University of Oregon, Dave Frohnmayer, urged legislators to take a close look at the growing tradeoffs between funding for prisons and funding for higher education. He pointed out that as state spending on prisons has dramatically increased over the past 20 years, the portion of the University of Oregon’s budget that comes from the state has decreased from 32% in 1991 to 14%.

A former Oregon Attorney General, Frohnmayer described prisons as "expenditures" and universities as "investments," citing that the University of Oregon generates $1.2 billion for the state’s economy from the $60 million it receives from the state. The Oregon Department of Corrections' proposed budget is over $1.2 billion for the next biennium, and the vast majority of that money will come from the state’s general fund.

Frohnmayer also compared the amounts spent on:

• K-12 students ($6,492 per child per year in 2005)
• university students ($4,497 per in state student in 2006)
• prisoners ($24,648 per prisoner in 2005)

This news brief is based on stories from the Salem Statesman Journal, UO president decries state's spending priorities, and the Eugene Register-Guard, Cellblocks, classrooms compete for funding. If the links are broken, check the newspapers’ archives.