Union Report Finds Oregon’s Universities Hired Administrators as Instructional and Classified Staff Lagged

Data compiled by organized labor indicates four of Oregon’s public universities, including its three largest, have hired significant numbers of administrators since 2015, while slowing or reducing hiring for instructional and classified positions.

That’s one of several takeaways from a Service Employees International Union Local 503 report released last Wednesday. SEIU 503 represents classified employees across all seven public universities. The white paper, titled “The Cost of Administrative Bloat,” was deployed as universities and the union are engaged in a contract negotiation process that has dragged on.

That’s largely because public universities say they do not have the financial means to support wage demands from the union. As Oregon Public Broadcasting has reported, the two offers are still widely far apart. Both groups submitted their last best offers on Friday.

SEIU 503’s paper uses salary reports from the four universities that make them publicly available to map both employee growth and salary spending in the last decade among administrators, instructors and researchers, and classified staff. Between 2015 and 2026, the report found administrative hiring and spending, on the whole, outpaced the other two categories.

Melissa Unger, the executive director of SEIU 503, told reporters Wednesday that the report is meant to flag the dissonance between universities’ financial turmoil and their spending choices. She says that even though growing administrative spending cannot fully explain budget crises, where money is prioritized can affect classified employees’ morale.

Unger says that the report is meant to spark a conversation around oversight of public university spending.

“We believe that we should decrease administrative bloat, especially at a time where campuses are cutting back on staff,” Unger says. “Campuses that feel like they’re really in these crises, what are we doing to direct them on how they’re cutting?”

The University of Oregon, the state’s largest, hired about 290 full time equivalent positions in administration, while hiring about 60 FTE instructors and 193 FTE classified employees. (SEIU calculates admin grew by 21% while instructors grew by 3%, and classified employees by 10%). In the last decade, the report finds it increased its administrative spending by $92 million, while other categories grew by $60 and $55 million, respectively.

Oregon State University, the state’s second largest, hired about 656 FTE administrators, while growing instructors by 42 FTE and losing 25 classified FTE. (That’s 56% growth in administration versus a 2% increase in faculty and 2% decline in classified workers). OSU increased administrative spending by $100 million, spent $68 million more on instructors and spent $34 million more on classified employees.

Portland State University saw a small increase in administrative FTE, while faculty and classified FTE positions fell sharply. Western Oregon University grew its administrative positions by 89%, according to the analysis.

Three smaller universities, Eastern Oregon University, Oregon Institute of Technology, and Southern Oregon University, did not have publicly available data to use.

It’s worth noting that the union used university salary reports to determine administrative FTE growth, instead of opting for a workforce report each university produces for the state. Overseen by Senate Bill 1520, passed in 2018, the Higher Education Coordinating Commission compiles data.

The differences are dramatic. In footnotes, SEIU 503 writes that while UO reported 178 FTE in the administrators and management in its workforce report, its own salary report identified 1,504 FTE in primarily administrative positions.

Spokespeople with both UO and HECC say that’s largely because of tighter definitions that HECC uses to classify administrators in its reports. “The final distribution of employees into categories remained a university decision,” says Endi Hartigan, spokeswoman for HECC. “How the institutions interpret HECC definitions in the administrator/management category of their submission in relation to their own employee classifications may vary.”

Angela Seydel, a spokeswoman with UO, says that it reports a small number of employees as administrators under SB 1520 because the definition largely encompasses senior administrators and executive leadership positions.

In contrast, the university’s salary report includes all officers of administration.

That category “is a much broader group,” Seydel says. “It includes all non-represented, non-faculty, non-temporary employees. This group includes positions like counselors, data analysts, HR professionals, and advisors, among others.”

In other words, the SEIU report largely classifies employees by whether or not they are represented by a union.