Previously, I called for the University of Oregon to cut general education requirements. Of course, it’s not so simple; we are legally required to have these general education credits in order for the university to remain accredited. This requirement may encourage some students to take the classes that allow them to earn an ‘A’ easier than others, but this doesn’t need to be the case. Here’s how you can take advantage of the university’s system.

Why a Minor Might Be Useful

There are several reasons why one would want to minor in another subject. A great reason to take on a minor is to expand a skill set or specialize within an area of your major. An example of this would be an accounting or finance major minoring in economics. Another example would be a journalism major minoring in political science; if they hope to write about political events after graduation. Perhaps you have skills in a second language and would love to highlight such a skill – a minor is great for that. Also, a minor can give you a competitive edge against your classmates who think that a company would rather value a higher GPA with fewer skills.

For some who are torn between a subject they love and a subject they understand well, like music and finance, you could major in finance and minor in music. While they seem totally unrelated, every corporation in the music industry needs financial analysts. We don’t need to sacrifice our desires in the name of pragmatism. The university has plenty of minors to choose from. See if there’s anything that interests you enough to possibly take a minor in it.

Little to No Extra Work

To earn a bachelor’s degree at the University of Oregon, you must meet the general education group requirements. Additionally, there’s a multicultural requirement that requires two classes; on top of this, you must also earn 62 upper-division credits (including major classes). Many minors require 24 credits, which allows room for people to take a secondary minor without too much extra work. There is a catch: For each group, you must take two courses in one subject and at least one course in another subject. In all, you may not have more than three courses in one subject per group.

One could easily take advantage of the generous double counting with a minor in political science. Political science counts as social science credits and has no prerequisites. Plus, you can take political science courses that count towards multicultural requirements. In a nutshell, one could take three upper-division political science classes and have 12 credits of their social science group satisfied and the multicultural group satisfied. This leaves you with three courses for the minor – one upper-division and two lower-division. Since there is a minimum credit requirement outside of general education, there is no extra work for a minor in political science unless you change your major. To find which classes in what subjects may count towards multiple general education requirements, there is a searchable page full of group-satisfying courses.

How to Effectively Choose a Minor

It’s probably going to be easier for students to choose a minor if they’re not undecided about their major. Even those of us who have selected a major or two might have a hard time deciding what to minor in. Simply put, you should ask yourself, “What do I want to do after graduation?” I understand that this sounds daunting, especially if you’re a freshman. But even if you have several career paths you can choose from based on your major, a minor can help you with whichever of these paths interest you. If you’re undecided in your major, perhaps you would benefit from starting with minors and eventually choose one to major in.

Perhaps it would be helpful to look at job postings for such career paths. Believe it or not, you could pick a minor based around qualifications that may show up on the job posting and are not taught within your major department. A classic example of this would be someone majoring in business administration with a concentration in finance–aka – a major in finance–that wants to work as an analyst at a company. These days, it takes an understanding of databases and other programming languages to land a job at companies like Amazon or Microsoft. This is due to the nature of being tech companies, but that doesn’t need to be a barrier for you. You can minor in computer information technology (CIT), which specifically entails programming and databases.

Start Early as Possible

Those of you who will benefit the most from reading (and applying) this will be freshmen and sophomores that aren’t undecided. The sooner you check out your options, the sooner you can take advantage of the double counting credits that took me way too long to figure out myself. Had I known what major and minor I wanted from the start, I would have saved a lot of time, effort and money from the university’s generosity. If you plan well enough, you might even be able to get away with graduating in less time.

The post Yanez: How to choose a minor without wasting gen ed credits appeared first on Emerald Media.

In an effort to reduce alcoholism, a few state lawmakers in Wisconsin are trying to lower the drinking age from 21 to 19. While the National Minimum Drinking Age Act is responsible for the 21 year age restriction, quite a few states allow minors to consume alcohol in private residences with parental consent. Oregon is one of these states. Obviously, the federal law is likely to create some hardships for this seemingly insane idea, however, with the recent prevalence of underage binge drinking, I believe that people should be able to drink at the age of majority, which is 18 in most states and territories in the United States.

Reducing Alcoholism: Changing How We View Alcohol

Part of reducing alcoholism is reducing the level of binge drinking. The National Institution of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) showed that in 2003, the average age people first used alcohol in the United States was 14. According to the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2015, “32 percent of college students [continued] to stand out as having a relatively high level of binge drinking.” This “high level of binge drinking” was described as “consuming 5 or more drinks in a row…at least once in [a] two-week period.” The NIAAA stated that “other behavior problems associated with alcohol use include rebelliousness.” This could confirm the notion that there exists a “forbidden fruit” association with alcohol and the current legal drinking age.

By lowering the drinking age to 18, those who wait until they’re legally allowed to purchase alcohol can have their first drink in the comfort of their own home rather than away at college. Parents who worry about their children getting alcohol poisoning or taken advantage of at parties could then have confidence that their children will make better choices with alcohol at parties.

How Responsible Drinking Can Stimulate the Economy

The economy could be positively stimulated by lowering the drinking age to 18. Assuming that at least half of the about 4,000 incoming freshmen per year over the past few years were 18, there would be at least 12,000 newer students currently attending UO that could now drink. With an increase in demand, this means more bars would likely open near campus. More bars equates to more jobs and more jobs means more income tax revenue.

The state of Oregon received about $1.53 per capita in alcohol tax revenue from Eugene and Springfield residents this past September. This means that the state could receive up to an additional $18,360 per month in tax revenue, only counting those 12,000 UO students. This does not include others in Eugene and Springfield who graduate high school or attend Lane Community College.

For reference, Eugene and Springfield brought in just under $346,000 in tax revenue during that month. That’s an additional $220,320 per year from just UO students in the third largest metropolitan area in the state. While this doesn’t sound like much, the Eugene-Springfield area has four four-year colleges and universities, a community college, a satellite campus for Pacific University, and a post-secondary school.

Some Opposing Arguments Make Little Sense

Arguments for keeping the drinking age at 21 include impairing brain development and illegal purchase for minors. Some argue that a lot of things will turn your brain to mush, like our parents would say about watching too much TV. 

Many are of the opinion that it is unsafe to drink before you’re 21, but what about enlisting in the military, which only requires you to be 18? There’s obviously a higher risk of death with that decision, but it only requires you to be the age of majority.

Perhaps an area of concern would be that seniors in high school would technically be able to drink. This is a valid concern, which could possibly be avoided by making the age limit similar to what Wisconsin is considering – 19 years old. Even then, we cannot completely prevent people from buying alcohol for minors.

One thing is certain: The drinking age is actually a purchasing age, which has become a de facto drinking age through misunderstanding. That being said, we cannot ignore the fact that the United States has a binge drinking problem that isn’t common around the world.

Oregonians Should be Free

We have a fairly bad alcoholism problem that can be partially attributed to how minors view alcohol as a forbidden fruit. Perhaps the reason lies within the culture and how alcohol is usually consumed with food rather than chugged like in movies such as ‘Animal House.’ We can make that change in Oregon; lowering the drinking age can help change how minors view alcohol. Parents could teach healthy drinking habits instead of hoping that they don’t adversely affect their grades with hangovers. There’s the fact that we could help improve the economy in several ways – job creation, more cash flowing through businesses and an increase in tax revenue. While this sounds nice, there’s something that has been seemingly forgotten about ourselves as a society: our personal freedom.

At some point in our generation, the state will need to make a decision about its priorities: Should we be tightening laws on what people can willingly take into their bodies or should we broaden these laws to make Oregon an example of freedom? If we continue to allow the state to tell us what to think and believe, we’re not going to be a free state. After all, Oregon is a state with a wide variety of beer, wine, and distilled spirits, but if you dare have any of these drinks on a public sidewalk (outside of Hood River), the police will hand you a ticket. Does this sound like the state has your personal freedoms in its interest?

We also need to seriously consider a few other questions: How many college students must be taken advantage of at parties before we take this issue seriously? How many people must be hospitalized for alcohol poisoning before we think about changing behavior through awareness and teaching responsible drinking habits? Hopefully, we can come to our senses before it gets too out of hand.

The post Yanez: It’s time to lower the drinking age appeared first on Emerald Media.

It’s time to have a serious conversation about the content of a college education. In the U.S., most colleges and universities require students to take general education classes, commonly referred to as “gen eds.” Nearly two-thirds of a college education at the University of Oregon is general education. General education is required for the university to be accredited; UO group requirements fulfill the minimum requirements. While the university can’t make this cut without losing accreditation, it should reach out to the accreditation committee and try to negotiate a cut of some, if not all, of these requirements.

The Devaluation of the Bachelor’s Degree

For a bachelor’s degree in economics at UO, you only need 64 credits in economics and math. This means that about 36 percent of my bachelor’s degree in economics was actually related to economics. The other 64 percent was general education, which electives are considered a part of. Perhaps the real reason colleges emphasize the importance of general education courses is to help the students who don’t have much of an idea of what they want to major in (known as “undecided” or “undeclared”), so they have a little time to decide.

We already receive a general education in high school. As a society, we need to stop kidding ourselves that a bachelor’s degree today is anything more than high school diploma with a concentration that only gives us about a year to a year and a half of major classes, but with more homework. When looking for post-graduation jobs, I find that many employers now require experience for an entry level job. Not just an internship; employers often seek one to three years of “related experience.” Perhaps employers would value a bachelor’s degree more if there were more experience obtained through additional hands-on classes.

The problem with double dipping

Many classes at UO can fulfill several gen ed requirements, despite being single courses. Some students take advantage of this and call it “double dipping” courses. Examples of classes that double dip into group requirements are math, economics and anthropology. If you take Calculus I and II, and 200-level Statistics, you get three-quarters of the required science group credit, despite being math subjects.

An introductory microeconomics class can double as social science credit. Depending on the anthropology class, you might see it appear in social science and multicultural requirements. The same applies to certain music classes, which may be double counted into arts & letters and multicultural requirements. If UO double counts so much, why does it care about actually requiring so much general education? Why aren’t these classes good enough to stand on their own without double counting credits into majors and minors that we may not have an adequate amount of knowledge of?

Major Imbalance

Instead of most of a college education being general education, why not cut the time spent in school or allow departments to expand their curriculum? Economics is one area of study that needs to expand its curriculum, but professors are likely reluctant to take away major electives and create more major requirements because of general education requirements.

The London School of Economics even brought up this issue, sparking a campus-wide debate with a panel of professors with a Q&A session afterwards. The debate was about whether economics students learn too much math and not enough about economic history. Today, employers in data analysis, finance and economics want new graduates to understand several computer programming languages, as well as software that isn’t taught in most undergraduate economics programs. As an economics major, it is absolutely appalling that I won’t be properly prepared for the various industries I could work in. Anything else I would need would be self-taught.

Too Much Fluff, Not Enough Specialization

Let’s be honest about what our bachelor’s degrees are: A degree in general education with little more than a year of classes related to our majors. I would have been fine without eight credits of multicultural education. I took History of Jazz and Anthropology of Chocolate. Though they were interesting classes, how will they help me in economics?

By cutting just the group requirements, we would, in theory, have three-year degrees. If implemented, a lot of classes would likely be less clogged with students who don’t care about what’s being taught because they have to take an extra class. We could see departments expand their curriculums and better prepare students for the labor force and potentially graduate school.

As previously mentioned, the UO is required to have a minimum of 45 credits for accreditation. The UO’s executive leadership should get together with other universities in the region and push back on these general education requirements, asserting that we could better supplement our education with a relevant minor or second major. In the meantime, we could trim down on upper-division requirements and multicultural requirements or at least try to incorporate these standards into our major classes. To require more than the minimum for accreditation robs students of their potential in the name of making them more well-rounded within their area of study.

The post Yanez: UO should cut general education requirements appeared first on Emerald Media.

How would you feel about a sales tax being imposed on already expensive health insurance? Depending on where you heard about Measure 101, this might be news to you, but that’s exactly what Oregonians will be voting on Jan. 23. According to Edward Johnson, a former canvasser who helped Measure 101 get on the ballot, most of the people he encountered “had never heard of the new tax and many didn’t believe [him] until [he] pulled up a news article on [his] phone.” Though there has been some reporting about the positives of the measure, voters need to consider a few things before making a decision.

Measure 101 was originally intended to be on the November ballot next year. However, supporters in Oregon’s government moved it up to January for a special election. While there isn’t much information about why this happened, one might assert that it’s because fewer people vote in special elections. If this is true, we need address the fact that it looks like our state government is trying to subdue the voters to advance its own agenda.

What’s Included in the Bill?

Originally, Measure 101 was known as Referendum 301 when it was a petition. The original bill that was passed and signed into law by the governor was Oregon House Bill 2391. Specifically, Measure 101 is to accept or reject sections 3, 5, 8, 9, and 27. If you read these sections, you get an idea as to why such a blue state overwhelmingly signed the petition to put it to a vote.

Section 3 states that the Public Employees’ Benefit Board (PEBB), where state employees—including UO faculty and staff—get their health benefits from, will be taxed by 1.5 percent. Stop Healthcare Taxes, the primary organization in opposition of the measure, has stated that this could be seen as an excuse to raise college tuition. This, of course, depends on how public schools decide to handle the tax.

Section 5 states insurance companies are to pay a 1.5 percent tax on insurance premiums. Most people support fair taxation, but supporters of Measure 101 often fail to mention Section 8, which reads, “…insurers may increase their premium rate on policies or certificates…by 1.5 percent.” An Oregon lawmaker, a Measure 101 supporter, slammed The Oregonian, Oregon’s largest newspaper, stating it was “very important” for public college students to pay for this tax through hikes in school-provided health insurance (PacificSource):

Why Was HB 2391 Passed in the First Place?

The Oregon Health Authority was under audit by the Secretary of State because it was caught violating federal eligibility rules for Medicaid. That is, the Oregon Health Authority did not verify that 37,000 Oregonians actually qualified for Medicaid, paying nearly $200 million in Medicaid benefits for these people.

Supporters of this tax use scare tactics by saying that you’re going to take healthcare away from 350,000 Oregonians. This isn’t true because voting no repeals only $330 million of the $550 million tax. This ensures many, if not all, would get to keep their healthcare. Nobody is ignoring the fact that the state needs some extra tax revenue. According to Edward, and many who signed the petition, “the revenue must be raised but there are so many other ways to do it.”

Last year, Governor Kate Brown tried to use the mental hospital in Junction City as a political pawn after Measure 97, another sales tax that was projected to raise average individual expenses by $600 per year, was rejected. Unsurprisingly, the governor as well as several unions and special interest groups hope to use the same scare tactics by proposing to shut down the mental hospital in Junction City, a tactic the governor has a clear history of using.

The Oregon Supreme Court Was Involved

When the ballot title and summary were first drafted by the Joint Interim Committee on Referendum 301, State Representatives Julie Parrish (R – West Linn) and Cedric Hayden (R – Fall Creek) appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court due to its misleading and confusing nature. According to The Oregonian, the Oregon Supreme Court told State Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum that “the language did not make the implications of voting yes or no clear enough.”

The Oregon Supreme Court also stated that “it must also be clear to voters that insurance companies can raise premiums by 1.5 percent, to recoup the cost of the tax that would fund the state reinsurance program.” It’s worrisome to me that our state government needs to be told not to mislead people in an election.

We Can Do Better

Edward shared some of his experiences with me about working on the petition. “While working as a canvasser for the campaign, I quickly learned that the innate opposition to taxing health insurance premiums was not a partisan issue; It seems there is a basic understanding across parties that raising health insurance premiums through taxation is an immoral action.”

We need to consider that the state threw $300 million a few years back into the failed Medicaid project, Cover Oregon. We need to seriously consider the latest scandal with the Oregon Health Authority overpaying more than $74 million and how its previous leader didn’t tell the governor about it. In light of all of these major issues, should we be giving the legislature more money without consequence?

I don’t believe we should allow our state government to abuse us, treating Medicaid recipients and the mentally ill as mere political pawns. Even Edward, stated that “the idea that a Democratic legislature and Governor would intentionally raise insurance rates felt like a betrayal.” Anybody in an abusive relationship, with manipulative behaviors like the governor has exhibited, would be advised to get out of it. Oregon desperately needs out of this relationship, starting by voting no on Measure 101.

The post Yanez: What Oregon voters need to consider about Measure 101 appeared first on Emerald Media.

When people hear about university administrators earning more than half a million dollars annually, they might think the administrators work for a private university. Collectively, the University of Oregon’s 11 administrative leaders earn more than $2 million in salaries and car allowances. This may be unsustainable with a dwindling in-state undergraduate population.

According to a 2016 Washington Post article, the University of Oregon “embarked on a campaign to boost out-of-state and international enrollment.” To be fair, the Oregon State Legislature has been decreasing education funding for some time, as mentioned by President Schill last year when he tried to save face with the students after announcing a steep tuition hike.

UO Vice President for Admissions Roger Thompson brought up the issue of lower graduation rates in high school, asserting that these reasons were “not an excuse or crutch.” But is the UO really doing all it can to boost in-state enrollment? One can understand that bringing in more out-of-state students would boost the university’s total revenue, but once the university started its recruitment drive for more out-of-state students, I think that the UO should have announced plans to privatize the university. Why should the Oregon taxpayers have to support a university that won’t be educating many of their fellow residents anyway?

Students would benefit in several ways. Smaller class sizes would be an obvious benefit. Another would be that the university would have more power to experiment with ways to keep costs down for students that cannot afford an education otherwise. If the university truly cares about its students, it should at least explore becoming a private university.

A private university is not the same as a private college, such as Reed College, with under 2,000 students. A private university is much bigger, which may help keep tuition lower than a conventional private school. Students and parents can also apply pressure on the university to ensure that any increase in tuition is actually needed. Currently, only the state has such power.

Vice President for Student Life Dr. R. Kevin Marbury mentioned in an email about the Genocide Awareness Project – a display visiting campus that compared abortion to genocide – on Monday that the university cannot restrict certain kinds of speech due to its public university status. While I fully support free speech in every peaceful form, I’m sure the university would like to be able to tell the anti-abortion group not to use graphic images to get their point across. As a private university, it could easily have that power and right to do so.

Recently, the university made a decision to meet one of the demands made by the Black Student Task Force by not only implementing a new class, but also hiring UO professor Debra Thompson in order to meet another demand to hire more Black faculty. Professor Thompson stated that a course like this was a huge success at Northwestern University, a private university. The university caters to a lot of minority groups on campus, both racial and ideological. But it sidelines conservative students. This sort of selective support for minority groups, as well as hiring new faculty based on race, is something that I would expect at a private university, not a public university that is supposed to stay politically neutral.

Unfortunately, if anybody who could potentially benefit from the Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) had a say in whether or not the university were to privatize, I don’t think it would ever happen. Full formula tier one PERS, which is what former Duck football coach Mike Bellotti receives, is a decent percentage of one’s last salary while they were employed by the state. That said, The Oregonian reports that Bellotti brings in about $45,645 per month in retirement. Michael Schill makes $660,000 per year plus a $14,000 car stipend. Based on his salary alone, if he were to retire with a similar benefit, he would receive a monthly benefit of $23,100.

Even Oregon Governor Kate Brown earns less than $100,000 per year. For perspective, 36.01 percent of American wage earners made less than $20,000, and 49.31 percent earned less than $30,000, all in 2016. Let that sink in the next time President Schill and the UO administration announces that the university must raise tuition.

The post Yanez: The UO should be a private university appeared first on Emerald Media.