Oregon Student Association

OSA Priority Issues

Representing over 100,000 students, in April 2006 the OSA Student Board set its Priority Legislative Agenda for the 2007 Oregon legislative session. The decision came at the end of an eight-month process initiated in August 2006 when students began brainstorming and thinking critically about the issues that impact students’ ability to access and afford a quality postsecondary education. Upon returning to campus in the fall, students surveyed campuses across the state as to what issues were most important to Oregon students. Students then underwent a scrupulous process of research, dialogue, and debate to develop a comprehensive, winnable, and innovative package of legislative issues that will increase access to a quality postsecondary education for Oregon Students.

Click here for the press release announcing our 2007 Legislative Agenda.
OSCC has also announced their 2007 Priority Legislative Agenda.

The following are our 2007 priority issues:

Funding & Tuition

Shared Responsibility Model

ASPIRE (Access to Student assistance Programs in Reach of Everyone)

Student Child Care Program

Funding & Tuition

In just three years, 87 percent of new jobs in Oregon will require a college degree. But in spite of the need for a more college-educated citizenry, Oregon is actually educating less Oregonians. The decline in Oregonians attending college comes after over a decade of disinvestment in postsecondary education that has left Oregon students paying more and getting less. We can make Oregon stronger by reinvesting in postsecondary education to provide access to an affordable, quality college degree. Students are asking the legislature to fund the Oregon University System (OUS) at the level allocated in the Governor’s Recommended Budget (GRB) and, in addition, to allow students to retain the interest on their own tuition dollars by directing this money back to OUS. Students are asking for $46 million above the GRB for community colleges, which provide access for many students often shut out of postsecondary education and develop Oregon’s workforce.
Fact Sheet: Funding & Tuition: Oregon University System

Fact Sheet: Funding & Tuition: Community Colleges

Shared Responsibility Model

For today’s students, working your way through college is only a myth. Tuition has skyrocketed while grant aid has not kept pace. The good news is that students, our institutions, the Governor, and other interested parties have come together to create the Shared Responsibility Model (SRM), an innovative new model for need-based aid in Oregon that would reinstate students’ ability to work our way through college, as did generations before us. OSA is asking the legislature to invest the resources allocated in the GRB to open the doors to a college education for Oregon’s low and middle-income families.

Fact Sheet: Shared Responsibility Model

Fact Sheet: How Affordable is a Postsecondary Education?

ASPIRE (Access to Student assistance Programs in Reach of Everyone)

ASPIRE is a unique program that matches high school students with volunteer mentors who give their students the tools they need to access a postsecondary education. This effort helps to bring those students underrepresented at Oregon’s colleges and universities—low-income students, students of color, first generation students, and rural students—to campus. It will take state support to expand this successful program to ensure that all students, no matter what their background or location in the state, have the necessary tools to become contributing citizens after high school. The Governor invested in ASPIRE for the first time in the GRB. OSA and OSCC are asking the legislature to follow this historical lead by fully funding the expansion of the ASPIRE program at $3.1 million.

Fact Sheet: ASPIRE

Student Child Care Program

All too frequently, student parents are forced to choose between providing care for their children or receiving a college education that offers long-term security for their family. Funded since 2001, the Student Child Care Program (SCCP) is an established, successful program that helps low-income student parent recipients access college by providing financial assistance for childcare while the parent is in school. The SCCP is the only program to increase access to college specifically for student parents. Currently funded at $1 million to serve 230 families, the SCCP only begins to fill the needs of student parents as 2,657 are currently on the waiting list.

At a time when a college degree is more important than ever but our state is graduating less Oregonians from college, we cannot abandon a program like the SCCP that helps educate not just parents, but generations to come. Students are asking legislators to help Oregon families best support their families and put their children on the road to college by funding the SCCP at $1 million.

Fact Sheet: Student Child Care Program

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