Schill deserves credit for biting the bullet. He honestly confronts the facts that the UO is slipping when measured against its AAU comparators, that its revenue structure presents obstacles to its progress, that leadership in the university is inexperienced, and that Santa Claus is not coming. He is moving money to build a larger and better tenure-track faculty to achieve the goal of making the UO one of the better public universities in the country. I admire him. 

Can he do it? I hope so. I do believe that the odds are against him. The UO is in its current condition because of the array of schools and programs and so revenue structure handed to it by past generations of political infighters in state government. If that structure ever changes, it will be a long term process. When Schill moves money, he must take it from somewhere: departments, graduate programs, staff. It's like taking pieces of one wall to repair another. With perfect calculation, it's possible. Odds? Not good.