PENDLETON — The three leading candidates vying to be the next governor of Oregon said supporting higher education is a must, but they varied on how to do that.

Democrat nominee Tina Kotek, Republican nominee Christine Drazan and unaffiliated candidate Betsy Johnson on Friday, Sept. 16, brought their campaigns to the Pendleton Round-Up, eating at the Cowboy Breakfast, participating in the Westward Ho! Parade and taking in the Pendleton Round-Up Governor’s Luncheon at Blue Mountain Community College.

The East Oregonian asked each about their plans to support higher education, including research that could benefit rural Oregon.

Drazan touts value of Extension Service

Drazan spoke about her commitment to higher education and the Oregon State University Extension Service, emphasizing their importance to keeping the workforce competitive and competent.

“Higher education is a priority for me,” she said. “At the same time, I think that our higher education system needs to do a better job of ensuring that students graduate in four years instead of five. That adds costs to families, getting done in four years is the gold standard.”

Drazan said when a student enters an Oregon university, those universities must provide information so students know exactly what they need to graduate on time. Too often, she said, students go an additional year due to a lack of alignment for students that transfer between schools, particularly within Oregon’s higher education system.

Drazan also was critical of how lawmakers use the Extension Service to play political football.

“In rural communities, they’re typically represented by Republicans, and Democrats typically want Republican votes to offer something they don’t want to, so they end up holding the Extension Service until all deals are done,” she said. “Then it gets funded in a modest way, but never at the level that allows for the deep and substantial progress needed on some of the categories that our agricultural communities really need.”

Underfunding the extension services has allowed other states to surpass Oregon in industries it once dominated, she said, and has priced out local producers in grocery store shopping aisles.

“Oregon used to be far and away the ultimate strawberry provider, for flavor, for quality, all those kinds of things. California has left us in the dust,” Drazan said. “It’s not just the nature of how long they have a beautiful summer season, they invested in strawberries that could ship well, could be more shelf stable.”

Oregon can compete again, Drazan said, but that means greater funding for the Extension Service.

Kotek says community colleges need help

Kotek said ensuring Oregon’s workforce has sufficient access to valuable higher and K-12 education helps keep Oregon’s economy healthy and helps address the state’s housing, homelessness and addiction crises.

“My first priority there is to make sure we increase the financial assistance programs for students,” Kotek said.

The Oregon Opportunity Grant and Oregon Promise, for example, are crucial so universities and community colleges can be more affordable, she said, but Oregon also faces a challenge when it comes to money for higher education.

“I don’t know how we find that extra funding source to increase investment in higher ed, but in the meantime, we need to make sure financial aid is more readily available for students,” she said.

“I will say, to contrast with my opponents, Christine Drazan voted against that, Betsy Johnson said she’d change her vote,” Kotek said. “The Student Success Act is our pathway to getting more students graduated. Period.”

Central to Kotek’s education strategy is supporting community colleges, which she said are essential for Oregon’s workforce.

“We really have to help our community colleges,” she said. “I was just up at BMCC. The way that community colleges are, they’re a very important piece for when you get out of high school and are looking for your next set of skills, community colleges have to be there and be affordable.”

Funding community colleges, she said, is how to solve Oregon’s workforce issues.

Johnson wants more collaboration between state universities

Johnson, who was in Pendleton for her first-ever Round-Up, said K-12 education and higher education do a poor job of training and preparing a professional workforce in Oregon. She said the state must support higher education and research to maintain economic growth throughout the state. But Oregon’s public universities need to not compete with each other.

“We work best when we work collaboratively,” she said. “It’s been my observation in the Legislature that there’s a lot of head-to-head competition between schools.”

The proof of education leading to workforce development and economic growth is visible here in Pendleton, Johnson asserted.

“Pendleton has become a ground-zero in drone development,” she said, “those drones are working in agriculture right now, and can fly over fields to identify where the water use could be more efficiently applied, it can look at a field and determine if it’s getting too much water in some places, or not enough in others. It’s phenomenal the role that research can play in water conservation and use.”

Funding research and higher education isn’t everything though, Johnson said, and a focus on K-12 education is crucial toward preparing students for joining the workforce.

“Let me start by saying that I’m not trained as an educator, I would surround myself with issue experts to help inform me,” Johnson said.

She also said the outgoing governor did no favors to Oregon’s students.

“The fact that Kate Brown signed a bill that caused a high school diploma to not have to demonstrate proficiency in core subjects is incredible to me,” Johnson said. “We ought to be demanding higher standards for our kids, and then helping the schools in whatever way we need to so we can achieve those standards. When our kids aren’t meeting the standards you don’t lower the standards, you raise them.”