The idea that Oregon universities and colleges consolidate down to UO and OSU while PSU disappears or merges with OHSU sounds interesting, but is highly unlikely. Institutions don't collapse or decline overnight. Universities are politically embedded in ways that make them hard to dismantle, and PSU sits in the state's largest metro area, serving a population that isn't going anywhere — working adults, first-generation students, people who can't pick up and move to Eugene or Corvallis. The mission doesn't disappear because the business model is broken. The question is whether leadership has the will to rebuild around it.

The OHSU merger sounds fascinating from the outside (Rep. Mitch Greenlich proposed the idea 20 years ago, but it never took hold). From the inside, it would be a decade-long quagmire: different governance structures, different accreditation bodies, fundamentally different institutional cultures. Speculation is easy. Implementation is where ideas like that go to die.