AuCoin went into higher education five years after leaving the Congress, joining the faculty at Southern Oregon University in Ashland as a visiting professor of political science and business ethics. He was named Outstanding Professor of the Year by the SOU chapter of Phi Kappa Phi, the nation's largest scholarly society. AuCoin was also voted by SOU students as one of the university's four "most popular professors." While at SOU, he won an Oregon Associated Press award for political commentary at Jefferson Public Radio. AuCoin writes on national issues for the Huffington Post, freelances magazine articles, and publishes book reviews for regional newspapers. He is co-author of "The Wildfire Reader: A Century of Failed Forest Policy". In the 1960s, while working at Pacific University, he won several national awards for excellence in editing the school's official magazine.