Universities drank the kool-ade and thought that if they spent and unbelievable amount of money on administration, student perks and sports teams, that would generate an exponential growth in enrollment. It did not.<p>The WSJ did a decent article about this a few weeks ago.<p><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-university-tuition-increase-spending-41a58100" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-university-tuition-increa...</a><p>It was hard not to see this coming. Everyone has been talking about how the benefit of a Bachelor's degree is not worth the tuition cost. Covid drove that home when students were paying tens of thousand dollars just to watch videos at home.<p>I could go on and on about this but it just breaks my heart to see how bad universities screwed this up.
Meanwhile our coal baron Governor is trumpeting that the State of West Virginia has a historic record $1.8-billion tax surplus this year:<p><a href="https://governor.wv.gov/News/press-releases/2023/Pages/Gov.-Justice-says-West-Virginia-shatters-all-time-financial-records-with-close-of-fiscal-year.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://governor.wv.gov/News/press-releases/2023/Pages/Gov.-...</a><p>And we're forcing the primary state university to gut its programs and/or risk complete shutdown over $45-million budget deficit, partially due to inadequate state funding.<p>Why? Because - tragically - West Virginians pride themselves on ignorance, consistently vote against their own longterm best interests, and loathe the idea of liberal higher education in all its forms.<p>(To be fair, the current WVU administration is to blame for letting this get out of hand rather than proactive budget cuts, but eduction should also be one of our literally-poor state's biggest investments.)<p>This cynical perspective has been brought to you by a lifetime WV resident and WVU Computer Science grad, consistently disappointed by my state's active rejection of progress.
> In fact, on the same day WVU wrote to tell us our department is cancelled and we are fired, they ran a front-page article on the university website celebrating the NSF grant that Sergio Robles-Puente and I recently received, and lauding our innovative research and intensive student mentoring.<p>I have a few close friends in academia and while IMO they're clearly underappreciated by their institutions (even the lucky ones who have tenure), this level of cynical disrespect is shocking.
This is a sick path to be on. Keep the money, plug kids into some other university's classes remotely. To what end? A school full of nothing but overpaid administrators, and kids all taking remote classes at disparate cheapest possible offerings?
This is only a premonition of the things to come. Our universities have been hell bent on destroying themselves for the past few decades. They stole as much as they could as the traditional gatekeepers to the upper-middle class, but even the most clueless are realizing the missing value proposition. College enrollment has been dropping from its peak in 2010.[1] As the amount of freshmen and state funding drops, the parasites will fire everyone except their fellow parasites until the hosts are consumed.<p>1. <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enrollment-and-projections-in-public-and-private-institutions/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enroll...</a>
> All of the foreign language and literature programs at the university are to be discontinued; the president of the university publicly stated that foreign-language classes will be replaced with online apps or remote classes at other universities.<p>If a university is just offering online courses at other schools, it ought to be treated as if it doesn’t offer the subject at all.<p>I dunno, is it crucial to teach languages? I find (human) languages very difficult to learn, to the point of unpleasantness. But still, it seems frankly bizarre that a public university might not provide instruction in them. Not providing this kind of instruction puts a school in the vo-tech/community college category IMO. (Which are important places of learning but I believe the U there stands for University).
EDIT: Others have commented that this is just that the # of students taking courses vs. the # of students in the major. The phrase "program enrollment" meant something different to me. This would make the 800k profit make sense.<p>Can someone help me clarify how they're getting to $800k in profit? When I look at their actual numbers, his comments don't make sense.<p><a href="https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/bf3ef02f-e90a-4e43-a316-d295fa489067/academic-transformation-public-data-table_july-17-2023-100.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/bf3ef02f-e90a-4e43-a316-d295...</a><p>They somehow have 18000+ credit hours to their department in a year, but only 61 enrolled students in fall 2022 which, means an average student enrolled was taking 310 credits? Or ~150ish if the 2022 credit hours is for both fall & spring?<p>My guess is that these are $0 credits. Most universities allow you to meet your "foreign languages requirement" by showing your High School transcripts, and then you get those credits applied to your degree. $0 profit. The later part of the spreadsheet clearly shows how impossible this is - they did not make $6.7M with 61 students' tuition. Clearly the spreadsheet is just a dumb formula multiplying by the credits..<p>So either they're somehow the most expensive foreign language school in the world, with 1 instructor per 2 students that folks are paying $50k+/semester..<p>Or their research grants aren't being accounted for correctly? (I don't know how grants work, I am but a lowly swe)<p>Or they're a wildly expensive department that almost no one major's with, and their research grants don't cover their millions in losses to the university.
Speaking as a parent, the state of higher education is shocking.<p>Costs of $300,000 for a 4-year degree ($75K/year for tuition, fees, and housing) is not just possible, it's essentially the norm for many schools that aren't even top-tier. Even state schools will run about $200,000, all-in. God forbid you have more than one child.<p>Universities tout their need-based financial aid, but the cut off is often far below the median salary in high cost of living areas. At that point the aid is "Congratulations, you qualify for student loans!"<p>It's great that more lower-income families can get a full scholarship, but the middle class has been priced out of everything but state schools and community college.
For reference, here are all the proposed WVU cuts by dept (~7.25% total faculty reduction): <a href="https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/da8e760e-d129-47c1-b06d-5fe927b2ec34/summary-of-preliminary-recommendations-for-faculty-reduction_8-13-23.xlsx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/da8e760e-d129-47c1-b06d-5fe9...</a><p>More context: <a href="https://wvutoday.wvu.edu/stories/2023/08/11/wvu-announces-preliminary-recommendations-academic-transformation-next-steps" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://wvutoday.wvu.edu/stories/2023/08/11/wvu-announces-pr...</a> and
<a href="https://provost.wvu.edu/academic-transformation/academic-program-portfolio-review" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://provost.wvu.edu/academic-transformation/academic-pro...</a>
From the anonymous report [0] linked here:<p>> Beyond the irregular manner in which she was hired, the most unusual thing about Maryanne Reed as a Provost is that she does not hold a doctorate in her field (or any other). The Provost is responsible for overseeing graduate education, assessment of Faculty research, and the administration of tenure, which is normally based on research and limited to faculty with doctorates (Reed herself was a rare exception to this pattern as a professor of journalism). A Provost with no experience in any of these areas is highly unusual.<p>As far as I'm aware, a Provost, or any academic executive, at a four-year research university without a PhD is super duper shady.<p>Imagine a Distinguished Fellow at Microsoft or somewhere like that whose previous job was a rank consultant at Deloitte. It's like that, afaik.<p>While Maryanne Reed, who holds an MS in Journalism, spent a lot of time at WVU (30 years as an assistant professor, which is usually the highest teaching position you can get without a PhD), her progression is still very unusual in academia.<p>Outside that, it appears as if WVU is being robbed from the inside.<p>I feel bad for the students.<p>[0] <a href="https://archive.ph/uhQi1" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://archive.ph/uhQi1</a>
I'm not going to lie - while it sucks for the departments affected, I actually think universities cutting tiny departments is probably a good thing and more universities are probably going to follow suit.<p>This kind of hints at a deep growing conflict inside of higher-ed - is the primary beneficiary the students and undergraduate programs, or is it the academic community and graduate program?<p>Having niche programs is only debatably good for students! While it may feel fancy to have some as feathers in your cap, the reality is that most students would be better off going to a college that specializes in their field rather than getting a sub-par experience from a novelty program added to round out "offerings".
> operating profits of more than $800,000 in each of the last three years<p>while I'm sympathetic to their plight, the notion of "profit" for an individual department of a university is probably laughable to a real accountant (which I'm not).<p>College finances are indeed a disaster, though, and it's mostly their own fault:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37090403">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37090403</a>
probably lot of money went to stupid gym, sport teams, and fancy buildings for cover of a brochure, while all is needed for these folks and their students to perform is a classroom with a blackboard, some desk, laptop, internet connection, and a place to hangout. That is all needed for 90% of education.
I completely sympathize with the author and his colleagues. However, I would respectfully say given the state of the university, please do not contemplate staying back.<p>It seems most of the authors’ colleagues have external funding sources which they can take with them.<p>Make a clean break. The relationship right now is broken. I wouldn’t try to mend it. It’ll just cause more stress as time goes on.
What do you think is easier? Cutting administrators and forcing a restructure of your university? Or cutting entire departments wholesale?<p>It's classic vertical versus horizontal scaling, just with people's life work.
Professor Katz states that one of the reasons for the cut is ideological, though he does not elaborate. Does anyone have any idea of what he's talking about?
As it turns out, middle and working class people finally figured out it isn’t worth paying $100k for book club. One of the mistaken beliefs of many Americans is that class isn’t a big thing here. And with this mistaken belief, millions have bought the lie that they too could do book club or art club and the associated lifestyle of young adult daycare and actually end up in a better place. Naive parents stood in front of the “Mission Accomplished” banner teary eyed as their youngster went away to some school far from home that guaranteed a better life for them. If only they’d go into crippling debt.<p>Happy to see this correction but sad it took so many ruined lives to get there.<p>If you’re middle class or less and not exceptionally academically able then the only acceptable outcome is you exit an affordable college with a useful degree. The other crap is for rich kids that can study botany and end up at their dads hedge fund one day. No one is funding your “finding yourself”or w/e. Don’t be a sucker.