Seven professors were dismissed! Colleges and universities abolished liberal arts
Original Focus on Higher Education Max Research 2024-05-03 18:18
Morning Mist / Repost
去年秋天，纽约州立大学波茨坦分校（State University of New York at Potsdam）传出风声，一些培养项目将会终止，一些教师将要走人。
Recently, the rumors have finally landed. In the wake of a $9 million debt crisis, the university laid off seven tenured professors (effective a year later) and reached agreements with more than 30 faculty members to voluntarily leave the university.
And this is only the first "cut" to the teacher. The chairman of the school's Faculty Senate is worried, estimating that the crisis will affect nearly 70 to 100 staff members, including retirements, voluntary departures and layoffs.
David Curry, a professor of philosophy at the university, wrote an article this month in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The dismissal notice, which was abruptly announced, saw at least one of the dismissed professors have been teaching for more than 35 years, more than 18 training programs have been terminated, and many more have a lack of full-time faculty teaching, almost all of which are humanities disciplines......
In fact, the State University of New York at Potsdam was "premeditated".
The university presented a "realignment plan" in February 2022, sparking speculation that humanities teachers believe they will be "realignment targets." Some clues have made it difficult for many humanities teachers to sleep. For example, Professor Kerry's philosophy department sent away four retired professors in 2018 and 2020, but the school did not replenish new blood.
In response to the anxiety of many teachers, the school's teachers' council passed two high-profile resolutions in May and September 2023, one calling for a review of any actions or policies involving teacher layoffs. The second is to require schools to stop any financial optimization plans unless the rationale of the plan has been justified and made public to all teachers.
Needless to say, the school management chose to ignore these proposals, and in the end, we went our own way.
Be optimized in optimization
In recent years, scenes of "change", active "transformation", and "optimization" have been proposed, and then the relationship has been suspended, and the scene of dismissal of teachers has been staged in American universities.
#2022年9月, Emporia State University in Kansas resigned 30 tenured professors or tenured professors. "Extreme financial pressure" was the main reason cited by the school in explaining the decision;
#2023年8月11日 (local time), West Virginia University decided to abolish 32 majors, or 9 percent of the total majors, including the foreign language department, and cut 7 percent of its faculty and staff, a total of 169 people, in order to fill the $45 million financial gap;
#进入2024年, Marquette University announced a $31 million reduction in operating expenses over the next six years, and where to reduce the school is still under consideration, Wright State University announced the discontinuation of 34 programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including art history, rehabilitation consulting, engineering physics and other majors, and Valparaiso University University) is considering canceling 28 programs, which will be announced at the beginning of the new semester this fall and completely discontinued in 2027.
……
Factors such as financial crisis and declining student population are important reasons for these American universities to reduce expenses and reduce staff, and in addition, "the epidemic accelerated the crisis" is a powerful rhetoric for the university.
The American Association of University Professors has researched this issue and released a special report on Covid-19 and Academic Governance. The report mentions that due to severe challenges such as recruitment, the trend of restructuring colleges and universities after the epidemic has become more and more obvious:
…… The financial management level of many colleges and universities has been low for many years, and (after the epidemic) the school investors and presidents suddenly woke up to the fact that they should change the institutions under their command to the characteristics of "flexibility", "sustainability" and "appropriate scale", so many colleges and universities shouted the slogan of "reconstruction" and "innovation", resolutely made changes and took a brave step......
The impact of the transition is manifold, and the bad side has led to the burial of many teachers' careers, and the quality of education received by students has significantly declined during the transition period.
Of course, the predicament mentioned by these American colleges and universities is not what some netizens speculated, "just an excuse for faculty and staff, all of which are made out of nothing or exaggerated." For example, the State University of New York at Potsdam, for example, has seen its enrollment plummet from 4,224 in 2012 to 2,501 in 2023, with a $9 million annual deficit in the school's accounts. Although the school is part of the State University of New York (SUNY) system, Chancellor Suzanne Smith admitted late last year that "there is no assistance, and the above (SUNY) refuses to provide any assistance." "In short, it's all on your own, and personnel expenses account for the bulk of the school's expenses......
In 2020, Kenneth Macur, then president of Medaille University, announced a number of orders, including a rewrite of the faculty management manual, the elimination of some professors, the cutting of some training programs, and the abolition of tenure. The school's teachers felt the principal's ambition in a letter written by Markle himself, "It's time to make up your mind and make great efforts to create the most suitable future model for the school." ”
Whether this model will work for McDowell University is unknown, but there is certainly no future for this future-oriented model, as McDowell University closed permanently on August 31, 2023 (local time).
Why is it always the liberal arts that gets hurt?
With fewer and fewer students, more and more deficits, and high daily operating expenses, foreign universities are reducing their staff, suspending majors, and even closing down their faculties in order to make ends meet. In the context of "survival", a series of optimization and reconstruction actions are also helpless and necessary operations.
Judging from the final decision-making of universities, liberal arts or humanities will always become the "hardest hit area" for the optimization and adjustment of universities.
Forbes reported earlier this year that Fontbonne University in St. Louis issued a "austerity plan" to close 21 academic programs and cut 19 faculty positions in the face of a $5.2 million budget shortfall.
Fengbang University will discontinue a number of undergraduate majors, including Actuarial Science, Fine Arts, Global Studies, Early Childhood Special Education, Health Care Administration, and Religious Studies, as well as graduate programs such as Art and Fine Arts. Of the 19 teaching posts to be abolished, five are university teachers in the arts.
Methodist University in North Carolina reportedly plans to repeal 30 teaching positions, as well as a number of academic programs and majors, including fine arts, music, music performance, music composition, special education, and more. The university hopes to reduce spending by around $1.75 million and direct resources to other areas of growth.
"The university is realigning and withdrawing non-growth areas (majors) that have had low enrollment for many years and have no projections for future growth," Methodist said. The main reason for the abolition of majors is that they require high-level faculty resources, but the number of students is low. ”
In times of crisis, it is difficult for a profession without a future to find a strong reason for oneself to step into the future.
In recent years, a number of institutions, such as the Chronicle of Higher Education, have conducted public surveys about the value of higher education. The results show that "finding a job after graduation, or going further to find a high-paying job", has become the unwavering belief of the majority of the American public about the value of higher education. Philosophy, history, art, sculpture, literature, dance, foreign languages and other humanities majors, even with a deep history of hundreds or even thousands of years, have become typical representatives of "learning that thing is useless" in the eyes of the public.
The U.S. economy is in a downturn, the aftermath of the epidemic is endless, and the job market is becoming more and more difficult. And the harder it is, the more deeply rooted the idea of finding a good job, and even some majors in STEM fields face similar problems in the humanities. Spanish, drama, and theoretical physics majors finally have something in common, "What can I do after graduation?"
The future financial plans announced by many colleges and universities mention that limited resources should be used to the best of their ability, and the training programs or majors that are heavily invested must be the most sought-after and most popular in today's job market. In other words, it is a profession that is good for employment.
Obviously, the "Qinggao" liberal arts majors that disdain employment are always the first to appear in the center of the optimization and reform of colleges and universities. The State University of New York at Potsdam, SUNY at Fredonia and SUNY at Plattsburgh have all drastically reduced the size of their philosophy majors, each retaining only one full-time professor, Professor Kerry wrote.
In addition to declining student resources and serious deficits, the decline in local finances is also an important factor in the downsizing of American universities. Still taking the State University of New York system as an example, the State University of New York system received $1.34 billion in financial aid from New York State in 2023, compared to $1.9 billion nearly 20 years ago (in 2004). Taking into account inflation, "the financial support received by SUNY has been cut in half. Frederick Kowal, president of the SUNY System Labor Union, said.
To make matters worse, some colleges and universities do not seem to have had an immediate effect.
As mentioned earlier, in 2022, Empolia State University has resigned more than 30 tenured professors in order to alleviate "extreme emergency pressure". A year later, the school's enrollment rate had fallen by 12.5 percentage points, while enrollment at other public universities in the state had increased by an average of 2 percentage points over the same period.
In the long run, it remains to be seen whether reforms at universities such as Empolia State University, West Virginia University, which has cut its entire foreign language department, and the State University of New York at Potsdam, which has been a killer in the liberal arts, will be effective.
However, many people in colleges and universities said that "going to the liberal arts" may not bring attraction to school enrollment, and the reduction of expenses is more of a game of "school movement" by school administrators, investors and other stakeholders.
As Professor Kerry said, in the context of declining student resources and economic downturn, how to "save the life" of schools and how to save themselves in the humanities requires some large-scale comprehensive universities and small colleges and universities that lack characteristics to think about and deal with them.
Key References:
[1] The Gutting of the Liberal Arts. The Chronicle of Higher Education. April 8, 2024.
[2] Special Report: COVID-19 and Academic Governance. American Association of University Professors.
[3] Emporia State University, Kansas Board of Regents members “unfit to lead” investigation finds. Kansas Reflector. May 1, 2023.
[4] University funding is urgent, and the "wave of revocation" of liberal arts is coming. Max Research Official Account. 2024-01-25.
Source: 2024-05-03 WeChat official account Max Research
ID：MyCOS_Research
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