The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Many Penn State Commonwealth campuses are indeed in big trouble. They are among the most vulnerable in the excess high-education capacity in Pennsylvania, especially in the rural areas where demand is dropping especially fast.

Commonwealth campuses have lost about 20% of enrollment in the last four years and currenly serve about 23,000 undergrads. Many of these satellite PSU campuses were set up to accommodate the GI bill enrolment after WWII and the baby boom that follwed, so the original need is no longer there. Furthermore, they compete directly with the also-struggling PASSHE system of public colleges which enrolls 70,000 undergrads. PASSHE schools have featured regularly in this thread.

Ten of the PSU Commonwalth campuses have 500 or fewer undergrads, which is unsustainable for a university and a rounding error in the PSU system enrollment. The problem isn't just size because four of the five larger campuses (2,500-4,000 undergrads) are losing students at the same pace.

An article in the local news outlet indicates that Penn State faculty know that a reduction is in order, their criticism is that the reductions could be done much better than the what administration is doing. That hurts morale a lot. Have the trustees brought in a chancellor who will make big cuts the trustees see as necessary, absorb all the faculty resentment, and then leave taking that resentment with them?

The pattern of strong campuses gaining and weak campuses losing is evident at PSU as well. The flagship PSU campus has high and rising enrolment, expected to crack 50,000 next fall. The one larger (4,000) Commonwealth campus that is strong is in the capital, Harrisburg.

To put the higher-ed overcapacity in numbers: Pennsylvania has 100 undergrads per 1,000 population, versus California 50 and Florida 30.

Quote from: lightning on May 08, 2024, 08:22:32 PM

Quote from: EdnaMode on May 08, 2024, 04:59:37 PMOne of my friends just sent me this. He's at one of the Commonwealth Campuses and is worried about the future. They have already been told that for teaching faculty, regardless of years of service or rank, their 5 year contracts will be converted to one year. Several of their engineering departments do not have enough faculty to teach the required courses because faculty who have retired or left for other positions have not been replaced. He said his particular campus has not run at a deficit in the several years he's been there, but the administration at University Park is making the majority of the cuts from the Commonwealth Campuses. Not sure where the money is going because their tuition is among the highest in the Big Ten.

Penn State offers Voluntary Separation Incentive Program to eligible Commonwealth Campus employees

https://www.psu.edu/news/administration/story/penn-state-offers-voluntary-separation-incentive-program-eligible-commonwealth/

1 year of salary as buyout? That's it?!? Bollocks. There's a sucker born every minute, I guess.

That was the standard when they were buying out faculty at my old place.  Some were offered 80% of salary.

Quote from: fishbrains on May 08, 2024, 02:33:46 PMIf I were Lord-God-King of the universe, all schools at any level receiving any federal funding would be required to have the same summer break, fall break, winter break, and spring break, so family members can take vacations at the same time.

This is what happens in English primary and secondary schools. It means that everyone knows when families can go on vacation, and prices are raised accordingly. Which means that families take their kids out of school during term-time, so they can actually afford to go to the Lake District or on that quick jaunt to Paris. So ... not a good strategy after all.

Quote from: EdnaMode on May 08, 2024, 04:59:37 PMOne of my friends just sent me this. He's at one of the Commonwealth Campuses and is worried about the future. They have already been told that for teaching faculty, regardless of years of service or rank, their 5 year contracts will be converted to one year. Several of their engineering departments do not have enough faculty to teach the required courses because faculty who have retired or left for other positions have not been replaced. He said his particular campus has not run at a deficit in the several years he's been there, but the administration at University Park is making the majority of the cuts from the Commonwealth Campuses. Not sure where the money is going because their tuition is among the highest in the Big Ten.

Penn State offers Voluntary Separation Incentive Program to eligible Commonwealth Campus employees

https://www.psu.edu/news/administration/story/penn-state-offers-voluntary-separation-incentive-program-eligible-commonwealth/

1 year of salary as buyout? That's it?!? Bollocks. There's a sucker born every minute, I guess.

Quote from: rochish on May 08, 2024, 05:18:58 PMHello everyone,

I need to file an appeal to our University's Faculty Grievance Committee. However, I have never done this before and so I'm not sure how to go about it and if there are any best practices. If you have any insights or experiences, I would be grateful if you could share them.

In addition, I am looking for examples of appeal documents (fully recognizing that the issues under consideration will be totally different). I was able to find one such document online (https://legalinsurrection.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/2023.01.16-Amy-Wax-Grievance.pdf).

If anyone of you is aware of any other appeals submitted to Grievance Committees available online, I would appreciate knowing.

Thank you.

Your grievance officer(s) should be the ones helping you with this.

And, no, contrary to popular belief, the growth in administrators is not the cause of most
institutions' demise.  Most programs return negative contribution to overhead to begin with. It's only aux services, grants, development and non rare occasions athletics and certain grad programs which brings the entire institution into the black. Yes, there has been an explosive growth in administrators, but that has mostly occurred at institutions that can afford it and where students and parents expect it. Medium and small institutions typically function with administrative understaffing relative to the workload.

Note: if your institution has bled 50% or more of its senior leadership in the last 3 years, enrollment is down 15% or more over the past 5-7 years, it hasn't recently gone thru a reckoning and your endowment is less than 150M, buckle up and dust off that ole CV. They are lying to you.

mm
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Most universities lose money on athletics. The impact of a program really depends on how you calculate the costs, but many programs that are often maligned make money due to low costs. By contrast, one administrator once told me that that big value of nursing was all the of the students who can't actually hack the science in nursing but stay at the institution, since nursing is so expensive to run, it barely breaks even, despite the large number of nursing and pre-nursing majors. The argument that small and medium institutions are usually administratively understaffed really varies. 

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on May 08, 2024, 05:32:09 PM

Quote from: Puget on May 08, 2024, 01:40:04 PMTwo good pieces of grant news in one day!
But I have a ton of work and grading to do. Finding it very hard to concentrate.

Congratulations!

Thank you! I'm really excited to get to do this work (which is a brand new direction for my lab) with a very cool team of collaborators. I just really need a couple weeks to catch my breath right now which I don't have. Definitely falls under the category of good problems to have though!

Quote from: Puget on May 08, 2024, 01:40:04 PMTwo good pieces of grant news in one day!
But I have a ton of work and grading to do. Finding it very hard to concentrate.

Congratulations!

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on May 08, 2024, 07:06:23 AMJust a bit of T1 today.

Small chunk.

Hello everyone,

I need to file an appeal to our University's Faculty Grievance Committee. However, I have never done this before and so I'm not sure how to go about it and if there are any best practices. If you have any insights or experiences, I would be grateful if you could share them.

In addition, I am looking for examples of appeal documents (fully recognizing that the issues under consideration will be totally different). I was able to find one such document online (https://legalinsurrection.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/2023.01.16-Amy-Wax-Grievance.pdf).

If anyone of you is aware of any other appeals submitted to Grievance Committees available online, I would appreciate knowing.

Thank you.