Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[marshwiggle]

University of Arkansas at Little Rock is now looking at cutting and eliminating various programs.  Among the proposed cuts, performing arts, any foreign languages besides Spanish, and several engineering programs that haven't been doing too well at UALR.  And the usual reductions to English, History, etc.



https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2020/mar/31/ualr-looks-at-academic-program-cuts-202-1/

Some of those majors that are proposed to be cut, require talent, prepared academic backgrounds, tenacity, and hard work from students. That's often why numbers are low in those majors. Sadly that can leave a university with a majority of programs that are fluff, and a student population, the majority of whom have no talent, are unprepared academically, can't stick with anything, and think hard work is reading 20 pages a day. This will lower the overall reputation of the university, and devalue the credential from UALR, continuing the cycle of mediocrity to its inevitable end.

We are letting American higher ed crash.

By the description of the student body above, maybe that's not such a bad thing.

Like the adjunct situation, where a good remedy would be replacing lots of lousy jobs with fewer reasonable ones, part of the solution for students is to provide a better education for a smaller number who are prepared and dedicated. Institutions that contribute to both the adjunct problem and the student problem described are probably not worthy of a lot of propping up.

[polly_mer]

IHE indicates that even institutions that wouldn't normally make the dire financial straits thread have announced hiring freezes as a way to cope with the current crisis.

But fine, you asked so I will give it a shot in a single sentence: I would like to see a steady and concerted progress over a number of years toward condensing PT academic jobs into FT jobs---thus reducing the total number of people employed in academia but giving them careers and restoring stability and quality to higher ed---by activating the populace's willingness to spend a fraction of America's vast wealth to restore North American higher ed alongside many other worthy projects.

The time to have done that was forty years ago. 

Technically, some places could do some consolidation.  However, trying today is really a non-starter in most cases, even in the places that have adjunct armies so it looks as though consolidation should work.  If someone does the math, then it's less likely the decision will be to find extra money to consolidate, say, 80 part-time positions to 20 full-time positions, and it's much more likely to look at the admissions side to decide that perhaps those general education requirements can be met in other ways.

I haven't written recently in detail about what some changes in student preparedness means for general education demand so I"ll do that here.

NEA published an article a couple years ago titled: Dual Enrollment's Expansion: Cause for Concern  The causes for concern include huge growth in the students finishing college credits in high school for students who haven't already maxed out in high school; indeed, some of the students are struggling with high school classes, but are enrolled in dual credit.  Not listed as  a primary cause for concern is jobs for college professors at institutions that will enroll students who have already completed their general education requirements.

The growth in AP likewise reduces the demand for the bread-and-butter college general education courses.

I can't find stats on how many people are taking CLEP to get college credit cheaper than taking the courses, but I can find many recent articles advising people to do so.

Stats on the number of students who start at community college to complete their general education requirements cheaper are easier to find: About half of all people who earned a college degree in recent years started at community colleges.

One memorable fall term at Super Dinky several years ago, we only needed one ENGL 101 section because the entering class either had credit to skip or placed into developmental English (not taught out of the English department). 

Thus, people who are looking at where faculty are needed and are allocating lines appropriately based on student demand for classes are very unlikely to be looking to expand full-time slots in the general education courses that traditionally have armies of adjuncts.  Instead, the decision makers are likely to be looking to just cut positions as the demand drops for the bread-and-butter, taught-everywhere-including-dual-enrollment-by-HS-teachers-with-graduate-degrees courses.  It's possible that individual departments will cut full-time positions and slightly expand part-time positions to give greater variety of the one-off electives that will fill (like Zombie Apocalypse below).


The idea was floated recently that the small colleges could just add another position or two to grow full-time faculty positions in the heavily adjuncted fields.  I'll use MacMurray as an example of what can happen at a tiny school since they were mentioned recently here and have their course schedule available to the public.


MacMurray College lists no English department; instead, it has a Humanities Programs with the first entry as physics and math, an interesting choice.  There are three people listed as composition faculty and one English faculty member.  THere's one philosophy professor and one history professor.  This is not at all uncommon for the tiny SLACs holding on by their finger tips with 20-30 full-time faculty total to serve a few hundred students.  Indeed, I'm surprised that MacMurray has three full-time faculty in composition because that seems large.  The humanities program has one professional fellow lwith no expertise listed.

Going over to the course schedule, there are 10 sections of composition listed, including one with a name that comes back to a librarian.  However, there are 31 seats open across the 10 sections of 155 seats.  Some of those sections meet at exactly the same time with neither one full or even really close to full.  One of the sections is capped at 20 possible seats while the others are capped at 15.  It looks a lot like these sections could have been consolidated in some way even to keep the cap at 15 for more feedback possible to each student.  Letting the cap float to 20ish would allow for further consolidation.

There are four English sections listed with only two being taught by the English professor and others by comp folks. One of the comp folks is teaching a section of VCON 302: Value Conflicts: Renaissance-Modern alongside the philosophy professor(2 sections) and the political science professor (2 sections).

Doing the math, 4 full-time faculty members at four sections each is 16 sections.  Using the math above, we have 9+4+1 for 14 sections.  It's entirely reasonable to let the comp director have a course release and perhaps someone else needs one as well for something.  It's unclear how MacMurray would have load for another full-time faculty member in English or composition since it looks a lot like they were scrambling to have something for faculty to teach even with caps of 15 on bread-and-butter sections.

Looking at other parts of general education, it's noticeable that there are only 4 English electives and they are capped at 19/20.

There are only 2 philosophy courses and one is Management and Business Ethics.  Again with caps of 20ish.

There's one political science class (I looked because MacMurray brags in their recent news about a new major: PPE: Philosophy, Political Science, and Economics and philosophy is not obviously carrying that load).

There are two econ courses listed: one with an enrollment of 8 and one with 48 students spread over three sections.

There are 4 history courses, but one is the same course in two sections that has a total enrollment of 22.

Searching on the name of the professional fellow listed in the humanities program, she is listed as teaching two computer courses: presentation software and database applications.

In summary, MacMurray, like most tiny at-one-time-LACs, had already consolidated any armies of adjuncts in the humanities and was still struggling to find enough work for their full-time faculty who lost the majors and are only supporting general education.  These are the institutions that will close in the next year and there's no way they will be hiring enough full-time people now to matter at all to the national adjunct-in-certain-fields job lack.

[tuxthepenguin]

University of Arkansas at Little Rock is now looking at cutting and eliminating various programs.  Among the proposed cuts, performing arts, any foreign languages besides Spanish, and several engineering programs that haven't been doing too well at UALR.  And the usual reductions to English, History, etc.



https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2020/mar/31/ualr-looks-at-academic-program-cuts-202-1/

Some of those majors that are proposed to be cut, require talent, prepared academic backgrounds, tenacity, and hard work from students. That's often why numbers are low in those majors. Sadly that can leave a university with a majority of programs that are fluff, and a student population, the majority of whom have no talent, are unprepared academically, can't stick with anything, and think hard work is reading 20 pages a day. This will lower the overall reputation of the university, and devalue the credential from UALR, continuing the cycle of mediocrity to its inevitable end.

We are letting American higher ed crash.

By the description of the student body above, maybe that's not such a bad thing.

Like the adjunct situation, where a good remedy would be replacing lots of lousy jobs with fewer reasonable ones, part of the solution for students is to provide a better education for a smaller number who are prepared and dedicated. Institutions that contribute to both the adjunct problem and the student problem described are probably not worthy of a lot of propping up.

I think that statement (about UALR students) is excessive. There are some community colleges where that might be a reasonable description, but UALR is pretty standard as non-elite public universities are concerned. They have a small number of elite students, a ton of good students, and a few really bad students that will attend for a semester or a year. It's definitely not a majority of students, and very few of those are going to make it to the third year.

[polly_mer]

Perhaps more people need to know that approximately 40% of everyone who starts college drops out before earning a degree.

The figures are higher for those who need college the most with only 16% of students from low income families completing a college degree.

Someone on a thread months ago asked whether college graduates who come from low SES families really do worse with a degree in a liberal arts field.   I still can't answer that question because so few low SES students get college degrees at all, let alone in the liberal arts from an institution that represents a typical, not elite, education.  The folks who get a liberal arts degree from an elite institution and who end up with the social capital as well as the education do fine, as long as they are willing to go where the jobs are.

[Wahoo Redux]

I think we do know about college drop-out rates.  That subject has frequented this forum. We've talked about the deceptive numbers (as does this interview, noting that CC drop-out rates pull the numbers down) and offers nothing substantially new.

For instance, when pressed for an example of how to change the drop-out rate, the interviewee offers this nugget:

Western Michigan University decided to change the equation of failure, and it is succeeding. WMU gives these students ["foster kids"] a free financial ride. At least as important is how the university intentionally builds a community, beginning the summer before college. They live on campus during the time they're enrolled at WMU. Crucially, they have a "coach" who takes on the roles of academic adviser, social worker, mentor and parent.

Great.  Marvelous.  That is wonderful.

Aren't we complaining a lot about the cost of higher ed?  You want to reduce costs?  Is it a big surprise that if you give a student a free-ride and a coach hu is going to do a lot better than hu would otherwise? 

The result:

This support pays off: 44 percent of the foster-care youth graduate, and while that's below the 54 percent overall graduation rate at WMU, it's a whole lot better than 10 percent! [which is the rate which "foster kids" generally graduate]

So even with a free-ride and a life-coach we're still at 40 percent.  Maybe this is just the percentage of people who will stick it out and graduate college.

And is it really a big surprise that with a lot of expensive support students do better?

All of us could teach the heck-fire out of our students AND boost the overall graduation rate AND get quantifiable results AND support those most in need if we had full-rides and time enough to teach and coach----BUT we will need to pay for it.

The whole have your cake thing.

I understand that a lot of people appreciate Polly's posts, but talking with her is a bit like a family argument at Thanksgiving: I know what she's said in the past and I know the stuff she is looking for.  Right now it is in vogue to be outraged at higher ed.  Polly, you have fallen into the pit. 

[marshwiggle]

This support pays off: 44 percent of the foster-care youth graduate, and while that's below the 54 percent overall graduation rate at WMU, it's a whole lot better than 10 percent! [which is the rate which "foster kids" generally graduate]

So even with a free-ride and a life-coach we're still at 40 percent.  Maybe this is just the percentage of people who will stick it out and graduate college.

And is it really a big surprise that with a lot of expensive support students do better?

All of us could teach the heck-fire out of our students AND boost the overall graduation rate AND get quantifiable results AND support those most in need if we had full-rides and time enough to teach and coach----BUT we will need to pay for it.

But a lot of money could be saved if we could reliably predict even half of the people who aren't likely to complete, and funnel them into more productive life choices. (In fact, those people are going to suck up support resources that would be better targetted to the ones who are likely to complete.)

More money for certain things is going to be worth it. However, that doesn't negate the reality that there may be other areas where the solution is wiser decision-making; not more money.

[Wahoo Redux]

You're suggesting we "funnel [people] into more productive life choices"?

Marshy, you ever consider moving to North Korea?  You'd do well there.

[apl68]

MacMurray College lists no English department; instead, it has a Humanities Programs with the first entry as physics and math, an interesting choice.  There are three people listed as composition faculty and one English faculty member.  THere's one philosophy professor and one history professor.  This is not at all uncommon for the tiny SLACs holding on by their finger tips with 20-30 full-time faculty total to serve a few hundred students.  Indeed, I'm surprised that MacMurray has three full-time faculty in composition because that seems large.  The humanities program has one professional fellow lwith no expertise listed.

Going over to the course schedule, there are 10 sections of composition listed, including one with a name that comes back to a librarian.  However, there are 31 seats open across the 10 sections of 155 seats.  Some of those sections meet at exactly the same time with neither one full or even really close to full.  One of the sections is capped at 20 possible seats while the others are capped at 15.  It looks a lot like these sections could have been consolidated in some way even to keep the cap at 15 for more feedback possible to each student.  Letting the cap float to 20ish would allow for further consolidation.

There are four English sections listed with only two being taught by the English professor and others by comp folks. One of the comp folks is teaching a section of VCON 302: Value Conflicts: Renaissance-Modern alongside the philosophy professor(2 sections) and the political science professor (2 sections).

Doing the math, 4 full-time faculty members at four sections each is 16 sections.  Using the math above, we have 9+4+1 for 14 sections.  It's entirely reasonable to let the comp director have a course release and perhaps someone else needs one as well for something.  It's unclear how MacMurray would have load for another full-time faculty member in English or composition since it looks a lot like they were scrambling to have something for faculty to teach even with caps of 15 on bread-and-butter sections.

Looking at other parts of general education, it's noticeable that there are only 4 English electives and they are capped at 19/20.

There are only 2 philosophy courses and one is Management and Business Ethics.  Again with caps of 20ish.

There's one political science class (I looked because MacMurray brags in their recent news about a new major: PPE: Philosophy, Political Science, and Economics and philosophy is not obviously carrying that load).

There are two econ courses listed: one with an enrollment of 8 and one with 48 students spread over three sections.

There are 4 history courses, but one is the same course in two sections that has a total enrollment of 22.

Searching on the name of the professional fellow listed in the humanities program, she is listed as teaching two computer courses: presentation software and database applications.

In summary, MacMurray, like most tiny at-one-time-LACs, had already consolidated any armies of adjuncts in the humanities and was still struggling to find enough work for their full-time faculty who lost the majors and are only supporting general education.  These are the institutions that will close in the next year and there's no way they will be hiring enough full-time people now to matter at all to the national adjunct-in-certain-fields job lack.

My goodness, what a threadbare liberal arts program!  It sounds like their status as a liberal arts college finished bleeding away years ago.  With overall traditional-age student populations declining, and better-resourced schools still available in the region, it really would be awfully difficult to justify bailing a school like this out.  And sadly, like it or not, there seem to be a lot of them.

[apl68]

University of Arkansas at Little Rock is now looking at cutting and eliminating various programs.  Among the proposed cuts, performing arts, any foreign languages besides Spanish, and several engineering programs that haven't been doing too well at UALR.  And the usual reductions to English, History, etc.



https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2020/mar/31/ualr-looks-at-academic-program-cuts-202-1/

Some of those majors that are proposed to be cut, require talent, prepared academic backgrounds, tenacity, and hard work from students. That's often why numbers are low in those majors. Sadly that can leave a university with a majority of programs that are fluff, and a student population, the majority of whom have no talent, are unprepared academically, can't stick with anything, and think hard work is reading 20 pages a day. This will lower the overall reputation of the university, and devalue the credential from UALR, continuing the cycle of mediocrity to its inevitable end.

We are letting American higher ed crash.

By the description of the student body above, maybe that's not such a bad thing.

Like the adjunct situation, where a good remedy would be replacing lots of lousy jobs with fewer reasonable ones, part of the solution for students is to provide a better education for a smaller number who are prepared and dedicated. Institutions that contribute to both the adjunct problem and the student problem described are probably not worthy of a lot of propping up.

I think that statement (about UALR students) is excessive. There are some community colleges where that might be a reasonable description, but UALR is pretty standard as non-elite public universities are concerned. They have a small number of elite students, a ton of good students, and a few really bad students that will attend for a semester or a year. It's definitely not a majority of students, and very few of those are going to make it to the third year.

It's classed as an R2 university, although there are concerns that with cuts like this it might lose that status.

[Wahoo Redux]

But fine, you asked so I will give it a shot in a single sentence: I would like to see a steady and concerted progress over a number of years toward condensing PT academic jobs into FT jobs---thus reducing the total number of people employed in academia but giving them careers and restoring stability and quality to higher ed---by activating the populace's willingness to spend a fraction of America's vast wealth to restore North American higher ed alongside many other worthy projects.

The time to have done that was forty years ago. 

Agreed.  We've talked about that before.

Which just makes our jobs harder now as we try to save higher ed.

[marshwiggle]

You're suggesting we "funnel [people] into more productive life choices"?

Marshy, you ever consider moving to North Korea?  You'd do well there.

Unless I've missed the change, high schools used to have "guidance offices" to help students decide on what to do after graduation. Telling virtually everyone "Go to university!!!" is not particularly helpful. (And if the advice for everyone is the same, the office is a waste of resources.) Directing people to progams, (academic or vocational), based on their abilities and interests, is helpful. Others who have no idea might be better advised to look for emplyment to work for a year or two to give time to consider so they'll make money rather than spend it studying things for no apparent reason because it's "the thing to do".

[Wahoo Redux]

In summary, MacMurray, like most tiny at-one-time-LACs, had already consolidated any armies of adjuncts in the humanities and was still struggling to find enough work for their full-time faculty who lost the majors and are only supporting general education.  These are the institutions that will close in the next year and there's no way they will be hiring enough full-time people now to matter at all to the national adjunct-in-certain-fields job lack.

This is your worst example of cherry-picking yet, Polly, and not representative of anything but MacMurry. 

[spork]

In summary, MacMurray, like most tiny at-one-time-LACs, had already consolidated any armies of adjuncts in the humanities and was still struggling to find enough work for their full-time faculty who lost the majors and are only supporting general education.  These are the institutions that will close in the next year and there's no way they will be hiring enough full-time people now to matter at all to the national adjunct-in-certain-fields job lack.

This is your worst example of cherry-picking yet, Polly, and not representative of anything but MacMurry.

This is exactly what my employer will be doing soon -- and something that should have been done a decade ago. My employer's undergraduate FTE is more than four times larger than MacMurray's was and the proportion of course sections taught by adjuncts to those taught by full-time faculty is below the average for institutions in our category.

What's the undergraduate FTE where you work? The ratio of adjuncts to full-time faculty in terms of classes taught per semester? The percentage of net revenue from tuition? Average number of students per course section? You frequently complain about cherry picking but don't offer any counterexamples. Are you at all familiar with operational expenses at your employer?

[Wahoo Redux]

Yes.  It's all on the web. The reports use jargon that is confusing but I can post what the fiscal year 2019 numbers say if you like.

More germane, we have 41 percent FT teachers /59 percent PT teachers.  Our undergrad lectures generally range between 25 to 40 students, depending on the course, obviously---I don't know the ratio of credit hours per, but those numbers are fairly indicative I think.

And I have mostly kept my comments to the English discipline, which is what I know and which Polly specifically mentioned in regards to MacMurry and which sounds like none of the places I've worked or studied at.

Are you going to join Marshwiggle in simply denying numbers that are generally acknowledged?

Did you just have a temper tantrum?   

Ironically, if any of the several struggling SLACs in our area tank it will be much better for us since we, and they, almost exclusively recruit from the region.  But what a shame for higher ed.

[polly_mer]

People who have never really looked at the tiny colleges of under 1000 students are often stunned at the realities of having 30ish full-time faculty total and under 20 major programs after cutting all the liberal arts majors.

When it closed, Southern Vermont College looked similar to MacMurray, as did others when I looked and was trying to keep Super Dinky afloat.

I recommend people use https://www.collegefactual.com/ to really look at these tiny colleges in terms of overall faculty numbers and how many part-time faculty are being used.  It's not just scaling down a department with 25 full-time faculty and 80 adjuncts.

Go look at colleges mentioned on this thread as having tiny enrollments.  Take a tour through some of the colleges trying to pick up students from MacMurray and place your guesses on how long those places will remain open.


Ask yourself how many students will pick places that brag about having 25-40 student groups and small class sizes of under 20 when those won't be face-to-face classes.

Ask yourself how big a selection of electives are offered with only 2-5 faculty members in a department and how appealing that is to students who want a true liberal arts education.

I pick concrete examples in an effort to give additional perspective to those who may have an intellectual idea but don't really deep-in-their-guts know the stark realities of the breadth of US higher ed.