Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[bio-nonymous]

St. Cloud State in Minnesota announced plans to terminate 46 out of 136 degree programs.  See page 42 of this slide show:  https://www.scribd.com/document/729982751/St-Cloud-State-University-Budget-Update-May-6-2024#from_embed

St. Cloud apparently is the most worse off financially of all of the MN state schools.

With a steadily declining and 50% enrollment drop since 2011 something had to give!

[EdnaMode]

One 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/

[Golazo]

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
[/quote]

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. 

[lightning]

One 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.

[Wahoo Redux]

One 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.

[Hibush]

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.

[Wahoo Redux]

IHE: Keystone College in danger of closing

[secundem_artem]

One 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.

If Artem U proposed that, I'd be out the door by this afternoon.  Earlier retirement offers from this year consisted of a 1 term sabbatical in the fall at full pay, followed by continued payments towards our health benefits for the spring semester but no pay.  Then, a firm handshake, hearty congratulations, and don't let the door hit you in the arse on the way out.

[Asymptotic]

Not sure where the money is going because their tuition is among the highest in the Big Ten.

Administrative bloat. Main campus has an absurd number of redundant administrators. They sign our emails so I know.

[Asymptotic]

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.

Yeah, this really pissed me off considering we were hired with the promise that we would look forward to multiple of your contracts for the rest of our career. Of course the president received something called an evergreen contract, which means she will be renewed in perpetuity. What is good for the goose is not for the gander at Penn State and it stinks.

[Asymptotic]

Nassau Community College isn't on the brink of collapse, but it is going through hard times. Massive consolidation of departments, and they have got rid of all their food services.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/institutions/community-colleges/2024/04/17/nassau-community-college-consolidates-departments
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nassau-community-college-cafeteria-cafe-snack-bar-close/

Given the massive taxes residents of Nassau County pay, it's a little ironic. But their property taxes don't go towards the community college.

Nassau County is a cesspool of political corruption and waste. But at least the rookie cops there make $100,000 a year to do jack shit. This used to be an excellent institution of higher education.

[downer]

Nassau Community College isn't on the brink of collapse, but it is going through hard times. Massive consolidation of departments, and they have got rid of all their food services.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/institutions/community-colleges/2024/04/17/nassau-community-college-consolidates-departments
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nassau-community-college-cafeteria-cafe-snack-bar-close/

Given the massive taxes residents of Nassau County pay, it's a little ironic. But their property taxes don't go towards the community college.

Nassau County is a cesspool of political corruption and waste. But at least the rookie cops there make $100,000 a year to do jack shit. This used to be an excellent institution of higher education.

I won't disagree about the corruption. I'm not sure how much of a role it plays in the plight of NCCC. I do get the impression that faculty morale is low.

[treeoflife]

Other community colleges in NYS are going through the same thing. Rockland County community college announced similar measures in April and the numbers do not lie, with %50 decline in enrollment since covid-19 the budget must be cut.

[jimbogumbo]

.   And, no, contrary to popular belief, the growth in administrators is not the cause of most
institutions' demise. 
mm

Maybe, but it sure doesn't help. Here is a recent Atlantic piece: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/no-one-knows-what-universities-are-for/ar-BB1m2mbD

[Wahoo Redux]

.   And, no, contrary to popular belief, the growth in administrators is not the cause of most
institutions' demise. 
mm

Maybe, but it sure doesn't help. Here is a recent Atlantic piece: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/no-one-knows-what-universities-are-for/ar-BB1m2mbD

The world has more pressing issues than overstaffing at America's colleges. But it's nonetheless a real problem that could be a factor in rising college costs.

Okay, granted.  But it is also a very serious problem.  American higher ed is approaching deep crisis, if it is not there already.  We seem to have progressed to a state in which education----a cornerstone of civilization----is being both over prescribed and taken for granted.

And the protests aren't helping.

Attenuating our colleges is serious business.  Peeps should keep that in mind.

After all, higher education is a labor-intensive industry in which worker compensation is driving inflation, and for much of the 21st century, compensation costs grew fastest among noninstructional professional positions. Some of these job cuts could result in lower graduation rates or reduced quality of life on campus. Many others might go unnoticed by students and faculty. In the 2018 book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, David Graeber drew on his experience as a college professor to excoriate college admin jobs that were "so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case." 

Another reason to care about the growth of university bureaucracy is that it siphons power away from instructors and researchers at institutions that are—theoretically—dedicated to instruction and research. In the past few decades, many schools have hired more part-time faculty, including adjunct professors, to keep up with teaching demands, while their full-time-staff hires have disproportionately been for administration positions. As universities shift their resources toward admin, they don't just create resentment among faculty; they may constrict the faculty's academic freedom.

And DEI sure seems to be a pinata these days. 

"Take something like diversity, equity, and inclusion," Ginsberg said. "Many colleges who adopt DEI principles have left-liberal faculty who, of course, are in favor of the principles of DEI, in theory," he said. But the logic of a bureaucracy is to take any mission and grow its power indefinitely, whether or not such growth serves the underlying institution. "Before long, many schools create provosts for diversity, and for equity, and for inclusion. These provosts hold lots of meetings. They create a set of principles. They tell faculty to update their syllabi to be consistent with new principles devised in those meetings. And so, before long, you've built an administrative body that is directly intruding on the core function of teaching."