Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[Wahoo Redux]

I started thread on this over in "General Academic Discussion."

There is a fair amount of research on streaming / tracking out there.

Yes, Wikipedia has the pros and cons.  And, not that I doubt your experience, there are a lot of cons, some of which are very specific to American culture I am sure but are cons nevertheless. 

[marshwiggle]

Faculty should be putting together ideas to improve what they're doing now and to add new things employers want.

Amen, brother.

I'm honestly confused here. Where is the line between "add new things employers want" and "job training"?

[polly_mer]

Ah, Wahoo, you keep acting as though I'm proposing something new to be discussed and agreed upon instead of describing what has happened and likely will continue happening.

1) Small colleges with no unique mission, few resources, and no reason for anyone to pick them over other higher ed institutions are closing and will continue to close.  According to one report I linked in the past week, there are 800 of those institutions that have three of the standard red flags.  The handful of institutions who could use the current events as an opportunity would have already had to be well along the progress to change.

2) The liberal arts cannot have enough good enough full-time academic jobs for those who want them, even through consolidation of current adjuncts armies, whether all at one institution or spread over a geographic region.  I have done the math many times in many ways.  You don't like it, but I have yet to see a calculation from you that contradicts my or anyone else's calculations while using reasonable approximations.

3) While you often concede important points, you then immediately ignore them in any resulting analysis.  Most recently in this category are the changes in demographics and for what students have already voted with their feet over the past decades.  We middle-aged engineers, nurses, K-12 teachers, business folks, and other community leaders/decision makers/regular voters aren't going away simply because you've decided we don't matter.  Our direct experiences will always count strongest for our decisions on what gets funded and what is important enough for our taxes, charitable donations, and advice to younger folks.

The majority of college students who start part-time or the majority of students who go online or within 50 miles of home aren't going away because you refuse to grant them typical student status.

The rise in AP credit, dual enrollment credit, transfer credit from cheaper schools, and similar means to cheaply and efficiently meet general education requirements at schools is another big factor in why the liberal arts faculty jobs that maybe could have been consolidated 20 years ago are just plain going to go away.  Those jobs going away will be accelerated under the current conditions with fewer students expected to return/enroll in college in the fall as the need and budget dictates.  The linked article on presidential decisions indicates a poor outlook for the contingent faculty jobs that serve general education.

Turning back to student demand, the students who want to return to school to learn a new profession and go online due to personal circumstances will very likely choose an institution with a great national reputation through putting resources into online over a more local, homegrown version with fewer options and almost no support.  Many of those who are being told they should have made better educational choices are signing up for those national online programs right now or signing up for the welding certificate as soon as the local vo-tec institute reopens.

The number of people going to college was already on the downward slide.  This semester's experience is not going to help institutions whose primary best selling point was the community together on the campus.  Many of those students won't be coming back in the fall, even if the college is still open for that term.  The discussion in some parts of high ed circles is how few of the students who were already in precarious positions will return to any college in the fall as their life just fell apart. 

People with no money, a precarious living situation that has minimal internet access, and wondering about their next meal are not signing up for college classes anywhere; instead, they are hoping that pooling enough kith and kin resources will let them literally physically live through the summer instead of starving to literal death.

People who have well-meaning family members say, "I told you to ...", at this particular truly unusual moment in modern world history generally come from sufficient resources that those individuals will be fine, albeit with a heavy dollop of advice while they are fed and sheltered and may take a skills-enhancing class or three online as required by the individuals paying the bills. 

None of those folks are going to be working on a liberal arts degree if they end up going the degree route; they will be in the certificate programs that lead to jobs or resuming majors that directly lead to jobs.  From the first-person stories in many media outlets, the people who are really bad off as their in-person jobs were eliminated/furloughed/cut for now either already have a college degree (possibly a master's degree in the humanities) or come from a social class where few of their kith and kin have any other type of job and therefore would never get the "I told you to..." warning.

The discussion in many places was already pretty loud about how college was not the right choice for many people straight out of high school based on outcomes.  Even college graduates aren't all that safe with the 40% of them in jobs that don't require college degrees.  The discussion is deafening in some circles about how now is the perfect time to do something else while college attendance is up in the air any way and most institutions aren't providing the education for which one will pay good money.  Again, the prospective students who want good online education will choose a different institution now instead of the one that scrambled to finish the semester doing something to continue already-in-progress courses.

4) Since we're being personal, Wahoo, I will also point out that nearly all your goals involve preserving/creating/enhancing jobs for specific categories of faculty.  I am impressed at how hard you work to avoid the realization that you aren't at all working on preserving higher ed for the students based on their wants and what is needed for those wants. You are always focused on the faculty jobs aspect while asserting that having particular faculty jobs will help the students. 

That would be more credible if you showed any awareness of what the real, live, currently enrolled students and could-have-been-enrolled students have opted for doing based on their observable actions. 

That would be somewhat credible if you hadn't shared so much over the years leading to the conclusion that your life has been good enough largely because your spouse has a bill-paying good job and you've found something to do as the trailing spouse contributing something to the household.  The efforts to create more jobs like your current one because you've been more precarious are meaningful to you, but ignore all the other factors in higher education, including what large identifiable groups of people want that the rest of the community agrees we want done. 

5) I haven't said it enough recently, but one huge looming problem that just got worse as the US has to decide what is essential and what is not as well as what can be automated/scaled back and what cannot is that we as a society don't need all adults in the workforce who want/need to work to work.  https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/11/hipsters_on_food_stamps.html is brutally cruel about the situation in a three-part post, but the author isn't wrong.

As we discuss what the government should do for the citizens, one evolving libertarian case for Universal Basic Income includes the increasingly obvious situation that we, as a society, cannot employ everyone who wants to work doing something they are capable of doing and have the budget be such that those individuals providing at least as much value as they are being paid.  It's far more efficient and humane to just flat out send money individuals can pool together with their kith and kin to live inside and eat regularly instead of trying to figure out how to make it appear that those folks are working for their income.  However, that means accepting that certain individuals are just going to be in the non-working, charity class for most of their lives.  The alternative is much less humane and doesn't account for the luck and other factors that mean anyone could fall below the productive-enough-line through no fault of their own.

[Ruralguy]

Not that it really matters much, but faculty on the job market (and some academic staff) care about *national* ranking because its a correlate of $ and other factors such as general prestige
(though that can be manipulate to a degree). If a school sinks from 75 to 125, one has to wonder what happened. This happened to a particular SLAC in the Northeast about a decade ago. The major factor leading to this seems to have been a change in president from a prominent politician who had recently gained national recognition (who was both personally wealthy and well connected to the academic philanthropist circuit) to well...a nobody. In any case,  if rankings more or less correlate with bucks, prestige, teaching load, prospective academic employees can find these measures to be somewhat useful.

[Wahoo Redux]

Ah, Wahoo, you keep acting as though I'm proposing something new to be discussed and agreed upon instead of describing what has happened and likely will continue happening.

Most everything in that last dissertation you have posted already.  Ad nauseam.  Ad nauseam.  And again, ad nauseam.  I agree with almost all of it (and why that throws you I do not know).

Perhaps, Polly, you don't understand my very basic stance that we could work to do something about these things that are undermining our higher ed system before it is too late (which it already might be).  I am not alone, even on these forums, in this.

Or no wait...you are way too smart not to get that simple point...you would simply rather argue that I "ignore" you.  That's a lot easier.   

For you the doomsday book is closed.  If I could make an analogy: Polly recognizes that the coronavirus is going to sicken and kill millions and do vast economic damage----therefore we should just accept the coronavirus and its effects; those people who are going to die are going to die (and it's there own fault); no point in looking for a vaccine----it's never going to happen, Wahoo, so quit ignoring reality.

In the meantime, let's ignore any signs that things can change, such as hiring practices or schools realigning themselves to face new realities.

That's about it except when we get these little odd tangents such as:

We middle-aged engineers, nurses, K-12 teachers, business folks, and other community leaders/decision makers/regular voters aren't going away simply because you've decided we don't matter.  Our direct experiences will always count strongest for our decisions on what gets funded and what is important enough for our taxes, charitable donations, and advice to younger folks.

The majority of college students who start part-time or the majority of students who go online or within 50 miles of home aren't going away because you refuse to grant them typical student status.

WTF?! When did I decide anybody, particularly voters, "didn't matter"?  Is this a counter-jibe to my "you can't figure out how to deny that there is work for lib arts types and therefore you make us disappear" comment?

Probably is, isn't it?

What I've said is that these "middle-aged engineers, nurses, K-12 teachers, business folks, and other community leaders/decision makers/regular voters" actually DO care about colleges and funding.  We simply have gotten to the point where we are all frustrated by the costs associated with college. 

And we take college for granted.

We will see if that attitude changes as we begin to shed our schools and little towns, like that one is SW Wisconsin, begin to feel the impacts, economic and otherwise.

There's a class thing going on with you, Polly.  You are somehow resentful and defensive about education.

The effect of the virus is unprecedented.  We will see what happens. 

And the times I have disagreed...or no, added perspective to your comments I generally use your own sources.  You ignore when I post sources.

For instance, I saw you do the math on one tiny, failing college, but I remembered a certain posting that goes all the way back to our first encounter (you were quite rude, my dear!) and for some reason, even though it goes back to 2012, you reposted it.  I am not good at math, so perhaps someone can correct me if I am wrong, but I calculated the FT jobs which could have been generated in 2010 if each of these classes taught by contingent faculty were consolidated into 4/4 lectureships. The point, BTW, is simply to illustrate how much work there is out there for FT faculty of some stripe, and so even if I have thought through my numbers incorrectly, the simple fact remains.

From the illustrious Pollymere: the very incomplete numbers based on self-reporting by the Coalition on the Academic Workforce.

CAW report, page 8
http://www.academicworkforce.org/CAW_portrait_2012.pdf

Respondents in this category were directed to a survey path that invited them to provide information about up to six credit-bearing courses they were teaching in the fall 2010 term
Part-time faculty respondents reported at least some information for a total of 19,615 courses.

Respondents reported teaching courses at a range of Carnegie institutional types (table 5). Of the 19,615 individual courses reported on by part-time faculty respondents, the institutional type could be determined for 18,449; this number serves as the basis for the following breakdown:
◆ 7,111 courses (38.5%) were taught at Carnegie associate's institutions
•   444 FT jobs to cover these courses in Fall 2010
◆ 1,267 courses (6.9%) were taught at Carnegie baccalaureate institutions
•   317 FT jobs to cover these courses in Fall 2010
◆ 5,381 courses (29.2%) were taught at Carnegie master's institutions
•   1,345 FT jobs to cover these courses in Fall 2010
◆ 4,119 courses (22.3%) were taught at Carnegie doctoral and research institutions
•   1,030 FT jobs to cover these courses in Fall 2010
◆ 571 courses (3.1%) were taught at Carnegie special focus institutions
•   143 FT jobs to cover these courses in Fall 2010
Total: 3,279

So please, don't tell me I "ignore" you----I obviously take you very seriously.

[stemer]

1) Small colleges with no unique mission, few resources, and no reason for anyone to pick them over other higher ed institutions are closing and will continue to close.  According to one report I linked in the past week, there are 800 of those institutions that have three of the standard red flags.  The handful of institutions who could use the current events as an opportunity would have already had to be well along the progress to change.

Would you be able to repost or PM me the link? Looking for it but unable to find it.

[Wahoo Redux]

1) Small colleges with no unique mission, few resources, and no reason for anyone to pick them over other higher ed institutions are closing and will continue to close.  According to one report I linked in the past week, there are 800 of those institutions that have three of the standard red flags.  The handful of institutions who could use the current events as an opportunity would have already had to be well along the progress to change.

Would you be able to repost or PM me the link? Looking for it but unable to find it.

Polly posted all these on page 37 of this thread.

This is her link.  Note the title of the article.  Read the entire article.

https://hechingerreport.org/as-small-private-colleges-keep-closing-some-are-fighting-back/

[pgher]

Not that it really matters much, but faculty on the job market (and some academic staff) care about *national* ranking because its a correlate of $ and other factors such as general prestige
(though that can be manipulate to a degree). If a school sinks from 75 to 125, one has to wonder what happened. This happened to a particular SLAC in the Northeast about a decade ago. The major factor leading to this seems to have been a change in president from a prominent politician who had recently gained national recognition (who was both personally wealthy and well connected to the academic philanthropist circuit) to well...a nobody. In any case,  if rankings more or less correlate with bucks, prestige, teaching load, prospective academic employees can find these measures to be somewhat useful.

The thing is, once you get past the top 25, and certainly past the top 50, a very small change in various numbers can make a huge difference in ranking. The scores get pretty close together. I've seen my institution go up and down a dozen spots or so for no real reason.

[marshwiggle]

And we take college for granted.

We will see if that attitude changes as we begin to shed our schools and little towns, like that one is SW Wisconsin, begin to feel the impacts, economic and otherwise.

I asked this a while back and you never responded:

I would like to see America use its massive wealth to voluntarily save as many of our colleges as possible.  On this I have been pretty clear. We take higher ed for granted.  Someday we will regret that.

What does that even mean???? Until enrollment drops by 20%? 50%? 90%? Is there any objective criterion or set of criteria that you would accept to determine when it's time to pull the plug? Everything I've seen from you suggests there's never a time when you're not going to blame "government" or someone else for the failure of an institution to attract enough students to make it viable.

This is what I find frustrating. You say "as many as possible" should be saved, but refuse to specify if there is ever some point at which you would consider a place beyond saving. (And that also avoids the question of what responsibility these institutions have to respond to the needs of their communities. Or do they get to say "because we've always done it that way; give us money!" till the cows come home.)

[Hibush]

Not that it really matters much, but faculty on the job market (and some academic staff) care about *national* ranking because its a correlate of $ and other factors such as general prestige
(though that can be manipulate to a degree). If a school sinks from 75 to 125, one has to wonder what happened. This happened to a particular SLAC in the Northeast about a decade ago. The major factor leading to this seems to have been a change in president from a prominent politician who had recently gained national recognition (who was both personally wealthy and well connected to the academic philanthropist circuit) to well...a nobody. In any case,  if rankings more or less correlate with bucks, prestige, teaching load, prospective academic employees can find these measures to be somewhat useful.

The thing is, once you get past the top 25, and certainly past the top 50, a very small change in various numbers can make a huge difference in ranking. The scores get pretty close together. I've seen my institution go up and down a dozen spots or so for no real reason.

Some of the ranking services also change their criteria a little bit from time to time. That also helps move the rankings around a bit. It would be dull if there were no changes when they announce their annual rankings. Dull does not sell.

[tuxthepenguin]

Faculty should be putting together ideas to improve what they're doing now and to add new things employers want.

Amen, brother.

I'm honestly confused here. Where is the line between "add new things employers want" and "job training"?

I think of job training as training for a specific task: write a web app in Javascript, do someone's taxes, and that sort of thing. When I talk with employers, they want something a little broader. They'll often start their response with something like, "I don't care about the specifics, but I want to see some evidence that they can do [...]" where [...] is not a mechanical task. It might be "create and deliver a good talk for our client". That might lead to the creation of a certificate in business communication that students can add to their CV. Any department could be involved in that. The ability to explain the works of Shakespeare in a ten minute presentation to a general audience is a skill that could carry over to many other areas, but I don't view it as job training. The successful colleges are the ones that will recognize the potential for these things and find a way to do them using the resources they currently have. It's not as easy as adding a Javascript course to the books.

[marshwiggle]

Faculty should be putting together ideas to improve what they're doing now and to add new things employers want.

Amen, brother.

I'm honestly confused here. Where is the line between "add new things employers want" and "job training"?

I think of job training as training for a specific task: write a web app in Javascript, do someone's taxes, and that sort of thing. When I talk with employers, they want something a little broader. They'll often start their response with something like, "I don't care about the specifics, but I want to see some evidence that they can do [...]" where [...] is not a mechanical task. It might be "create and deliver a good talk for our client". That might lead to the creation of a certificate in business communication that students can add to their CV. Any department could be involved in that. The ability to explain the works of Shakespeare in a ten minute presentation to a general audience is a skill that could carry over to many other areas, but I don't view it as job training. The successful colleges are the ones that will recognize the potential for these things and find a way to do them using the resources they currently have. It's not as easy as adding a Javascript course to the books.

But the point is, that to add something that employers want, it requires taking away something they don't care about. What could be taken out in order to fit in what the employers want?

[tuxthepenguin]

Faculty should be putting together ideas to improve what they're doing now and to add new things employers want.

Amen, brother.

I'm honestly confused here. Where is the line between "add new things employers want" and "job training"?

I think of job training as training for a specific task: write a web app in Javascript, do someone's taxes, and that sort of thing. When I talk with employers, they want something a little broader. They'll often start their response with something like, "I don't care about the specifics, but I want to see some evidence that they can do [...]" where [...] is not a mechanical task. It might be "create and deliver a good talk for our client". That might lead to the creation of a certificate in business communication that students can add to their CV. Any department could be involved in that. The ability to explain the works of Shakespeare in a ten minute presentation to a general audience is a skill that could carry over to many other areas, but I don't view it as job training. The successful colleges are the ones that will recognize the potential for these things and find a way to do them using the resources they currently have. It's not as easy as adding a Javascript course to the books.

But the point is, that to add something that employers want, it requires taking away something they don't care about. What could be taken out in order to fit in what the employers want?

My university adds new things all the time. No need to remove anything. The primary goal is to increase enrollment, either from new students that like the new offering, or existing students hoping to make themselves look better to employers. In some cases you can do that by repackaging the courses you already offer or by making minor changes to those courses.

[dismalist]

I've heard it said that Deans can add, but not subtract.

[spork]

Looks like deposits are running about what they were a few years ago, when we missed our target for the incoming class by more than ten percent.