Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[apl68]

I've also seen a couple of op-ed pieces where faculty members complain that Chancellor Ambrose is making the cuts in an arbitrary and dictatorial manner, without any consultation with faculty.  They acknowledge the need to make cuts, but question whether he is making the right ones.  They didn't have the space to suggest alternatives.

I don't know....  Obviously the Chancellor believes that HSU's best hope for the future is to become a glorified vo-tech school, like the majority of state institutions.  Given overall demographic trends, and the clear decline in student interest in liberal arts majors of all sorts, that sounds plausible.  No sense offering a liberal arts college education in the region if too few students there are asking for it any longer.  I know the region well enough to know that the number of students who honestly want any sort of a liberal arts education there has probably declined to a pretty low level.  Maybe a glorified vo-tech school is all the region can really support at this point.

Still, some of the faculty comments I've seen suggest that some of the liberal arts degrees on the chopping block could have been saved.  I don't know whether this is wishful thinking, or whether they actually have the figures to back it up.  If so, then these cuts could prove ill-considered and destructive, even if there was a legitimate need to take drastic action.

[Langue_doc]

Lincoln College is closing:

Lincoln College to Close, Hurt by Pandemic and Ransomware Attack
The predominantly Black college in Illinois will cease operations Friday after 157 years, having failed to raise millions to recover from the pandemic and a cyberattack that originated in Iran.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/09/us/lincoln-college-illinois-closure.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Education

[marshwiggle]

But the knee jerk assumption that what we've always done is good (I mean, it worked in the 1980s!) and new ideas are bad is troublesome. I do understand that folks are worried about their jobs, but doubling down on what isn't working feels like a way to accelerate that concern.

BUT PROF. JURASSIC HAS BEEN TEACHING PHYSIOLOGY FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS, AND NOW ALL THESE FREAKING "MAMMALS" WANT "WARM-BLOODED PHYSIOLOGY". THAT FAD WILL PASS.

[mamselle]

Glad to know I wasn't too far off in interpreting your arguments.

At our place, we really struggle with a relatively small, but loud group of folks want to cling, tightly, with both hands to courses that students are not taking and often have to be cancelled. Students are frustrated because the popular courses are full, or because they have to rework their schedule around a cancellation. They also express annoyance that we do have some limited variability - 20 History courses about Europe, 1 about Africa and 2 about Latin America seems like 42 choices, but to students it doesn't feel that way. It feels like 3 choices, and most of the space is in courses they don't find relevant. 

Several programs have proposed some innovative strategies to build enrollment by building programs and courses that would attract students. The curriculum process, which requires faculty senate approval (although our provost can override that) often kills outright, or through 1,000 cuts in the form of tabled motions these innovative courses and programs because they could - wait for it - pull resources away from the struggling courses. Granted, not all of the new ideas are awesome and they should be revisited to ensure wise use of tuition dollars. But the knee jerk assumption that what we've always done is good (I mean, it worked in the 1980s!) and new ideas are bad is troublesome. I do understand that folks are worried about their jobs, but doubling down on what isn't working feels like a way to accelerate that concern.

It seems like the issues also fall around lines where faculty either do or do not seem willing to think more broadly about how to "fluff up the aura of their courses" (at the most reductive) or "enhance deep value" (at the best-practices end) by considering "what they've always taught" in the context of globally parallel or perpendicular issues.

I.e., a course that looks at, say, cultural challenges in the Mediterranean up to the time of Alexander could be re-thought without much difficulty into a discussion of, say, "Empires Then and Empire Now," w/r/t the various wars we've seen in the area in the past century (including Ukraine, which has a strong Mediterranean tie via the Black Sea-as-stepping-stone, etc.) The prof would definitely need to do some work updating their own awareness of these more recent issues, but with deep knowledge of the past, that shouldn't be so hard.

I see folks in the arts, music, etc, much more interested in cross-cultural dialogue, because that has always been the norm; it might also make sense for a few more courses to be co-taught, so that (besides taking some of the 'weight' off the primary prof) viewpoints from various disciplines could be hosted and discussed, with a final paper broadly defined to tie them together. I'm thinking of the Medieval and Renaissance course I took on Florence from the 12th-15th c. as an undergrad; it was phenomenal, with no whit of rigor lost.

One friend who does African history is often invited to present to art history courses on the Arts of Africa and the Middle East; his opposite number, who's done interreligious cultural studies in the Fertile Crescent and Eastern Mediterranean up through Late Antiquity complements the team with visuals and texts from Arabic, Jewish, Coptic, and Early Christian sources.

In general, to my mind, the humanities' greatest strengths lie in teaching students to synthesize learning and to attend to nuance in interpretation. Those are the very skills an 'educated populace' needs most in doing the most mundane things in the world...

...like voting...

M.   

[Wahoo Redux]

As a trailing spouse, I tend to teach whatever falls on the floor, so I am used to scrambling for a lesson plan. Personally, I enjoy teaching outside my subfield----I learn a great deal----but it is not always easy to pick up or redesign a whole new course.   

[Mobius]

Henderson State's chancellor seems to be taking polly_mer's advice or am I missing something?

http://thefora.org/index.php?topic=2299.0

[apl68]

Henderson State's chancellor seems to be taking polly_mer's advice or am I missing something?

http://thefora.org/index.php?topic=2299.0

Some of the last posts that polly shared with us, almost exactly a year ago....

On the second page of the thread ruralguy expressed a concern that a liberal arts education would cease to be available to anybody not privileged enough to go to a handful of elite colleges that still offered it.  Polly's reply:

I don't see it as that bleak, Ruralguy, unless elite now includes places like New Mexico State and University of Wisconsin-Platteville.

I see a lot of consolidation for programs.  Yeah, not all the directional states will offer all of astronomy, chemistry, physics, English, history, and philosophy majors, but all of those programs will be available in the state for students, not just at the flagships.

Problem is, HSU was one of the last places in our state where a liberal arts education was still available.  And now that choice is about to go away there.  Maybe the loss is indeed inevitable, but it will be no less of a loss for the region.

The previous heads of HSU who botched things so badly have a lot to answer for.  Had they not bungled everything, HSU might at least have had a managed decline, where the losses wouldn't have been quite so abrupt and extreme.

[Wahoo Redux]

Polly had very good points, but she was like a lot (but certainly not all) STEM people in her attitude toward the liberal arts, humanities in particular. 

For Polly, it was simply not that serious a loss.

[Ruralguy]

I don't know how productive it is to speak of people who are not around (though I kind of hope she comes back at some point, even though we disagreed a bit on these issues and even more on social issues). However, I think she'd probably say something along the lines of the "intrinsic value" of the liberal arts being beside the main point: feet are moving in directions away from most of the liberal arts (save for where it is absolutely required, and even there, the requirements are generally being reduced). I don't fully agree with that sentiment, but at some point if enrollments are literally 0, what do you do? You can give people full teaching credit for something that's not enrolled, yet what are these faculty going to teach if their specialties get *nobody* (maybe a bit more than nobody on good days).  I should be clear that I am thinking of one liberal arts area at my college that is in serious jeopardy (not the fun Mayim Bialik kind).

[marshwiggle]

I don't know how productive it is to speak of people who are not around (though I kind of hope she comes back at some point, even though we disagreed a bit on these issues and even more on social issues). However, I think she'd probably say something along the lines of the "intrinsic value" of the liberal arts being beside the main point: feet are moving in directions away from most of the liberal arts (save for where it is absolutely required, and even there, the requirements are generally being reduced).

For those who feel the intrinsic value of <whatever> is *obvious, how is that different from the religious practice of trying to pass on one's faith to the next generation?  (My use of "whatever" is because the argument isn't necessarily restricted to any specific area.)


(*Meaning it should be automatically supported without any additional justification beyond its historically attributed importance.)

[Mobius]

I don't know how productive it is to speak of people who are not around (though I kind of hope she comes back at some point, even though we disagreed a bit on these issues and even more on social issues). However, I think she'd probably say something along the lines of the "intrinsic value" of the liberal arts being beside the main point: feet are moving in directions away from most of the liberal arts (save for where it is absolutely required, and even there, the requirements are generally being reduced). I don't fully agree with that sentiment, but at some point if enrollments are literally 0, what do you do? You can give people full teaching credit for something that's not enrolled, yet what are these faculty going to teach if their specialties get *nobody* (maybe a bit more than nobody on good days).  I should be clear that I am thinking of one liberal arts area at my college that is in serious jeopardy (not the fun Mayim Bialik kind).

That was one of the sub-plots of "The Chair" in that a few faculty members had a lot less students in their classes compared to other faculty in the department. Some of this is just branding, too. I teach in a discipline where a few sections of certain courses fill up. You can get similar courses under another discipline struggling to even meet the minimum. Part of the problem is we're so territorial over our disciplines that coming up with a real plan to shore up programs doesn't gain traction.

I also don't knock if the checkbox approach doesn't work these days, or the options in the box are awful. I imagine part of it is the latter. But changing any of that is difficult when the loudest faculty tend to shut down discussion on change because they think their courses are the ones vital for a "liberal arts" education.

I also didn't want to stir up thoughts on polly in general. Just thought her observation was interesting as I was browsing through older threads.

[apl68]

It was a thread worth revisiting.  Thank you for the link.

[Wahoo Redux]

I don't know how productive it is to speak of people who are not around (though I kind of hope she comes back at some point, even though we disagreed a bit on these issues and even more on social issues). However, I think she'd probably say something along the lines of the "intrinsic value" of the liberal arts being beside the main point: feet are moving in directions away from most of the liberal arts (save for where it is absolutely required, and even there, the requirements are generally being reduced). I don't fully agree with that sentiment, but at some point if enrollments are literally 0, what do you do?

That is exactly what Polly said.

And her point was perfectly valid (although sometimes the mask would slip and a wee bit of STEMy chauvinism would peek through----her evals were not completely unbiased).

I simply felt that it was something we as a society, and we as academia, should try to combat----because many of those feet were walking away based on misinformation and stereotypes----but there is generally resignation on the subject of lib arts education.

I actually talk to Polly from time to time on Reddit.  She is surprisingly mellow over there, and she was very gracious when she found out my job had been eliminated.  I told her she should come back but I think her feelings were hurt.

Polly, if you are reading, come back.  We miss you.

[Ruralguy]

We miss her, but will be critical. So, feelings could get hurt again. Perhaps we all need to deal with each other a bit more civilly.

Anyway, at my school, I would be open to discussing how to save certain fields. But it almost certainly means combining departments, and then people really will have feelings hurt.

[spork]

[. . .]

Several programs have proposed some innovative strategies to build enrollment by building programs and courses that would attract students. The curriculum process, which requires faculty senate approval (although our provost can override that) often kills outright, or through 1,000 cuts in the form of tabled motions these innovative courses and programs because they could - wait for it - pull resources away from the struggling courses. Granted, not all of the new ideas are awesome and they should be revisited to ensure wise use of tuition dollars. But the knee jerk assumption that what we've always done is good (I mean, it worked in the 1980s!) and new ideas are bad is troublesome. I do understand that folks are worried about their jobs, but doubling down on what isn't working feels like a way to accelerate that concern.

Too many faculty at struggling colleges and universities prefer that everyone be marched to the gallows together instead of a few people getting hanged separately. These are generally the same folks who have constructed their self-identities entirely around being "professor of X."