Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[TreadingLife]

Well, as far as the developing debate about professors who don't care about student learning in these barely populated courses that are provided to give the professor a semblance of a workload, it's easily explained this way. The professors involved may very well hope that the students will learn, but that's no guarantee that they do. Not by a longshot.
The whole thing could be solved by having a system where part-time to full time conversion is a two way street. Demand for what Professor Darned Socks does is on the decrease? Make him part time again. like a small business would do. You know, those enterprises where management has to figure out how to make the business efficient and trim enough to function, instead of pleading for more dollars from the state?

Aren't there "rock solid provisions" that would prevent taking a tenured faculty member and making them part time or full time depending on the needs of the institution?  Sure, you can do this with faculty on term contracts or adjuncts, but this problem lurks in the ranks of the tenured and tenure track faculty in under-enrolled majors where those other cuts have already been made, or didn't need to be made because they never needed adjuncts in the first place.  And if we are going to sit around wait for people to retire, then many institutions just don't have that time to give, and they will fold. I can't find the stat, but how many colleges and universities have enrollments under 2000 FTE? 300? 400? 500?  I did read somewhere that 40% of colleges and universities are under 1000 FTE. While that is dinky, that's clearly not the majority of institutions. But there are a lot of schools in that smaller, razor's edge situation regarding finances.

[marshwiggle]

I'm baffled by the idea that if profs teach courses that don't enroll well, then they have no other options. Of course they have other options, or at least other directives. They develop new courses that enroll better. Maybe their whole field is shrinking, as is the case with modern languages, in which case their department doesn't replace people when they leave or retire.  But the profs keep on teaching. If Italian 101 doesn't enroll enough, the Italian profs offer "Literary Odysseys and Homecomings," Food as Language in Italian Literature," " On Love and Violence: Studying Family," and "Horror, Italian Style," all of which fulfill the university Reading & Composition requirement and thus attract students from outside Italian.  (These are all offerings of the UC Berkeley Italian Department.)  I think TreadingLife must not be in academia, because this is very obvious to academics.

I see what TreadingLife describes all the time. Here it's what we call general education requirements -- ensure that each faculty member in departments without majors gets just enough students per course to meet minimum enrollment requirements. The system is designed to force students to take courses they don't want on made-up topics they have no interest in, so that Dr. Socks Darning can get paid for their 32nd year of ineffective, below-average teaching. Then you get some faculty members teaching a few dozen students per academic year while others are teaching close to two hundred (and we don't have grad student teaching assistants). But hey, the system can't be changed, no matter the financial ramifications to the organization or the educational quality for the students.

A variation on this is to have terribly unpopular (but tenured) professors teach only graduate courses or senior undergraduate courses in the major; i.e. where there is a captive audience. Since students will mutiny if they can and avoid elective courses taught by them, it means they get rewarded with small classes, and perhaps even in their research area, as opposed to others who have to teach huge enrollment junior courses.

And of course this is a way to try and seduce people into a major or minor by letting students see good teachers up front, so it's only once they're committed that they realize what they have to put up with to finish.

[Ruralguy]

Yup, we do this!  There really is no alternative. You can try other things, and maybe they'll work, but if you didn't fire a tenured faculty member when you had the chance 6 or 7 years in, its extremely difficult to do so later. You can talk and talk about depriving the person of full, or failing post-tenure reviews that have no teeth, but ultimately the person stays or is convinced to retire a couple of years earlier than they would have normally.

In any case, left with no alternatives for poor teachers or otherwise unpopular ones, you put them where they can do the least damage.

[spork]

TreadingLife's comments upthread mirror my experience to a T.

One of the answers to "How did we get here?" (to borrow from the Talking Heads) is the historical practice at these small institutions of refilling faculty lines with exact replicas of the people who did retire/die/go elsewhere without any kind of analysis of needs and resources. Dr. Socks Darning, whose dissertation was on Philosophy of Pasta in the Upper Tuscany in the Late Middle Roman Era, and whose 30+ year career has been devoted to making damn sure that Italian pasta philosophy is included in the gen ed requirements, was initially hired as the replacement for Dr. Mender Woolens, who was slightly more conservative in outlook than Dr. Socks Darning, but who specialized in the cognate field of Philosophy of Yeast Breads in Early Middle Roman Era Lower Tuscany. Sixty-five years ago Dr. Woolens argued that it was essential for every college student to learn about carbohydrate ethics of the Roman Empire, just as Dr. Darning does today.

This is what drives curriculum design at my employer.

[marshwiggle]

Yup, we do this!  There really is no alternative. You can try other things, and maybe they'll work, but if you didn't fire a tenured faculty member when you had the chance 6 or 7 years in, its extremely difficult to do so later. You can talk and talk about depriving the person of full, or failing post-tenure reviews that have no teeth, but ultimately the person stays or is convinced to retire a couple of years earlier than they would have normally.

In any case, left with no alternatives for poor teachers or otherwise unpopular ones, you put them where they can do the least damage.

And this can't be pinned on the lack of government funding, or the excessive hiring of adjuncts, or anything like that. It's most directly a negative consequence of "academic freedom".

[Wahoo Redux]

Our unhappy posters will happy to know that my observations have been exactly the opposite.

Toxic U, our first university after grad school (7K farm kids), eliminated Italian and German; French was off the table before we even got there.  And they quit hiring any literature positions.  They hired exclusively composition instructors and a new comp coordinator, a creative writer, and unsuccessfully tried to hire a professional writing professor (still a very hot field).

Our current D-1AA has hired business writing lecturers, a film professor who teaches virtually anything that needs teaching, an education lecturer, and a greatly overworked linguist who also does secondary education ESL training.   Literature and creative writing, even though there is call for both, are off the table.

I sometimes wonder about the veracity of the commentary here.

[JCu16]

A variation on this is to have terribly unpopular (but tenured) professors teach only graduate courses or senior undergraduate courses in the major; i.e. where there is a captive audience. Since students will mutiny if they can and avoid elective courses taught by them, it means they get rewarded with small classes, and perhaps even in their research area, as opposed to others who have to teach huge enrollment junior courses.

And of course this is a way to try and seduce people into a major or minor by letting students see good teachers up front, so it's only once they're committed that they realize what they have to put up with to finish.

I call bingo, a program in my department has one of those - they bait you in with the good teachers, and bingo, that person who makes it hell then takes over. Department has to bend over backwards just to get this person to a load including offering some pretty BS classes.

[quasihumanist]

Our unhappy posters will happy to know that my observations have been exactly the opposite.

Toxic U, our first university after grad school (7K farm kids), eliminated Italian and German; French was off the table before we even got there.  And they quit hiring any literature positions.  They hired exclusively composition instructors and a new comp coordinator, a creative writer, and unsuccessfully tried to hire a professional writing professor (still a very hot field).

Our current D-1AA has hired business writing lecturers, a film professor who teaches virtually anything that needs teaching, an education lecturer, and a greatly overworked linguist who also does secondary education ESL training.   Literature and creative writing, even though there is call for both, are off the table.

I sometimes wonder about the veracity of the commentary here.

Do you have much of a population that is really prepared to study literature?  That wouldn't just get completely lost if they had to understand and apply bits of theory?

I'm a pure mathematician.  We have less than one graduating senior a year who would have a chance of succeeding at a mediocre (or sometimes better) PhD program if that's what they wanted to do.  Most of our other students never really get it, because after a couple years of trying it still takes them two minutes to process the difference between "Not all swans are white" and "All swans are not white"

[ciao_yall]

Yup, we do this!  There really is no alternative. You can try other things, and maybe they'll work, but if you didn't fire a tenured faculty member when you had the chance 6 or 7 years in, its extremely difficult to do so later. You can talk and talk about depriving the person of full, or failing post-tenure reviews that have no teeth, but ultimately the person stays or is convinced to retire a couple of years earlier than they would have normally.

In any case, left with no alternatives for poor teachers or otherwise unpopular ones, you put them where they can do the least damage.

And this can't be pinned on the lack of government funding, or the excessive hiring of adjuncts, or anything like that. It's most directly a negative consequence of "academic freedom".

Academic freedom does not protect poor teaching or bad behavior. It protects controversial research and recognition of faculty as being experts in their disciplines.

Some colleges do a good job of maintaining high faculty standards even after tenure. Some do not. That college needs to have an ethical administration with a backbone, combined with good faculty willing to hold their peers to high standards. 

[mahagonny]

Yup, we do this!  There really is no alternative. You can try other things, and maybe they'll work, but if you didn't fire a tenured faculty member when you had the chance 6 or 7 years in, its extremely difficult to do so later. You can talk and talk about depriving the person of full, or failing post-tenure reviews that have no teeth, but ultimately the person stays or is convinced to retire a couple of years earlier than they would have normally.

In any case, left with no alternatives for poor teachers or otherwise unpopular ones, you put them where they can do the least damage.

And this can't be pinned on the lack of government funding, or the excessive hiring of adjuncts, or anything like that. It's most directly a negative consequence of "academic freedom".

Understating your case: sometimes it is the availability of adjuncts who stay concerned about their relationship with students that saves the student from a schedule with mostly unpopular teachers. Ones who can afford to be.

Well, as far as the developing debate about professors who don't care about student learning in these barely populated courses that are provided to give the professor a semblance of a workload, it's easily explained this way. The professors involved may very well hope that the students will learn, but that's no guarantee that they do. Not by a longshot.
The whole thing could be solved by having a system where part-time to full time conversion is a two way street. Demand for what Professor Darned Socks does is on the decrease? Make him part time again. like a small business would do. You know, those enterprises where management has to figure out how to make the business efficient and trim enough to function, instead of pleading for more dollars from the state?

Aren't there "rock solid provisions" that would prevent taking a tenured faculty member and making them part time or full time depending on the needs of the institution?  Sure, you can do this with faculty on term contracts or adjuncts, but this problem lurks in the ranks of the tenured and tenure track faculty in under-enrolled majors where those other cuts have already been made, or didn't need to be made because they never needed adjuncts in the first place.  And if we are going to sit around wait for people to retire, then many institutions just don't have that time to give, and they will fold. I can't find the stat, but how many colleges and universities have enrollments under 2000 FTE? 300? 400? 500?  I did read somewhere that 40% of colleges and universities are under 1000 FTE. While that is dinky, that's clearly not the majority of institutions. But there are a lot of schools in that smaller, razor's edge situation regarding finances.

[cards on the table]  I've never been a big fan of academic tenure. And over a period of many years, steadily less of a fan.

[TreadingLife]

Our unhappy posters will happy to know that my observations have been exactly the opposite.

Toxic U, our first university after grad school (7K farm kids), eliminated Italian and German; French was off the table before we even got there.  And they quit hiring any literature positions.  They hired exclusively composition instructors and a new comp coordinator, a creative writer, and unsuccessfully tried to hire a professional writing professor (still a very hot field).

Our current D-1AA has hired business writing lecturers, a film professor who teaches virtually anything that needs teaching, an education lecturer, and a greatly overworked linguist who also does secondary education ESL training.   Literature and creative writing, even though there is call for both, are off the table.

I sometimes wonder about the veracity of the commentary here.

The title of this thread is "Colleges in Dire Financial Straits" and it sounds like you don't work at one. You are very fortunate. Not all of us are. So for those of us who have been, currently are, or worried that we might soon be working at a college in dire financial straits, we are commenting on what we see happening and for me, I'm wondering out loud what other people are seeing happening or not happening at their respective schools. Sadly a number of us are seeing the same things. That's simultaneously comforting and terrifying. But just because you don't see it happening on your side of the tracks doesn't make it untrue, nor does it make us unhappy people. We're simply reporting what we see. Am I happy to see a decline in higher ed? No. Am I happy that the career stability I thought I would have was an illusion? No. Never did I think I would wait with bated breath to see if the college would be handing out a paltry cost of living adjustment. Never did I think I would worry about retention rates and shifting demographic trends as a professor. All I thought I had to worry about was being the best teacher and scholar that I could be, getting tenure and then getting promoted to full professor. I didn't think I'd have to worry about the financial viability of my institution or of the entire sector.  So yeah, I guess that can make me sound or seem unhappy. But that seems like a pretty reasonable reaction from someone who loves their job and is terrified it might disappear. And its not like the grass is much greener at other institutions if I wanted to move around in higher ed. Sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don't.  I am at least aware of the steps my institution has taken to put itself in the best position possible. I can't say the same for other institutions that might still have their heads in the sand. Will what we have done be enough? Who knows. But at least I know my institution has tried to roll up its sleeves, despite the kicking and screaming of others, which is the infuriating part for me. Can't they see the writing on the wall? How can they not care? This directly affects them and yet it is easier to resist than evolve. It is one thing for programs and faculty to refuse to change, which leads them into non-existence when the right-sizing train comes around. It is another thing when the resistance to change means the entire institution is at risk. I believe in my abilities to stay afloat at my institution if interest in my subject area were to wane, because I would find new ways to stay relevant and also because I am interdisciplinary and I love to teach, even if it isn't directly in my content area. But the ability my institution to stay afloat is what keeps me up at night.

When you see news like this at bigger institutions than my own, it makes you shake your head and wonder what might be coming down the pike.

Quinnipiac had a massive enrollment miss in 2019 that is only being exacerbated with the COVID shut down.
The university fell short of its enrollment goal by 570 students for the 2019-20 school year.  In 2018 they enrolled 1,895 first-year students. If their enrollment goal in 2019 was similar to 2018, then they missed their enrollment target by 30%. I have no idea what their net tuition revenue is, but that's easily a 12 mil hit in 2019 that will continue to affect their NTR for the duration of that cohort.

https://quchronicle.com/69949/news/quinnipiac-finances-hit-hard-by-covid-19/

Also Valparaiso
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/valparaiso-university-furloughs-200-employees-president-to-take-30-pay-cut-in-covid-19-reductions/article_38544283-26d4-53b6-a7ef-3a4314fc5b21.html

[mahagonny]

Yup, we do this!  There really is no alternative. You can try other things, and maybe they'll work, but if you didn't fire a tenured faculty member when you had the chance 6 or 7 years in, its extremely difficult to do so later. You can talk and talk about depriving the person of full, or failing post-tenure reviews that have no teeth, but ultimately the person stays or is convinced to retire a couple of years earlier than they would have normally.

In any case, left with no alternatives for poor teachers or otherwise unpopular ones, you put them where they can do the least damage.

And this can't be pinned on the lack of government funding, or the excessive hiring of adjuncts, or anything like that. It's most directly a negative consequence of "academic freedom".

Academic freedom does not protect poor teaching or bad behavior. It protects controversial research and recognition of faculty as being experts in their disciplines.

In theory, yes. In reality? Today, you can easily be an expert in your discipline, widely employed in higher education, with no access to academic freedom protection, and not even a real welcome.

[marshwiggle]

Yup, we do this!  There really is no alternative. You can try other things, and maybe they'll work, but if you didn't fire a tenured faculty member when you had the chance 6 or 7 years in, its extremely difficult to do so later. You can talk and talk about depriving the person of full, or failing post-tenure reviews that have no teeth, but ultimately the person stays or is convinced to retire a couple of years earlier than they would have normally.

In any case, left with no alternatives for poor teachers or otherwise unpopular ones, you put them where they can do the least damage.

And this can't be pinned on the lack of government funding, or the excessive hiring of adjuncts, or anything like that. It's most directly a negative consequence of "academic freedom".

Academic freedom does not protect poor teaching or bad behavior. It protects controversial research and recognition of faculty as being experts in their disciplines.

Some colleges do a good job of maintaining high faculty standards even after tenure. Some do not. That college needs to have an ethical administration with a backbone, combined with good faculty willing to hold their peers to high standards.

The point is that when people talk about trying to drum up public support for higher education, these problems that are common (now two other people on this thread have acknowledged experiences like mine) and that have nothing to do with funding issues undermine that effort. Problems that would be dealt with in a normal workplace can go unresolved in higher ed. and so ordinary people, who are not academics themselves, will not understand or sympathize with this apparent bad management.

Bailouts of industries that seem to have problems of their own making aren't popular with taxpayers, who are footing the bill.

[Hegemony]

I see that St. Olaf has extended its deadline for undergraduate admission this year. I don't know how common that is. If, as I suspect, that means St. Olaf is short on qualified admits, I'm sorry, because I've always heard good things about the place.

[spork]

More info on possible state university closures in Vermont, courtesy of the VTDigger:

https://vtdigger.org/2020/04/17/vermont-state-colleges-chancellor-to-recommend-closing-three-campuses/