Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[Wahoo Redux]

Those are good questions, Polly.

We have very few foreign nationals studying at our school, and engineering is not one of the 'hot' majors.  Our biggest majors are criminal justice, nursing, social work and the like, and we have a healthy business school.  The majors are fairly evenly distributed after that.  We have almost no out-of-staters either even though we are 20 miles from the state border; we are almost exclusively a city-and-bedroom-community commuter school.  We have healthy humanities majors but we are a school that caters to "practical" students who are career-focused and not overly intellectual.

We are the cheapest school in the state and of average size for an R2/Div-1A school.  Employees are paid diddly partly because our CoL is so low----we are situated in a slum region.

We are, however, at the end of a successful capital campaign and a $10M government bailout.

Most of our financial and enrollment info is online and has been covered in the newspapers.  We are in fairly good shape comparatively despite our projected deficit, and some brutal cuts and reorderings have already been made.

I understand your argument that faculty don't really understand how the university works and if we should have questions we should pursue the answers ourselves like this...

And again, my question is always the same: Why not share the numbers so we comprehend the choices, not just now, which we already know is bad, but for the long term?

As a public institution, much of that information should be publicly available.  Have you consulted a university librarian or the president's office with a request?

...but why should I?

Isn't it the administrations' job to explain to their workers why they make the decisions they do?

If the decisions our BoT, President, and Provost make are reasonable and necessary, why shouldn't they be transparent? 

[spork]

Sort of posted this in another thread already, but the basic news: University of Bridgeport is shutting down. Supposedly there will be a teach out for current students.

[mamselle]

Sort of posted this in another thread already, but the basic news: University of Bridgeport is shutting down. Supposedly there will be a teach out for current students.

Too bad; I knew some folks who taught there at various points.

M.

[Hegemony]

Generally when you make a request for public university budget specifics, one or more of the following happens:

-- you are told the hefty charge (up to hundreds of dollars) for preparing the documents
-- it takes 4-6 months to get the documents, after you pay the hefty charge
-- the documents refer to budgets one or two years previous

Ongoing budget decisions are never handed down with the actual numbers of all the components and options, in my experience. Whether they "should" be or not, they are not.

[TreadingLife]

Sort of posted this in another thread already, but the basic news: University of Bridgeport is shutting down. Supposedly there will be a teach out for current students.

Here's the article. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/07/02/university-bridgeport-be-acquired-three-nearby-colleges

[Parasaurolophus]

Sort of posted this in another thread already, but the basic news: University of Bridgeport is shutting down. Supposedly there will be a teach out for current students.

Here's the article. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/07/02/university-bridgeport-be-acquired-three-nearby-colleges

Guess it's just as well their merger with Marlboro fell through.

[TreadingLife]

Sort of posted this in another thread already, but the basic news: University of Bridgeport is shutting down. Supposedly there will be a teach out for current students.

Here's the article. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/07/02/university-bridgeport-be-acquired-three-nearby-colleges

Guess it's just as well their merger with Marlboro fell through.

True, otherwise we might have to make a companion thread to "Students Going From Closing Institution to Closing Institution" for "Institutions Going From Closing Institution to Closing Institution."

I jest, but I'm also not convinced it won't happen either.

[Parasaurolophus]

Sort of posted this in another thread already, but the basic news: University of Bridgeport is shutting down. Supposedly there will be a teach out for current students.

Here's the article. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/07/02/university-bridgeport-be-acquired-three-nearby-colleges

Guess it's just as well their merger with Marlboro fell through.

True, otherwise we might have to make a companion thread to "Students Going From Closing Institution to Closing Institution" for "Institutions Going From Closing Institution to Closing Institution."

I jest, but I'm also not convinced it won't happen either.

Eep. No kidding! I hadn't thought of it that way.

[polly_mer]

CUNY union sues over 2800 adjuncts being laid off.

[Wahoo Redux]

CUNY union sues over 2800 adjuncts being laid off.

Yet another example of a terrible dysfunctional, deteriorating system and its abysmally terrible hiring policies.

[downer]

CUNY union sues over 2800 adjuncts being laid off.

Yet another example of a terrible dysfunctional, deteriorating system and its abysmally terrible hiring policies.

Maybe so, but still if you are looking for adjunct work in NYC, working at a CUNY school is often an attractive option compared to alternatives. I am wondering how CUNY is planning to staff its courses since it is heavily dependent on adjunct workers. It would presumably cost more to pay the FT faculty to teach overload than it would to hire adjuncts. Are they also cutting courses or increasing class sizes? I haven't checked recently but I expect nearly all teaching will be online at CUNY schools this fall. A lot of their faculty are not well prepared to teach online at all, according to someone I know who has been trying to train them.

I assume that while CUNY's financial situation is indeed dire, they are not considering closing down any schools. Or are they?

[polly_mer]

CUNY was canceling/consolidating sections last fall due to financial problems.  The union vote in the fall was very contentious with a countercampaign of $7k or strike.

For years, institutional members of the CUNY system were national poster children for what happens when deferred maintenance becomes dire.

Anyone who is surprised by cuts at CUNY at this point hasn't been paying attention or believes that wishing is more important than numbers.

[downer]

There's no recent updates on the CUNY page https://www.cuny.edu/coronavirus/guidance-on-academic-continuity-to-campuses/

They still haven't made an official announcement about their fall plans, though it seems obvious it will be nearly all distance learning.

So I guess they still haven't made their plans. The website announces proudly that 550 faculty are taking their Online Teaching Essentials course, but they have 6700 faculty, so it is a drop in the bucket.

Are they really not employing any adjuncts? They normally employ 10,000 though maybe not all at the same time. Basically, they won't be able to operate without adjuncts. Presumably demand for courses is increased with the massive unemployment rates in NYC.

[polly_mer]

CUNY cut 25% of their adjuncts on 30 June and were already in November planning for larger sections.

[downer]

More from CUNY:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/04/cuny-j04.html