Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[polly_mer]

See?  Other people do know the big picture. 

Why is that so hard for the people who need to take action for their own jobs to grasp that the red flags are not just being raised, but are flapping wildly in a very hard-to-ignore way?

[Ruralguy]

Do we know that they aren't? That's not the sort of thing folks are going to advertise.
Many of the senior folks probably can't find other jobs anyway, or at least it would be quite difficult. One thing they can do is help preserve what they have for them and their younger colleagues, should they decide to stay or if the institution lives for more than a couple of years. It may be too late to do anything other than cut, cut , cut and then run, run, run, but its not surprising that some people are working to preserve what they have. I don't think that necessarily means that even a majority a *are not* considering other options.

[polly_mer]

Do we know that they aren't?

Depends on who "they" are.  I'd never heard of Misericordia until Spork posted, so I have no insight on those folks in particular.

I have in mind the people (here on the fora and elsewhere) who keep insisting that each of these notices is just a one-off instead of a pattern that is clearly visible outside the elite institutions.

I have in mind the people who seem to be completely ignorant of all the job market realities and higher ed sector largest problems that will affect their jobs, but instead want to focus on the much more comfortable intellectual discussions about the value of a liberal arts education.

I have in mind the people who are sure their job is only to keep something resembling teaching happening for a paycheck instead of needing to know how the business side actually works.

I dearly hope many, many people are quietly applying out for good jobs elsewhere, but that's not the impression from reading Reddit discussions where nearly every week people are still asking questions like "Can I get a full-time faculty job if I get an MA in <humanities> from online diploma mill?  What if I already have one and have been striking out even getting a death-marching adjunct job?  Should I go for an online diploma mill PhD to increase my chances?"

[Ruralguy]

Wow, that last category you mention, Polly, seems particularly clueless, but maybe they are just very young and don't know academic norms very well?

As for discussions about liberal arts: I'm all for it so long as it doesn't bankrupt a school for employing someone(s) in a discipline that has zero majors and not even well populated sections for gen end classes. Sadly, that probably goes for my STEM sub-discipline as well (eventually), but so be it if it does.

Obviously the institutional failures and destitute near failures are not one-offs.  I can tell you that in my region there are probably something like 20 schools like mine. Maybe a couple of them are in decent shape. Several very nearly have died in the last few years. We are sort of in the middle, but we know we can't survive if both health disasters+ demographic cliff push us over the sustainability limit, which I think is likely to be hit in under a decades (i.e.., before I was ready to retire (and way before my wife was)!). We have only just started to try to push more popular STEM programs (well, more popular than some we had...they haven't pulled in hordes), cut lines in majors that had zero students major, etc.. 

On the points about respecting the institution's needs as a business: yes, few faculty care, some very outwardly don't care and are dismissive of anybody who does, and still others care a little, but don't know jack, so aren't helpful.

[apl68]

Misericordia's FTE undergraduate enrollment fell by nearly 20% from FY 2014 to FY 2019. I suspect it fell even more for the fall 2019 incoming cohort. Then the pandemic hit.

Enrollment dropping, only a couple thousand students, and they still have seven Vice Presidents?  Either there's some administrative bloat, or some serious title inflation going on.

[marshwiggle]

Misericordia's FTE undergraduate enrollment fell by nearly 20% from FY 2014 to FY 2019. I suspect it fell even more for the fall 2019 incoming cohort. Then the pandemic hit.

Enrollment dropping, only a couple thousand students, and they still have seven Vice Presidents?  Either there's some administrative bloat, or some serious title inflation going on.

Imagine what that would mean if you extrapolated to a national government.

[Langue_doc]

Misericordia's FTE undergraduate enrollment fell by nearly 20% from FY 2014 to FY 2019. I suspect it fell even more for the fall 2019 incoming cohort. Then the pandemic hit.

Enrollment dropping, only a couple thousand students, and they still have seven Vice Presidents?  Either there's some administrative bloat, or some serious title inflation going on.

Imagine what that would mean if you extrapolated to a national government.

Imagine what that would mean if extrapolated to the current government--three kids, one kid-in-law, the out-of-his-mind lawyer, the so-called spokesperson, all co-VPing with the official VP.

Didn't mean to hijack the thread, but just couldn't resist.

[jimbogumbo]

Wyoming: https://www.uwyo.edu/uw/news/2020/11/uw-board-of-trustees-approves-budget-reduction-plan.html

[Hibush]

Wyoming: https://www.uwyo.edu/uw/news/2020/11/uw-board-of-trustees-approves-budget-reduction-plan.html

Thanks for the heads up. There are some unusual aspects to this movement.

• The Department of Athletics will reduce salaries and cut team travel costs.
• 
  In the College of Business, minors in accounting, decision science, finance, human resource management and marketing would be eliminated;
• 
  In the College of Engineering and Applied Science, consolidation of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Computer Science would be considered.

The arithmetic: The deficit is $21 million per year. Closing majors and laying of the associated faculty and staff will save 2.5 million. Raising tuition 6% will raise 3.2 million. So they are still short about 3/4 of the deficit.

[apl68]

Misericordia's FTE undergraduate enrollment fell by nearly 20% from FY 2014 to FY 2019. I suspect it fell even more for the fall 2019 incoming cohort. Then the pandemic hit.

Enrollment dropping, only a couple thousand students, and they still have seven Vice Presidents?  Either there's some administrative bloat, or some serious title inflation going on.

Imagine what that would mean if you extrapolated to a national government.

It's called the former Yugoslavia.

[spork]

Wow, that last category you mention, Polly, seems particularly clueless, but maybe they are just very young and don't know academic norms very well?

[. . .]

The age of people in that last category varies widely. They range from clueless undergraduates who are starry-eyed by the thought of teaching the courses they liked taking as students to the middle-aged who are dissatisfied with their home or work lives and who think becoming a professor is the magic elixir of happiness.

On the points about respecting the institution's needs as a business: yes, few faculty care, some very outwardly don't care and are dismissive of anybody who does, and still others care a little, but don't know jack, so aren't helpful.

Describes my university. The principle that drives curricular design is "how can students be forced to take the courses that I teach?" Cost never enters into the discussion. 


I don't want to leave administrators out of this either. Every few years we get a new one who proposes "engineering" as the solution, when a reputable engineering program that would be competitive with the state flagship that is twenty minutes away would cost at least $100 million to open.

[secundem_artem]

Do we know that they aren't?

Depends on who "they" are.  I'd never heard of Misericordia until Spork posted, so I have no insight on those folks in particular.

I have in mind the people (here on the fora and elsewhere) who keep insisting that each of these notices is just a one-off instead of a pattern that is clearly visible outside the elite institutions.

I have in mind the people who seem to be completely ignorant of all the job market realities and higher ed sector largest problems that will affect their jobs, but instead want to focus on the much more comfortable intellectual discussions about the value of a liberal arts education.

I have in mind the people who are sure their job is only to keep something resembling teaching happening for a paycheck instead of needing to know how the business side actually works.

I dearly hope many, many people are quietly applying out for good jobs elsewhere, but that's not the impression from reading Reddit discussions where nearly every week people are still asking questions like "Can I get a full-time faculty job if I get an MA in <humanities> from online diploma mill?  What if I already have one and have been striking out even getting a death-marching adjunct job?  Should I go for an online diploma mill PhD to increase my chances?"

I know several people who rode the online, for-profit horse into jobs as either faculty or staff.  I know others who work for reputable employers with those qualifications and are successful professionals. 

The hiring practices of academia are so byzantine and confusing as to be incomprehensible for people not already in the system.  We have all seen horrifyingly bad people get hired because they ticked the right box on somebody's diversity and inclusion form, credentials be damned. 

It's easy to make fun of people asking "can I get a job if....." questions,  but they are honest questions from people trying to better themselves.  The fact that they did not research some school's 990's (because they have never heard of such a thing), research the publication records of senior faculty, ask about the rapidity of turnover for administrators, look up a school on IPEDS and all the other "inside baseball" doings of the academy should not be held against them.

I get the "tough love" message, but let's not be careful that it starts to look like contempt.

[polly_mer]

It is not that hard to find out the state of higher ed hiring now with the internet and the voices so loud on how bad the job market is for many fields.  There is no point in my lifetime that going to graduate school in most of the humanities outside the fully funded elite programs was a good idea.  That's not inside baseball; that's basic market research that one should expect from adults.

I am very negative on people who somehow found a discussion board on higher ed and yet somehow didn't read the bazillion threads on the same topic.

Sure, asking the question as a middle-schooler who was asked yesterday to do a report on possible careers makes sense.

Someone who is claiming to be a college graduate who wants to teach critical thinking skills has already failed by asking the question.

[Ruralguy]

I think the best course of action is to educate people as you encounter them. Let them know how they can get critical information about a school or field. Be a good mentor. Let them know about their options.

[apl68]

I don't want to leave administrators out of this either. Every few years we get a new one who proposes "engineering" as the solution, when a reputable engineering program that would be competitive with the state flagship that is twenty minutes away would cost at least $100 million to open.

It's remarkable how many people don't seem to understand that certain things are only possible in places or institutions of a certain size.  There are people in our town, which is small and far away from anything the same size or larger, who honestly seem to believe that the reason why we don't have major chain sit-down restaurants and shopping malls is because the local chamber of commerce won't allow anything new to come to town for fear of the competition.  I've been on the Chamber.  They don't have anything like that kind of clout, and in most cases they'd be thrilled to attract a substantial new business to town.  We don't have such things because we just don't have the population to support them.