Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

The oddball major in the list is geology. In looking at the College Scorecard yesterday, I noticed that geology majors had remakably low salaries relative to other science majors. In the past, geologists were hired in the mining industry and made good money. Perhaps those salary numbers are turning rock-heads toward other majors?

Good geology program is very expensive to run and does not scale well. All those field schools with a dozen students per prof and labs with expensive equipment. So, not many geology programs are actually good. Even before the recent commodities price drop, mining industry was employing only a small minority of graduates. Many of the rest are competing for generic environmental jobs.

[Ruralguy]

Many years ago we thought if we were ever going to add an interdisciplinary physicist, it would be a geophysicist. But, yeah, we began to realize that this field was going out of favor compared to others, and that we'd never be able to nab the few successful ones anyway.

[TreadingLife]

Not dire financial straits, but doesn't seem to fit elsewhere.

Letter about budget at UC Boulder College of Arts & Sciences:
http://view.communications.cu.edu/?qs=3224887bffcee47c024592e1ac5bddb6dcebe85e337a8cab26b631423cdc14970fbadf6386134f6d0d3067b0935dd188299c27a50fae2c4cfa17e833a664c587cec4af6305595157cf4c8da689e8ef10

This is even more concerning than Vermont's move

"The University of Colorado at Boulder's College of Arts and Sciences dean said this week that he hopes to replace 50 tenured and tenure-track faculty members with 25 instructors who will teach more and earn less. His goal is to build more flexibility into the college's post-COVID-19 budget."

It is better to eliminate unsupportable programs than to create Potemkin departments. If you are a school like CU Boulder, you have to do it right or don't' do it at all.

Not to minimize the budget problems there, but they have over 1000 TT/T faculty members, so cutting 50 (through retirements) is hardly creating "Potemkin departments".

Although the pandemic has made things worse, the problems with the CU system long predate it, and result largely from the severe under-funding of higher ed by the state (last I checked CU Boulder was getting less than 5% of its budget from the state). This in turn is largely a result of a state budget with very little flexibility in it due to the people in their infinite past wisdom passing a series of initiatives that (a) limited the ability to raise revenue and save it for a rainy day, and (b) pre-committing big %s of the budget to specific uses (K-12, roads, etc.) which were all worthy causes in themselves but add up to most of the budget collectively.

Why not replace James White with 3 part-time Deans for the College of Arts and Science? Hourly wages, with contracts limited to 30 hours/week, so no overtime, no retirement matching or pension contribution, and no healthcare benefits? I bet you'd save a bundle, and get a lot more productivity.

Never waste a good pandemic.

How the hell would that help the Patriots' offense? Lol.

[Parasaurolophus]

The loss of 'Vermont Studies' seems too bad. Seems to me like an idea that was unique and had real potential to improve ties between the university, graduates, and the state. Would have been especially cool if they could have successfully drawn a significant out-of-state population, and made the course(s) mandatory for everyone. Alas.

[kaysixteen]

You are right about the population of VT, of course, but it has never been larger than it is today.   And we have seen various colleges in the state, including the few public ones, threatened with closure (some of the private ones have in fact closed).   But UVM is the state university, which the state can and should support.   But the point you correctly noted wrt enormous quantities of out of staters paying private school-like tuition is the reason why the state legislature itself has not adequately funded it.   All those small state colleges were founded at one point, so there was some demand for public college at one point.   One wonders what happened to such demand, but methinks something like the growing anti-intellectualism of the masses in this country may well have something to do with it.

[marshwiggle]

You are right about the population of VT, of course, but it has never been larger than it is today.   And we have seen various colleges in the state, including the few public ones, threatened with closure (some of the private ones have in fact closed).   But UVM is the state university, which the state can and should support.   But the point you correctly noted wrt enormous quantities of out of staters paying private school-like tuition is the reason why the state legislature itself has not adequately funded it.   All those small state colleges were founded at one point, so there was some demand for public college at one point.   One wonders what happened to such demand, but methinks something like the growing anti-intellectualism of the masses in this country may well have something to do with it.

Probably some of the change is due to students choosing professional programs which can't be offered at small places, since they need scale to be viable. It's not anti-intellectualism; it's choosing an education based on long term life goals.

[TomW]

For a comparison, I remember a phone interview I had back in 2014, for a position teaching Latin at a Christian school in a southern state.   The headmaster, about my age, had no background with Latin, so he asked the current Latin teacher to join us on the interview-- the young man was around 25, had graduated from college 2 years earlier and gotten the job at the school, and was now set to leave, in order to go to grad school himself.   This boy asked me a question regarding my familiarity with high school Latin textbook X, something I had vaguely heard of and certainly had no familiarity with, which I said.   The kid then adopted a very negative attitude towards me for the rest of the interview, and, of course, I never even received the courtesy of a rejection email from the school.   I remember, after hanging up the phone that night, thinking directly, 'what the hell is this boy doing interviewing me?  (and, of course, why did his boss think it was appropriate for him to do so, as well?)'   I decided not to write the guy back after it had become clear I was not wanted, but even now I do not like the experience.

This incident jumped out at me. I teach German at a university (and yes, German is still hanging on at a lot of places despite the program closures at so many financially troubled institutions), but my work brings me into contact with a lot of high school German teachers and I know a few people who have transitioned from teaching German in higher ed to teaching it at the high school level. One of the biggest challenges in making that transition is convincing the people doing the hiring for the high school that you REALLY want to teach high schoolers. They are often concerned that people with higher ed backgrounds will demand far too much of the high schoolers or that they will be miserable teaching high school and jump ship at the first opportunity. There are only a handful of high school German textbooks in wide usage in the US, they all have some issues, and high school German teachers tend to have strong opinions about them. I imagine the situation is similar with high school Latin because the market in the US just wouldn't be big enough to support a large range of textbook options. Not having an opinion on a commonly used high school textbook probably got you written off as someone who wasn't REALLY interested in teaching high school.

[spork]

You are right about the population of VT, of course, but it has never been larger than it is today.   And we have seen various colleges in the state, including the few public ones, threatened with closure (some of the private ones have in fact closed).   But UVM is the state university, which the state can and should support.   But the point you correctly noted wrt enormous quantities of out of staters paying private school-like tuition is the reason why the state legislature itself has not adequately funded it.   All those small state colleges were founded at one point, so there was some demand for public college at one point.   One wonders what happened to such demand, but methinks something like the growing anti-intellectualism of the masses in this country may well have something to do with it.

Not correct. Vermont has had negative population growth over the last decade. Twenty percent of its population is 65 or older. Less than a fifth is younger than 18. Less than five percent of residents are immigrants.

For comparison, Texas has had a population growth rate of fifteen percent. A quarter of residents are under age 18. Seventeen percent of residents are immigrants.

State governments began reducing direct budget allocations to university systems in the 1980s. Although Vermont has ranked at or near the bottom in terms of percentage of state revenue allocated to public higher education, it is not alone in this regard.

[polly_mer]

The oddball major in the list is geology. In looking at the College Scorecard yesterday, I noticed that geology majors had remakably low salaries relative to other science majors. In the past, geologists were hired in the mining industry and made good money. Perhaps those salary numbers are turning rock-heads toward other majors?

Good geology program is very expensive to run and does not scale well. All those field schools with a dozen students per prof and labs with expensive equipment. So, not many geology programs are actually good. Even before the recent commodities price drop, mining industry was employing only a small minority of graduates. Many of the rest are competing for generic environmental jobs.

In addition, actual mining engineering programs exist in the world and they are better preparation for the mining industry.  Actual environmental science and engineering programs exist in the world and will be better preparation for a generic environmental jobs.

Why would one hire more than the one geologist when what one needs in mining is one each of the various types of engineer, one each of several specialities in business and law and then hordes (although fewer all the time with automation) as physical labor?  Thus, even back in whatever day one wishes, there were far fewer mining industry jobs for geologists than geologists who wanted those jobs.

Geologists are a lot like biologists: many people want to do it and seize upon the public mantra of more STEM without doing the research to find out that what's needed are the math-heavy disciplines, not the math-light ones.  We have plenty of people who are happy to do the science without much math.

[polly_mer]

The Vermont faculty insist that they can somehow stop the cuts: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/12/07/u-vermont-faculty-members-pledge-fight-planned-cuts-liberal-arts

The classics professor's argument is particularly ineffective when so many of us attended institutions that didn't have a classics department and yet learned philosophy, math, sciences, and logic while becoming responsible citizens supporting the idea of a republic.

Per the Carnegie Classification, University of Vermont is only an R2, which means it cannot be part of the premier research institutions.

From Feb 2019, emphasis added:

Two classics professors who taught ancient history courses have retired in the past four years and weren't replaced, and now senior lecturer Brian Walsh has not been rehired for next year, Franklin said.

These changes are part of  "right-sizing" efforts to resolve a $1.3 million 2018-19 school year deficit caused by shrinking student enrollment, CAS Dean Bill Falls said.

The changes come as humanities majors have seen a 44 percent decline in enrollment since 2009, according to a Feb. 9 email from Falls and Provost David Rosowsky.

Source: https://vtcynic.com/news/the-changing-face-of-uvm-students-and-faculty-take-a-stand-against-budget-cuts/



From 2018, emphasis added:

UVM, like many colleges around the country has seen fewer students interested in liberal arts, said Bill Falls, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. The resulting drop in enrollment in Arts and Sciences classes has led to a teacher surplus, and a $4 million budget shortfall.

The university has not yet adjusted the size of the college's faculty to reflect declining enrollment, Falls said. UVM administrators are in fact giving the college $2 million per year to allow for wiggle room as the budgets are adjusted.

"We have a faculty that was sort of built for enrollments we had in 2010," Falls said. Since then enrollment has decreased by about 17 percent, and while in recent years there have been a slight upswing, enrollment is still below what it was in 2010. The college has a student to faculty ratio of about 14 to 1. Falls said he would like to increase the ratio to 16.5 to 1.

Source: https://vtdigger.org/2018/02/28/uvm-union-protests-proposed-faculty-cuts/

It's almost like the faculty don't want to believe that students aren't coming, despite almost a decade of under enrollment, and that somehow keeping teaching jobs for courses that don't need to be taught should somehow magically occur.

[polly_mer]

1) Marshy is right about the specific needs of dealing with quantitative problems, something I have less interest or experience in, and does not generally occur in the areas of life, professional and personal, that are common to me.   'Liberal arts-style critical thinking' is pretty much what ruralguy notes, but I would add in a specific component of verbal reasoning, acquired through significant reading, writing, and seminar-style instruction, something that, like it or not, you do not get in engineering school.

What makes you think that engineering school doesn't require significant reading and writing experience?  We don't read the same material as the humanities folks, but we do a lot of reading and writing.  That's how we end up with all those reports, memos, and other written material that come out of design and lab courses.

What makes you think we don't have seminar-style instruction?  It's not the same material as the humanities folks, but we do indeed spend a lot of time kicking around ideas based on what we all bring to the table.  The design meetings, many of the advanced labs, and the problem-solving sessions are much more seminar-like than anything else.  They are certainly not formal lectures delivered by the professor to the quiet, note-taking audience.

What makes you think we don't emphasize verbal reasoning in engineering?  That's the only way to deal with all the team projects we have.  One must convince the team that one is correct and then get people to do their parts.  A substantial portion of the engineering job outside of school is interacting with other humans to get them to buy into the plan that can work instead of doing whatever crap they want to do in their magical thinking since they don't understand the science, the technology, or the other constraints including legal and ethical.

There's a case to be made for being proficient in the humanities way of thinking, especially with a useful background of facts and ideas, but it's not that engineering school somehow is deficient in basic reasoning, reading, and writing.

[Hibush]

The Vermont faculty insist that they can somehow stop the cuts: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/12/07/u-vermont-faculty-members-pledge-fight-planned-cuts-liberal-arts

The classics professor's argument is particularly ineffective when so many of us attended institutions that didn't have a classics department and yet learned philosophy, math, sciences, and logic while becoming responsible citizens supporting the idea of a republic.

The article also notes that "Incentive-based budgeting, the model that determines college funding, allocates money based on the number of credit hours enrolled in by students in a college." 

IBB is very effective if your strategic goal is to have each department focus on maximizing student credit hours by not requiring any courses outside the major and by offering lots of fun non-major courses with easy As. Most departments resist to some degree because they have principles about a good education. The humanities faculty at UVM may have chosen an unsustainable proportion of principle vs practicality.

IBB can also be tweaked to reflect cost differences across disciplines, or to starve the ones you want to shrink. That appears to have been the case: "IBB structurally puts CAS at a disadvantage.... The credit hour weightings are being eliminated in IBB 2.0, which is slated for implementation this summer."

The recent article notes that a petition to save the religion department got 1500 signatures. That sounds like a lot, but to put that in fiscal perspective it is not. According the the UVM Foundation chair's remark in the same article, UVM has tried to address the structural deficit under the IBB program by raising endowments to cover some faculty salaries in those departments. If saving the religion department entails getting two endowed professorships, then each of those signatories would have to back up their sentiment with something like $5,000. That is a much bigger commitment.

The UVM story has quite a few of the elements that determine whether more dire financial straits can be avoided.  It is well worth watching what sustainable model they aspire to be, and what tactics they employ to get there.

[marshwiggle]

The Vermont faculty insist that they can somehow stop the cuts: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/12/07/u-vermont-faculty-members-pledge-fight-planned-cuts-liberal-arts

The classics professor's argument is particularly ineffective when so many of us attended institutions that didn't have a classics department and yet learned philosophy, math, sciences, and logic while becoming responsible citizens supporting the idea of a republic.

The article also notes that "Incentive-based budgeting, the model that determines college funding, allocates money based on the number of credit hours enrolled in by students in a college." 

IBB is very effective if your strategic goal is to have each department focus on maximizing student credit hours by not requiring any courses outside the major and by offering lots of fun non-major courses with easy As. Most departments resist to some degree because they have principles about a good education. The humanities faculty at UVM may have chosen an unsustainable proportion of principle vs practicality.

This can certainly be a problem for disciplines like math, which is required by many programs. Departments can create their own math courses, "Calculus for Basketweavers" to bring it into their own department. However, this could be de-incentivized by splitting the money for required courses from outside the major department. (If Basketweaving gets 50% of the money without having to actually teach the course, it's a bonus to them unless they get so big that 100% makes it worth having to teach it. It also means that math has to be working to have more of its own majors rather than being almost exclusively a service for others.)

The recent article notes that a petition to save the religion department got 1500 signatures. That sounds like a lot, but to put that in fiscal perspective it is not. According the the UVM Foundation chair's remark in the same article, UVM has tried to address the structural deficit under the IBB program by raising endowments to cover some faculty salaries in those departments. If saving the religion department entails getting two endowed professorships, then each of those signatories would have to back up their sentiment with something like $5,000. That is a much bigger commitment.

As the saying goes, "Talk is cheap."

[apl68]

The loss of 'Vermont Studies' seems too bad. Seems to me like an idea that was unique and had real potential to improve ties between the university, graduates, and the state. Would have been especially cool if they could have successfully drawn a significant out-of-state population, and made the course(s) mandatory for everyone. Alas.

I guess the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Studies program is in trouble too.  Oh well, you can still find copies of her works if you look.

[apl68]

I teach German at a university (and yes, German is still hanging on at a lot of places despite the program closures at so many financially troubled institutions), but my work brings me into contact with a lot of high school German teachers and I know a few people who have transitioned from teaching German in higher ed to teaching it at the high school level. One of the biggest challenges in making that transition is convincing the people doing the hiring for the high school that you REALLY want to teach high schoolers. They are often concerned that people with higher ed backgrounds will demand far too much of the high schoolers or that they will be miserable teaching high school and jump ship at the first opportunity. There are only a handful of high school German textbooks in wide usage in the US, they all have some issues, and high school German teachers tend to have strong opinions about them. I imagine the situation is similar with high school Latin because the market in the US just wouldn't be big enough to support a large range of textbook options. Not having an opinion on a commonly used high school textbook probably got you written off as someone who wasn't REALLY interested in teaching high school.

Interesting to hear that high school German is still a thing in the U.S.  I suppose it must be mostly in certain states.  In our state foreign language classes in high school are widespread, but I've never heard of anything other than Spanish and French--and not a whole lot of French--being taught in high school in-state.  It was a revelation to me in the 1990s to learn that Latin was still being taught in states further to the east.