U Tulsa to cut 40% of academic programming: CHE article

[polly_mer]

Tulsa Trustees Override Faculty to Uphold Academic-Restructuring Plan With Sweeping Cuts

[mamselle]

EDS (Episcopal Divinity School) all over again...

M.

[aside]

Details of programs/majors/minors affected:  https://utulsa.edu/truecommitment/reprioritizing-reallocating-resources/

[Wahoo Redux]

Interesting to see biochemistry and chemistry grad program killed, as well as physics grad, geosciences, history, some ed programs, math and a number of business degrees in the mix while the English graduate program is left apparently intact.  It really is a selective college-wide slash and burn.  Very sad about music and ancient languages.  The whole theater program is axed.  And even some law school degrees are gone.

The impoverishment of American higher ed takes yet another hit.

How is this going to affect U of Tulsa's rankings?

[mahagonny]

Interesting to see biochemistry and chemistry grad program killed, as well as physics grad, geosciences, history, some ed programs, math and a number of business degrees in the mix while the English graduate program is left apparently intact.  It really is a selective college-wide slash and burn.  Very sad about music and ancient languages.  The whole theater program is axed.  And even some law school degrees are gone.

The impoverishment of American higher ed takes yet another hit.

How is this going to affect U of Tulsa's rankings?

I don't know how rankings work, but I assume the cuts are either necessary, justified or rationalized (depending on one's interpretation and sympathies) by money.

Bothersome, crass (and will probably be considered irrelevant) questions:

If maintaining all the majors and courses taught should be the priority, couldn't they have been continued by just moving to non-tenure track faculty? Or is maintaining academic careers and jobs of acceptable status the priority?

[spork]

[. . . ]

I don't know how rankings work, but I assume the cuts are either necessary, justified or rationalized (depending on one's interpretation and sympathies) by money.

[. . .]

Supposedly the university acted like a Third World petro-state and spent itself into a hole that it is now trying to climb out of.

Many of the program eliminations look rational from the standpoint of focusing on what will help differentiate the university from competitors. Who needs more LLM degree holders in the USA, for example? But I would have kept some of the physics, geophysics, and chemistry programs. I'm surprised the university has nothing in chemical engineering given its program in petroleum engineering.

[polly_mer]

I'm surprised the university has nothing in chemical engineering given its program in petroleum engineering.

I see chemical engineering on aside's link with even the PhD being kept (first column in the engineering school where petroleum engineering is the last column).  What am I missing?

But I would have kept some of the physics, geophysics, and chemistry programs.

U Tulsa ia not competitive in those graduate areas and there's no reason to believe they could get more market share.  Whereas, having an established computational sciences specialty puts them as one of the frontrunners in a growing field, buzzwordy or not.

Nationally (and sometimes internationally), chemistry and physics have been losing majors to other fields at the undergraduate level.  The American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, and the European equivalents have spent more than a decade trying to spread the word about how a bachelor's degree in physics prepares one for a great career.  Reports are available at https://www.aip.org/statistics/employment while career guidance documents are at https://www.aps.org/careers/guidance/.  The upshot at the undergrad level is slightly better than the pitch for a liberal arts degree (you're a critical thinker with decent communication skills, good team work skills, and you can do math!), but the substance still comes down to a heavy dollop of "we don't have enough engineers in many specialities so we'll pay a physicist to learn engineering on the job".

British chemistry majors are down 20% in the past few years. The situation isn't dire like that in the US, but a quick look at degrees awarded in physical sciences and science technologies indicates growth from 20k to 30k in my lifetime.  50% increase seems good, until one realizes that's still fewer degrees every year in the combination of physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, and a few others than English alone and is nowhere near the growth or current numbers for computer science, biology, and communications/journalism.

When I was running numbers for Super Dinky, more HS students on the ACT indicated an interest in philosophy than in chemistry.  Chemistry knowledge, like physics, is core to a lot of other fields, but isn't all that popular as a standalone major.

People who do a little research may choose to study something in which chemistry is important, but is not the sole learning goal.  For those who don't know,

There are 85k chemists in the US making an average of $84k/year. 

Chemical engineers average $105k/year,

Petroleum engineers average $154k/year (during the recent boom)

Materials engineers average $92k/year,

Materials scientists average $100k/year

Biochemists and biophysicists average $105k/year

Biomedical engineers average $95k/year

The kicker is how few people are employed in most of these fields compared to chemistry.  The saving grace is one can generally then drop down to the technician/technologist level to make middle-class income (albeit more like $35k-$40k starting out instead of $70k) or take a job doing something else that requires a college degree because one will have all the benefits of critical thinking and communication as well as a proficiency with math and basic technology.

In another interesting turn, the push in some areas has been to do interdisciplinary majors that include chemistry and physics, but aren't traditional programs focused solely on those areas.  For example, Canadian universities have some programs (now 10 years old) that bring together several sciences to leverage their utility as part of a fabulous undergrad program..

In short, people who did the research on what to cut probably made good choices by looking carefully at their particular programs instead of going all in on a blanket STEM-is-the-future vision.

[spork]

I'm surprised the university has nothing in chemical engineering given its program in petroleum engineering.

I see chemical engineering on aside's link with even the PhD being kept (first column in the engineering school where petroleum engineering is the last column).  What am I missing?

[. . . ]

Oops, my mistake. I'm the one who missed it.

Note that U. of Tulsa has effectively killed all foreign language majors except Spanish. I bet there's a gen ed foreign language requirement of two semesters, which means first-year German, Chinese, and French will likely be taught by adjuncts.

My employer is very likely to do a similar restructuring of its academic programs in perhaps two years, but we have zero engineering, physics is limited to I and II and is taught by an adjunct, and computer science is represented by a single introduction to Python course taught out of the math department. Math graduates about one major per year. Meanwhile the philosophy and religious studies departments have a combined thirteen tenure-track faculty lines but together graduate only about four majors per year, usually double majors -- no one deliberately comes here to major in philosophy.

And I predict the outcome of this restructuring will be that the cancerous tumor that is our undergraduate business program will grow even larger, making the university even less differentiated from the competition than it already is.

[Wahoo Redux]

Tulsa is nuking their biochem M.S. as well as their chem M.S. and Ph.D.  What a shame.

I have no doubt you have analyzed the situation more or less correctly, Polly.  What I imagine is a textbook or its equivalent somewhere in the distant future written by a culture scholar explaining the paradox of American education in the comparatively wealthy, literate, and democratic 21st century, an era in which education is, at least in theory, open to all.  Someday, I suspect, we as a culture will regret this overall turn in our collective collegiate history.

[ciao_yall]

Tulsa is nuking their biochem M.S. as well as their chem M.S. and Ph.D.  What a shame.

I have no doubt you have analyzed the situation more or less correctly, Polly.  What I imagine is a textbook or its equivalent somewhere in the distant future written by a culture scholar explaining the paradox of American education in the comparatively wealthy, literate, and democratic 21st century, an era in which education is, at least in theory, open to all.  Someday, I suspect, we as a culture will regret this overall turn in our collective collegiate history.

I'm watching our own system turning itself inside out because of a crazy new funding formula. We are cancelling classes because students don't actually major in these classes - just taking them as gen eds. (Interthreaduality). We are investing in "new" programs while not addressing the impacted programs that are highly popular but "too expensive" to run.

Everyone wants to be a transformational leader, because being a competent manager is, I dunno, boring?

[spork]

Tulsa is nuking their biochem M.S. as well as their chem M.S. and Ph.D.  What a shame.

I have no doubt you have analyzed the situation more or less correctly, Polly.  What I imagine is a textbook or its equivalent somewhere in the distant future written by a culture scholar explaining the paradox of American education in the comparatively wealthy, literate, and democratic 21st century, an era in which education is, at least in theory, open to all.  Someday, I suspect, we as a culture will regret this overall turn in our collective collegiate history.

I'm watching our own system turning itself inside out because of a crazy new funding formula. We are cancelling classes because students don't actually major in these classes - just taking them as gen eds. (Interthreaduality). We are investing in "new" programs while not addressing the impacted programs that are highly popular but "too expensive" to run.

Everyone wants to be a transformational leader, because being a competent manager is, I dunno, boring?

It's because managerial competence is a rarity and easy to evaluate, whereas claims of being a "transformational leader" will always be believed by some, until it's too late. Recent personal example: our last provost was fired after four years of doing untold damage, and he was immediately hired by another university to be provost, where he lasted two years before getting fired. I'm sure he's on his way to yet another provost position somewhere else.

[ciao_yall]

Tulsa is nuking their biochem M.S. as well as their chem M.S. and Ph.D.  What a shame.

I have no doubt you have analyzed the situation more or less correctly, Polly.  What I imagine is a textbook or its equivalent somewhere in the distant future written by a culture scholar explaining the paradox of American education in the comparatively wealthy, literate, and democratic 21st century, an era in which education is, at least in theory, open to all.  Someday, I suspect, we as a culture will regret this overall turn in our collective collegiate history.

I'm watching our own system turning itself inside out because of a crazy new funding formula. We are cancelling classes because students don't actually major in these classes - just taking them as gen eds. (Interthreaduality). We are investing in "new" programs while not addressing the impacted programs that are highly popular but "too expensive" to run.

Everyone wants to be a transformational leader, because being a competent manager is, I dunno, boring?

It's because managerial competence is a rarity and easy to evaluate, whereas claims of being a "transformational leader" will always be believed by some, until it's too late. Recent personal example: our last provost was fired after four years of doing untold damage, and he was immediately hired by another university to be provost, where he lasted two years before getting fired. I'm sure he's on his way to yet another provost position somewhere else.

Because getting fired is proof that one is just too Transformational for the planet.

The Transformiest Tramsformer who ever Transformed.

[Caracal]

Some of this seems perfectly sensible. There are way too many MA programs in history. The ones that are well designed to fill particular niches, like public history, or secondary education, make sense. Many of the others are just designed to generate money and are a bad deal for students. Similarly, there are lots of places with PHD programs that shouldn't really have them. What polly said about STEM is true for the humanities too. If you're Tulsa and you have a humanities PhD program, you need to be able to have some sort of specialty or concentration that will draw good students.

The cuts to undergraduate majors and whole departments are much more troubling. Some of it could be reasonable. There's nothing inherently terrible about a school deciding that a particular specialized discipline or department no longer makes much sense. Maybe it makes more sense for Tulsa to say "look, we just aren't that strong in music performance, other places in our region have programs with stronger reputations and we just aren't attracting the best students. Let's just focus on music education where we do pretty well." The problem, of course, is that obviously this is all happening in an environment of crisis. The point is not to figure out which majors make sense, or how best to serve students, but to axe the budget and probably to fulfill various ideological agendas. You can see this in the massive cutting of language programs, classics and philosophy. That isn't about rationalizing programs, it is about a retreat from the liberal arts.

[pepsi_alum]

Some of these cuts make sense to me from a purely pragmatic standpoint, though there are some I will admit to not understanding. Why, for example, are they killing joint degree programs in the College of Business? It seems to me like a properly structured joint degree program shouldn't require much in the way of extra overheard. (If I'm wrong about this, someone please correct me. I'm genuinely curious).

One of my former employers will likely have some significant program cuts in 5-10 years. It's in an area with a declining population, and the programs that are there aren't doing enough to adapt to the changing realities of the situation. Some of it is the result of bureaucratic red tape, but's also due to faculty being unrealistic. (Just as an example, two of my former colleagues--both tenured before the internet was even a thing--scream bloody murder about the department offering any online classes, and the dean has gone along with their heckler's veto. The result is that students are simply voting with their feet and taking classes elsewhere, while the department's numbers continue to shrink).  Even my current place, which has good overall FTEs, isn't realistic either. There's a sustained push here to create MORE graduate programs in the humanities and social sciences that are theoretical rather than applied. God only knows why.

[Caracal]

(Just as an example, two of my former colleagues--both tenured before the internet was even a thing--scream bloody murder about the department offering any online classes, and the dean has gone along with their heckler's veto. The result is that students are simply voting with their feet and taking classes elsewhere, while the department's numbers continue to shrink). 

What is really the argument for online courses except that they are "the future?" Is there actually evidence that offering courses online provides real benefits for most students? I know the argument is that it increases access for students with jobs and busy lives, but often those are the very people who will do better if they have to come to class twice a week and stay connected to their schooling.

Perhaps, my perspective is skewed because teaching a course online seems awful to me. It takes away the part I like the most about teaching, interacting and engaging with students in a dynamic setting, and replaces them with the parts of the job I dislike, grading and fiddling with CMS software.