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The Cuts at WVU

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Re: The Cuts at WVU

#31

Post by nemo44x »

As it turns out, middle and working class people finally figured out it isn’t worth paying $100k for book club. One of the mistaken beliefs of many Americans is that class isn’t a big thing here. And with this mistaken belief, millions have bought the lie that they too could do book club or art club and the associated lifestyle of young adult daycare and actually end up in a better place. Naive parents stood in front of the “Mission Accomplished” banner teary eyed as their youngster went away to some school far from home that guaranteed a better life for them. If only they’d go into crippling debt.

Happy to see this correction but sad it took so many ruined lives to get there.

If you’re middle class or less and not exceptionally academically able then the only acceptable outcome is you exit an affordable college with a useful degree. The other crap is for rich kids that can study botany and end up at their dads hedge fund one day. No one is funding your “finding yourself”or w/e. Don’t be a sucker.

Re: The Cuts at WVU

#32

Post by codemac »

codemac wrote: post #21

EDIT: Others have commented that this is just that the # of students taking courses vs. the # of students in the major. The phrase "program enrollment" meant something different to me. This would make the 800k profit make sense. Can someone help me clarify how they're getting to $800k in profit? When I look at their actual numbers, his comments don't make sense. https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/bf3ef02f-e90a-4e43-a316…

The argument they should be making is more straight forward: We should not allow a University to become so mismanaged that every degree must be profitable, but instead a positive ROI for all students. Second, languages are not an optional part of a University for the people of West Virginia - we must be connected to the world.

Re: The Cuts at WVU

#33

Post by slaymaker1907 »

bsder wrote: post #26
silisili wrote: post #7

This is a sick path to be on. Keep the money, plug kids into some other university's classes remotely. To what end? A school full of nothing but overpaid administrators, and kids all taking remote classes at disparate cheapest possible offerings?

> A school full of nothing but overpaid administrators Um, exactly? The budget crisis is, in fact, easy to solve. Start by laying off administrators in order of highest salary (starting with the University President as he has clearly failed at his job) and continue down the path until you have 25% budget surplus.

Yep, as highlighted in the article, cutting successful academic programs (which the linguistics program seems to have been since it generated 800k in profits) is selling the golden goose.

Re: The Cuts at WVU

#34

Post by icegreentea2 »

codemac wrote: post #21

EDIT: Others have commented that this is just that the # of students taking courses vs. the # of students in the major. The phrase "program enrollment" meant something different to me. This would make the 800k profit make sense. Can someone help me clarify how they're getting to $800k in profit? When I look at their actual numbers, his comments don't make sense. https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/bf3ef02f-e90a-4e43-a316…

Enrollment is for programs, but course credits are tabulated by subject code (not program). It's possible that students at the university taking foreign languages as actual courses (and not just transferring high school credits) count towards the credit (and revenue) total.

You can see similar things in other programs (look at geography/geology) where'd you might expect a lot of non-major's to take a course in.

EDIT: Or most blatantly, look at math. Pulling in ~20 million dollars of revenue on ~120 program enrollments with an FTE:Enrolled ratio of 3. The credits are clearly from non-major'd students taking courses offered.

Re: The Cuts at WVU

#35

Post by clintonb »

dylan604 wrote: post #8
clintonb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t shocking. It’s the nature of layoffs. The folks making the cuts aren’t telling the the folks in the communications office, “hey, we are firing that person you’re doing a front page story on.” Also, the department won’t be dissolved until the end of the academic year.

i love the stories of companies announcing layoffs and then immediately announce bonuses for management. there's tone deaf, and then there's whatever this is

If you're talking about a public company, you're probably referring to an official filing, not an actual press release. I'm not aware of any company issuing press releases saying, "we just paid this dude 8 figures to fire those little people."

Re: The Cuts at WVU

#36

Post by zerocrates »

parl_match wrote: post #3

If their budget numbers are true, it demonstrates serious mismanagement.

The department, if I've found it correctly on the sheet, has very few students enrolled in it but logs tens of thousands of credit hours a year: this is presumably mostly students taking a foreign language course as part of general education requirements. I imagine that's where the bulk of the tuition income allocated to the department is coming from.

Presumably the idea is something like, if we axe the department, we dump 16 tenure-track and 32 total FTEs and something like 60 students lose their program: good trade. You just write off the linguistics and TESOL programs completely along with the handful of foreign language majors, and you figure that you can give out uhhhh... Duolingo credits to the students in other programs that cared about their foreign language/lit classes and keep them around.

Of course you're abandoning the pretense of really being a university and offering well-rounded education and broad opportunities and all that... but at least you can keep all the administrators.

Re: The Cuts at WVU

#37

Post by dylan604 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #24
dylan604 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't pretty much any situation of layoffs/cutbacks demonstrations of mismanagement? Rarely is it a single issue that was unable to be predicted that causes things like this.

> Isn't pretty much any situation of layoffs/cutbacks demonstrations of mismanagement? Only if you view the function of management as being to maximize employment at the firm, which the people hiring the managers generally do not.

you must think that layoffs only occur because of over hiring. i've seen departments that are profitable like the TFA, but because of issues in a different department that is closer to management's interest, other departments are decimated to cover the shortcomings.

however, to me, management not recognizing that head count is unrealistic is still a management problem.

Re: The Cuts at WVU

#38

Post by SL61 »

codemac wrote: post #17
parl_match wrote: post #3

If their budget numbers are true, it demonstrates serious mismanagement.

EDIT: Others have commented that this is just that the # of students taking courses vs. the # of students in the major. The phrase "program enrollment" meant something different to me. This would make the 800k profit make sense. When I look at their actual numbers, his comments don't make sense: https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/bf3ef02f-e90a-4e43-a316-d295... They somehow have 18000+ credit hours to their department i…

The enrollment numbers are probably for majors, i.e. enrollment count of 5 for the French program means there are 5 students majoring in French. The vast majority of students taking French classes would be taking them for general education requirements (or whatever WVU calls that), or due to other degree programs requiring a language class, or as electives.

At my alma mater, the Philosophy department had something like 10 majors, but the whole department was kept afloat by the Nursing College's requirement for their students to take an ethics class. The philosophy professors would teach a few high-level philosophy courses to tiny classes, and then several massive ethics seminars with hundreds of nursing students.

Re: The Cuts at WVU

#39

Post by jccalhoun »

frob wrote: post #13
footy wrote: post #4

> In fact, on the same day WVU wrote to tell us our department is cancelled and we are fired, they ran a front-page article on the university website celebrating the NSF grant that Sergio Robles-Puente and I recently received, and lauding our innovative research and intensive student mentoring. I have a few close friends in academia and while IMO they're clearly underappreciated by their institutions (even the lucky…

This reminds me of when MIT was putting student hacks, like the fire truck on the dome, on the front of their promotional material while prosecuting those same students for exploring unlocked areas of the campus.

It reminds me of the librarian that left $4 million to the University of New Hampshire and they spend $1 million of it on a scoreboard for the football team https://time.com/4497472/university-of-new-hampshire-librari...

Re: The Cuts at WVU

#40

Post by failrate »

sgustard wrote: post #27
ethbr1 wrote: post #11

For reference, here are all the proposed WVU cuts by dept (~7.25% total faculty reduction): https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/da8e760e-d129-47c1-b06d-5fe9... More context: https://wvutoday.wvu.edu/stories/2023/08/11/wvu-announces-pr... and https://provost.wvu.edu/academic-transformation/academic-pro...

"For example, Mining Engineering has experienced a decline in enrollment, yet this area is critical to the state and the region, and there is unmet occupational demand. Also experiencing similar challenges is the Petroleum and Natural Gas program" Very interesting. The politicians of West Virginia want to prop up the oil and mining industries. Young people do not want careers that destroy the planet. So the solution…

Yes, learning other languages will increase empathy. Reduced empathy makes it easier to work in the fossil fuel industry.
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