Yeah, this was my first thought reading through this. It literally makes no sense to close a department that, after operational and administrative costs, is net positive while you are facing a budget crisis.
Later on, the writer mentions an ideological split/decision on the chairperson's part. I wish they would delve into that more. Do the administrative heads feel that using outsourced labor will be more profitable?
> It literally makes no sense to close a department that, after operational and administrative costs, is net positive while you are facing a budget crisis.
If they think investment in another department will bring a higher ROI it makes sense.
Not trolling. I'm not sure you understand opportunity costs. I have 5m to invest in a department. Investing that 5m in Department A and earn 800k in net revenue. If I invest that same 5m in Department B I can earn 1.4m in net revenue. If I invest in Department A I'm giving up 600k in net revenue.
The department exists already, it needs zero investment. Did you read the article at all?
If anything, it's going to absorb more opportunity cost ramping the department down than to let it continue operating. About the only way your argument would make sense is if they desperately needed the physical resources (offices, desks, etc); but considering they closed down other unprofitable departments, there are plenty available.
I read the entire article and I reviewed the spreadsheet with financial data.
The department costs were $5,846,146 in 2022. They had net revenues of $801,468. A 13.71 ROI. They served a student population of 61. The student population has been consistently shrinking over time. Compare this for example to the Department of Psychology which had costs of $6,485,775 and net revenue of $1,724,536 for an ROI of 26.59. This while serving a student population of 774 which has been consistently increasing over time.
If they believe they can replicate the higher ROI while serving more students by switching the funding to another department they should do so.
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.
They somehow have 18000+ credit hours to their department in a year, but only 61 enrolled students in fall 2022 which, means an average student enrolled was taking 310 credits? Or ~150ish if the 2022 credit hours is for both fall & spring?
What I think is happening, is that most universities allow you to meet your "foreign languages requirement" by showing your High School transcripts, and then you get those credits applied to your transcript. That means you actually make $0 from those credits. The later part of the spreadsheet clearly shows how impossible this is - they did not make $6.7M with 61 students' tuition. Clearly the tuition is just a dumb excel formula multiplying by the credits.
So either they're somehow the most expensive foreign language school in the world, with 1 instructor per 2 students...
Or they're a wildly expensive department that almost no one major's with, and their research grants don't cover their millions in losses to the university.
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.
Yup. The same goes for mathematics programs around the world -- a relatively small number of Math majors, but the departments are kept afloat by teaching calculus courses to everyone going into other science and engineering programs.
Students don't just take courses in their own program. What we have here is 61 students majoring in languages, but lots of students from elsewhere in the institution taking language courses. Possibly because of a foreign language requirement, possibly out of interest... but I'd bet that a lot of them just take language courses to get an easy A.
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.
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.
> you must think that layoffs only occur because of over hiring
No, in fact, I think “overhiring” is mostly based on another misapprehension of management’s function. Hiring rapidly when conditions are favorable and firing rapidly when conditions change isn’t “overhiring” and then corrections, its two different sides of the near-optimal-as-possible management of headcount int the context of capitalism.
Is it bad for workers? Sure, but there’s a reason it’s called “capitalism” and not “laborism”.
Obviously, management makes mistakes. But rapid reductions in staff are not particularly a sign of that.
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.
> 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 ones who have tenure), this level of cynical disrespect is shocking.
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."
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.
So you're saying, in lack of any other evidence, that a librarian would want the money donated to the library?
I'm an engineer, I went to a school, I also played football and was in a fraternity. I think my school knows what they're doing. If I was to give them money in bequest, I'd either let them deal with it or I'd actually point it at the athletic department.
Actually now that I think of it I'd just put a $1M donation on game socks. All student athletes get great new socks once a week.
That and maybe something that encourages the good TAs to all be at the athletic complex.
My point is, based on a photo of me when I'm 80 and my career choice, you'd have no idea what I'd want to do with my money.
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?
I mean, that is kind of the end game of all of this, isn't it? Crank up the prices, rent seek, get your bag, destroy the underlying product in pursuit of personal enrichment.
Higher education seems to be lagging the vulture capitalism of the 80's/90's by a couple of decades, but boy it does seem like it's here.
Fair point. I guess it has the bonus effect of pulling the ladder up. Don't have to worry about some pesky young, well educated person taking your job or competing for future 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.
Oh yes. I just commented on "market saturation" elsewhere - partly, this is very similar to what I wrote there. Initially, hiring some "professional managers" works well (and, relatedly, expanding sports programs, adding "amenities", etc.). For an individual institution, bringing in this type of "business-thinking" obviously generated results.
For example, with the amenities etc. - this was a type of marketing they could do! There's only one "Harvard", "Princeton", etc. ... and, really, for any school, mostly you're avoiding changing "market segment" (in terms of acceptance rate / more generally, the target customer... I mean, student, demographic), but, you can attract applications through various kinds of "differentiation". "Oh, we may not be <ivy-league school X>, but look at this Michelin-starred food court we just built!"
But, there are limits. "Exponential" is not forever - locally or globally (in time &/ space). It's nonsensical. Yet, MBAs, and so many others in the modern world, expect and seek "exponential". This is not unique to humans, arguably, but that's a massive other topic I'll avoid. Ultimately, when a handful of institutions start, they get results. Then, others are basically forced to respond ... or get forced out of the market. And, you're left with a bunch of wreckage - including institutions getting so sidetracked from their core missions, you wonder why the hell they're still labeled with "university".
It was a frequent enough irritant the last time I was in a more academic setting (as recently as several years ago). Everyone kept waiting for a class to be announced as meeting at the football stadium. Many parents, students, faculty, etc. were annoyed. But, not the wealthy donors, the top admins, etc.
Let it collapse under the weight of business school BS, it'll be ... cathartic. All the business school nonsense, that was such a boon... turning around and biting us in the ass. Haha, it's the story of homo sapiens.
"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 is: eliminate World Languages?
How does learning other language increase empathy? Can you give a specific mechanism or metric for that? This sounds like a feel good idea, but I’ve taken foreign languages in a formal setting with 3 different languages; I never felt more empathetic afterwards.
Being unable to communicate with another human being can be very alienating.
In my experience, learning another language opens up even more the fact that different groups are fundamentally similar.
It could be that I started from a relatively low empathic capacity, but I also do not learn languages in a formal setting. I prefer to learn them immersively, e.g. working in a kitchen, traveling abroad.
2. They hired a team to devise a way to fairly eliminate programs.
3. That team decided that student enrollment should be the key metric to drive program elimination, but recognized three exceptions.
4. Both World Language and Extractive Resource Engineering programs have declining enrollment, thus would be slated to be eliminated.
5. The extractive resource engineering programs qualify for one of three exceptions which was significance to the local region and economy.
6. Thus those majors will be combined/restructured and downsized rather than being outright eliminated.
It's also worth noting that while you can merge the Mining Engineering major with the P&NG Engineering major in a clean way since there is significant overlap in coursework it's unclear to me how you would merge the Chinese and the Russian programs into a single major. So even if they did qualify for an exception, I don't think you could use the same solution.
No, mining is actually critical to the state and region, specifically coal, specifically bituminous coal, which isn't used for power generation, but instead in applications that need to be much hotter than what other fuel sources can easily obtain, like steel manufacturing, ~70% of which uses coal blast furnaces.
And while you might want to replace those furnaces with something else, there really isn't a great way to do that. Most of them are already running and are going to need to run another 10-25 years before they're replaced in order to pay for themselves. You can't just shut them off, because then you won't have steel and you do need steel for civilization to keep running smoothly.
So what you're left with is trying to make hydrogen cheap enough to replace the coal furnaces and make it worth the extra R&D time required to get your foundry producing in-spec material with a different fuel source, which means their processes need to be better with the new fuel as well.
If that sounds like it'll take decades to happen, well yeah, you're right, probably decades to even start happening, so we need to keep mining coal, and, it'd be a very good idea to get young, bright minds involved, because the mining process is, by my estimation, ripe for automation, and if you want to directly reduce the human cost of mining in general, robots is how you do it, and that's also a goal worth pursuing given the number of people die every year digging in the dirt, not just in the United States, but worldwide.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to put he young bright minds to work at trying to make hydrogen cheap enough to replace coal for the steel production? Keeping people working isn’t really the problem.
Universities drank the kool-ade and thought that if they spent and unbelievable amount of money on administration, student perks and sports teams, that would generate an exponential growth in enrollment. It did not.
The WSJ did a decent article about this a few weeks ago.
It was hard not to see this coming. Everyone has been talking about how the benefit of a Bachelor's degree is not worth the tuition cost. Covid drove that home when students were paying tens of thousand dollars just to watch videos at home.
I could go on and on about this but it just breaks my heart to see how bad universities screwed this up.
The author does state what you say at the end of the 2nd paragraph, but in the same paragraph, he said
"The reason given for this egregious violation of ethical and professional norms is that the university faces a dire budget crisis, and the administration has no choice but to cut academic programs in order to close their structural budget deficit."
And in the third paragraph...
"The story of how the university got into such a catastrophic financial position to begin with is a long and complex one"
I do not doubt the author's claim that the linguistics dept at WVU was profitable. I also agree with him that these decisions (sensible or not) are born from the massive financial pit they've dug themselves into.
The anonymous insider report linked within this article demonstrates that the financial issues ailing WVU are very specific to WVU and that other universities in its class are doing fine by comparison.
This is only a premonition of the things to come. Our universities have been hell bent on destroying themselves for the past few decades. They stole as much as they could as the traditional gatekeepers to the upper-middle class, but even the most clueless are realizing the missing value proposition. College enrollment has been dropping from its peak in 2010.[1] As the amount of freshmen and state funding drops, the parasites will fire everyone except their fellow parasites until the hosts are consumed.
> All of the foreign language and literature programs at the university are to be discontinued; the president of the university publicly stated that foreign-language classes will be replaced with online apps or remote classes at other universities.
If a university is just offering online courses at other schools, it ought to be treated as if it doesn’t offer the subject at all.
I dunno, is it crucial to teach languages? I find (human) languages very difficult to learn, to the point of unpleasantness. But still, it seems frankly bizarre that a public university might not provide instruction in them. Not providing this kind of instruction puts a school in the vo-tech/community college category IMO. (Which are important places of learning but I believe the U there stands for University).
Of course it is crucial for any university to teach languages. For fields like history or archaeology of various regions of the world, a lot (if not most) of the reading that one has to do will be in languages other than English. Any North American university library will have at least some scholarship in its stacks in a language other than English.
Also, in spite of the belief that language degrees are useless, they are an important first step, if not a prerequisite, towards 1) graduate studies in a field that draws on that language, and 2) various on-the-ground careers in the respective country. Lots of journalists based in and specializing in some region, started off with a degree in the language of that country, for example.
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.
They somehow have 18000+ credit hours to their department in a year, but only 61 enrolled students in fall 2022 which, means an average student enrolled was taking 310 credits? Or ~150ish if the 2022 credit hours is for both fall & spring?
My guess is that these are $0 credits. Most universities allow you to meet your "foreign languages requirement" by showing your High School transcripts, and then you get those credits applied to your degree. $0 profit. The later part of the spreadsheet clearly shows how impossible this is - they did not make $6.7M with 61 students' tuition. Clearly the spreadsheet is just a dumb formula multiplying by the credits..
So either they're somehow the most expensive foreign language school in the world, with 1 instructor per 2 students that folks are paying $50k+/semester..
Or their research grants aren't being accounted for correctly? (I don't know how grants work, I am but a lowly swe)
Or they're a wildly expensive department that almost no one major's with, and their research grants don't cover their millions in losses to the university.
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.
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.
And that was the thinking at the engineering school I went to. We offered an English major.
Why?
Because engineers should take a fair number of English courses as part of their major, and you attract the best teaching talent if you have an actual program, even if you only have a few explicitly-majoring students.
Eliminating foreign language requirements seems insane to me, though. How much of the world is missing to you without a second language?
probably lot of money went to stupid gym, sport teams, and fancy buildings for cover of a brochure, while all is needed for these folks and their students to perform is a classroom with a blackboard, some desk, laptop, internet connection, and a place to hangout. That is all needed for 90% of education.
And we're forcing the primary state university to gut its programs and/or risk complete shutdown over $45-million budget deficit, partially due to inadequate state funding.
Why? Because - tragically - West Virginians pride themselves on ignorance, consistently vote against their own longterm best interests, and loathe the idea of liberal higher education in all its forms.
(To be fair, the current WVU administration is to blame for letting this get out of hand rather than proactive budget cuts, but eduction should also be one of our literally-poor state's biggest investments.)
This cynical perspective has been brought to you by a lifetime WV resident and WVU Computer Science grad, consistently disappointed by my state's active rejection of progress.
> Why? Because - tragically - West Virginians pride themselves on ignorance, consistently vote against their own longterm best interests, and loathe the idea of liberal higher education in all its forms.
I'm tired of people saying that people vote against their own interests.
Is it so insane to believe that maybe they have different interests that don't make sense to you or me?
Then go ahead and explain why West Virginia is consistently and historically among the poorest, least educated, unhealthiest, and unhappiest states in the US.
It is a fact that West Virginians vote to perpetuate these circumstances. Our governor is the richest coal baron in the state, and we're going to overwhelmingly vote out centrist Joe Manchin to put that coal baron into the US Senate.
I've lived here for four decades, the son of a coal miner who was the son of a coal miner, the first person in my extended family to ever earn a college degree. Do you actually know what you're talking about, or are you just angrily shouting into the wind?
> Then go ahead and explain why West Virginia is consistently and historically among the poorest, least educated, unhealthiest, and unhappiest states in the US.
Can you really not imagine that some people don't care about money or education and instead care about other things that are seemingly unimportant to you?
There is a significant difference between "interests" and "best interests".
Unhealthiest. Unhappiest. These are literally studies where WV comes in at the bottom of the list. You just seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing.
There is likely truth to what you're saying, but isn't it possible that the alternatives (to what they vote for) would make people even worse off? If you look around the world, there is a looooong way down from the standard of living in West Virginia (which people in some countries would dream to have).
> I've lived here for four decades, the son of a coal miner who was the son of a coal miner, the first person in my extended family to ever earn a college degree. Do you actually know what you're talking about, or are you just angrily shouting into the wind?
Mon ami this is HN -- any posts that aren't about node.js or autism are generally people pissing into the wind
Sure - define rational as people who agree with you, and rational as people who disagree with you.
I'm tired of people thinking the people who disagree with them must be morons and incapable of rationality, and that the people who agree with them are smart and rational.
It's crazy unlikely given their sizes and endowments, but I am scared of Texas and Florida public universities pulling the same crap for the same reasons.
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.
> 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
You roll your eyes at kids in “book clubs”, then use a freaking STEM program as your example. Botanists, the people studying plants so they can make healthier crops among other things, are your example of bad educational investments? I don’t think you understand the whole university system as well as you think you do.
I think you missed the entire point. Botany is great and important for some exceptionally talented person. The kind of kid that gets scholarship to a top university because they’re super smart and conscientious. These people will make a difference.
It’s pointless for a middle class kid of average or even slightly above average ability with nothing to fall back on. These people need to make a living.
Once you’re earning a living then there’s nothing stopping you from exploring botany. The internet is full of resources. Your local college will probably let you sit in for free. Do that.
You have a poor grasp on what a botanist is, why we need them, and how a kid might end up on that track.
Your claim is directly analogous to “study physics on your own once you have a real job”.
The notion that only the wealthy should be able to pursue critical fields is dystopian as hell. I’m not a botanist. I don’t even know that I know any. I bought a cartful of their research at the supermarket today, though.
Unless you’re exceptional. You keep leaving that part out. There’s a parallel gradient of ability and practicality.
Has to do more with ability than wealth - although wealth lets you do w/e because you’re rich.
There’s reality and there’s how it “ought to be”. You’re stuck on that. Dystopian is millions of people with massive debt and unable to act on what they paid for it.
You're the one pitching an "ought to be". Your pitch is "Poor people ought not to aspire to roles above their station". That sounds pretty dystopian to me.
Tenure prevents you from being fired individually but does not protect you if your whole department is axed. That may be why the cuts are structured the way they are (entire departments) rather than culling specific faculty in departments that are over staffed relative to enrollment.
Speaking as a parent, the state of higher education is shocking.
Costs of $300,000 for a 4-year degree ($75K/year for tuition, fees, and housing) is not just possible, it's essentially the norm for many schools that aren't even top-tier. Even state schools will run about $200,000, all-in. God forbid you have more than one child.
Universities tout their need-based financial aid, but the cut off is often far below the median salary in high cost of living areas. At that point the aid is "Congratulations, you qualify for student loans!"
It's great that more lower-income families can get a full scholarship, but the middle class has been priced out of everything but state schools and community college.
In 2008 the “expensive universities” were $40-45k a year all in. Now they are $80k a year all in. Outside of computer science, high finance, and management consulting… who is paying enough to warrant a $320k degree? And even then it’s pushing it…
It also forces 18 year-olds to commit to a high $ major on day 1, then stick with it no matter what. What if you're undecided, but still want to be in a good university while you figure it out? What if you realize you hate computer science but don't want to transfer universities? These would be horrible causes of anxiety, stress, and burn-out.
The most costly, of course, are private schools (which is where my daughter wants to go).
However, the "financial back-up plan" of in-state 4-year universities is not exactly affordable either. In-state cost of UCLA, for example, is $37,385. UC Davis is $38,956 for California residents.
In my state UT is highly ranked nationally for many programs and estimated costs are $33k/yr to study engineering, or $130k total(source: https://admissions.utexas.edu/cost-aid/cost-tuition-rates/). That's for a great school in one of the most expensive cities in the state.
The largest component of that is $13k living expenses which you would spend anyway if not attending. If you want lower living costs you can attend a non-prestigious university in a smaller town like I did with lower tuition and noticeably lower living costs. Combine this with taking AP classes and CLEP tests in high school and using community college in the summer for the worthless "common core" college credits and the savings are much larger. You don't have to spend $200k!
Of course there are options; there's community college, transferring, less prestigious schools, etc.
However, it sucks to tell your kid that worked their ass off their whole life that they can't go to their first choice schools because of administrative mismanagement. Read the WSJ article that is linked elsewhere to see the systemic issues facing higher education. It's bleak.
"Congratulations, you got into Rice! Can I interest you in University of North Texas instead?"
Welcome to life for most of us. Precious few are privileged enough to go to whatever school they want to. Almost everyone has to make tradeoffs based on economic factors, it's been that way forever. It was that way over two decades ago when I went to school. I dreamed of going to MIT or more realistically UT, but that wasn't affordable to me with the support my family struggled to provide. I took all the measures I suggested, lived first 1hr away at home and then in a trailer park instead of on campus, and worked as much as I could between classes. A big chunk of my classmates were worse off.
UNT has some perfectly good programs by the way, some of the most brilliant and successful people I know graduated from their math and physics programs.
Yeah, I totally get it's a high quality problem. And, I feel you. Not to be "back in my day..." but I had to work 40 hours a week and live with 3 other people off campus to put myself through school. I understand sacrifice and hard choices.
But dude, after all that I wanted to give my kids the college experience I couldn't have. Let them live on campus, not have to work to pay tuition, be able to enjoy the benefits of both a strong curriculum and extra-curriculars and maybe even a social life to build networks for the future.
After working my own ass off my whole life, I make good money and have kids that can go almost anywhere. But...can't. All the living in a trailer park and full-time work will barely make a dent in some of these numbers.
But this really isn't a "woe is me" - I talk to a lot of other parents in exactly the same situation. I'm just at one end of a systemic middle class problem. You're either rich, in which case dropping $200K-$400K for a bachelors isn't a problem, or you're poor, in which case there's huge need-based aid available today.
If you're in the middle though, you're either squeezed out or taking on massive debts. This isn't even touching on the declining value of a bachelors and possible need to pay another $50-$60K for a Masters just to have an ROI.
(and I really wasn't slagging UNT. It's a fine school. My point was that it's hard to shift a teenager's thinking from a "dream school" to an affordable school without a significant amount of disappointment -- and the concomitant feelings of failure as a parent.)
I completely sympathize with the author and his colleagues. However, I would respectfully say given the state of the university, please do not contemplate staying back.
It seems most of the authors’ colleagues have external funding sources which they can take with them.
Make a clean break. The relationship right now is broken. I wouldn’t try to mend it. It’ll just cause more stress as time goes on.
> operating profits of more than $800,000 in each of the last three years
while I'm sympathetic to their plight, the notion of "profit" for an individual department of a university is probably laughable to a real accountant (which I'm not).
College finances are indeed a disaster, though, and it's mostly their own fault:
I'm not going to lie - while it sucks for the departments affected, I actually think universities cutting tiny departments is probably a good thing and more universities are probably going to follow suit.
This kind of hints at a deep growing conflict inside of higher-ed - is the primary beneficiary the students and undergraduate programs, or is it the academic community and graduate program?
Having niche programs is only debatably good for students! While it may feel fancy to have some as feathers in your cap, the reality is that most students would be better off going to a college that specializes in their field rather than getting a sub-par experience from a novelty program added to round out "offerings".
If there is a specialty program that better caters to a students desired major and is affordable, generally speaking, said student will go to that school. A student studying linguistics at WVU is likely studying at the best linguistics program that they can afford and received an acceptance.
Professor Katz states that one of the reasons for the cut is ideological, though he does not elaborate. Does anyone have any idea of what he's talking about?
> Beyond the irregular manner in which she was hired, the most unusual thing about Maryanne Reed as a Provost is that she does not hold a doctorate in her field (or any other). The Provost is responsible for overseeing graduate education, assessment of Faculty research, and the administration of tenure, which is normally based on research and limited to faculty with doctorates (Reed herself was a rare exception to this pattern as a professor of journalism). A Provost with no experience in any of these areas is highly unusual.
As far as I'm aware, a Provost, or any academic executive, at a four-year research university without a PhD is super duper shady.
Imagine a Distinguished Fellow at Microsoft or somewhere like that whose previous job was a rank consultant at Deloitte. It's like that, afaik.
While Maryanne Reed, who holds an MS in Journalism, spent a lot of time at WVU (30 years as an assistant professor, which is usually the highest teaching position you can get without a PhD), her progression is still very unusual in academia.
Outside that, it appears as if WVU is being robbed from the inside.
109 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 166 ms ] threadJust in case.
https://archive.ph/gGqvX
Later on, the writer mentions an ideological split/decision on the chairperson's part. I wish they would delve into that more. Do the administrative heads feel that using outsourced labor will be more profitable?
If they think investment in another department will bring a higher ROI it makes sense.
That's like saying "I don't want a free PS5, because I think I'd play my Nintendo Switch more often".
I'm having a hard time processing your logic here.
Let's just do numbers here:
* Option A: you have 1mUSD to invest into Department X.
* Option B: you have 1.2mUSD to invest into Department X and you get Department Y for free.
Option A makes zero sense, logically.
If anything, it's going to absorb more opportunity cost ramping the department down than to let it continue operating. About the only way your argument would make sense is if they desperately needed the physical resources (offices, desks, etc); but considering they closed down other unprofitable departments, there are plenty available.
The department costs were $5,846,146 in 2022. They had net revenues of $801,468. A 13.71 ROI. They served a student population of 61. The student population has been consistently shrinking over time. Compare this for example to the Department of Psychology which had costs of $6,485,775 and net revenue of $1,724,536 for an ROI of 26.59. This while serving a student population of 774 which has been consistently increasing over time.
If they believe they can replicate the higher ROI while serving more students by switching the funding to another department they should do so.
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 in a year, but only 61 enrolled students in fall 2022 which, means an average student enrolled was taking 310 credits? Or ~150ish if the 2022 credit hours is for both fall & spring?
What I think is happening, is that most universities allow you to meet your "foreign languages requirement" by showing your High School transcripts, and then you get those credits applied to your transcript. That means you actually make $0 from those credits. The later part of the spreadsheet clearly shows how impossible this is - they did not make $6.7M with 61 students' tuition. Clearly the tuition is just a dumb excel formula multiplying by the credits.
So either they're somehow the most expensive foreign language school in the world, with 1 instructor per 2 students...
Or they're a wildly expensive department that almost no one major's with, and their research grants don't cover their millions in losses to the university.
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.
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.
however, to me, management not recognizing that head count is unrealistic is still a management problem.
No, in fact, I think “overhiring” is mostly based on another misapprehension of management’s function. Hiring rapidly when conditions are favorable and firing rapidly when conditions change isn’t “overhiring” and then corrections, its two different sides of the near-optimal-as-possible management of headcount int the context of capitalism.
Is it bad for workers? Sure, but there’s a reason it’s called “capitalism” and not “laborism”.
Obviously, management makes mistakes. But rapid reductions in staff are not particularly a sign of that.
Tiny programs with not a lot of student interest did not make the cut.
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.
I have a few close friends in academia and while IMO they're clearly underappreciated by their institutions (even the lucky ones who have tenure), this level of cynical disrespect is shocking.
Also, the department won’t be dissolved until the end of the academic year.
I'm an engineer, I went to a school, I also played football and was in a fraternity. I think my school knows what they're doing. If I was to give them money in bequest, I'd either let them deal with it or I'd actually point it at the athletic department.
Actually now that I think of it I'd just put a $1M donation on game socks. All student athletes get great new socks once a week.
That and maybe something that encourages the good TAs to all be at the athletic complex.
My point is, based on a photo of me when I'm 80 and my career choice, you'd have no idea what I'd want to do with my money.
Higher education seems to be lagging the vulture capitalism of the 80's/90's by a couple of decades, but boy it does seem like it's here.
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.
For example, with the amenities etc. - this was a type of marketing they could do! There's only one "Harvard", "Princeton", etc. ... and, really, for any school, mostly you're avoiding changing "market segment" (in terms of acceptance rate / more generally, the target customer... I mean, student, demographic), but, you can attract applications through various kinds of "differentiation". "Oh, we may not be <ivy-league school X>, but look at this Michelin-starred food court we just built!"
But, there are limits. "Exponential" is not forever - locally or globally (in time &/ space). It's nonsensical. Yet, MBAs, and so many others in the modern world, expect and seek "exponential". This is not unique to humans, arguably, but that's a massive other topic I'll avoid. Ultimately, when a handful of institutions start, they get results. Then, others are basically forced to respond ... or get forced out of the market. And, you're left with a bunch of wreckage - including institutions getting so sidetracked from their core missions, you wonder why the hell they're still labeled with "university".
It was a frequent enough irritant the last time I was in a more academic setting (as recently as several years ago). Everyone kept waiting for a class to be announced as meeting at the football stadium. Many parents, students, faculty, etc. were annoyed. But, not the wealthy donors, the top admins, etc.
Let it collapse under the weight of business school BS, it'll be ... cathartic. All the business school nonsense, that was such a boon... turning around and biting us in the ass. Haha, it's the story of homo sapiens.
More context: https://wvutoday.wvu.edu/stories/2023/08/11/wvu-announces-pr... and https://provost.wvu.edu/academic-transformation/academic-pro...
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 is: eliminate World Languages?
What actually happened was:
1. WVU is running out of money
2. They hired a team to devise a way to fairly eliminate programs.
3. That team decided that student enrollment should be the key metric to drive program elimination, but recognized three exceptions.
4. Both World Language and Extractive Resource Engineering programs have declining enrollment, thus would be slated to be eliminated.
5. The extractive resource engineering programs qualify for one of three exceptions which was significance to the local region and economy.
6. Thus those majors will be combined/restructured and downsized rather than being outright eliminated.
It's also worth noting that while you can merge the Mining Engineering major with the P&NG Engineering major in a clean way since there is significant overlap in coursework it's unclear to me how you would merge the Chinese and the Russian programs into a single major. So even if they did qualify for an exception, I don't think you could use the same solution.
And while you might want to replace those furnaces with something else, there really isn't a great way to do that. Most of them are already running and are going to need to run another 10-25 years before they're replaced in order to pay for themselves. You can't just shut them off, because then you won't have steel and you do need steel for civilization to keep running smoothly.
So what you're left with is trying to make hydrogen cheap enough to replace the coal furnaces and make it worth the extra R&D time required to get your foundry producing in-spec material with a different fuel source, which means their processes need to be better with the new fuel as well.
If that sounds like it'll take decades to happen, well yeah, you're right, probably decades to even start happening, so we need to keep mining coal, and, it'd be a very good idea to get young, bright minds involved, because the mining process is, by my estimation, ripe for automation, and if you want to directly reduce the human cost of mining in general, robots is how you do it, and that's also a goal worth pursuing given the number of people die every year digging in the dirt, not just in the United States, but worldwide.
The WSJ did a decent article about this a few weeks ago.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-university-tuition-increa...
It was hard not to see this coming. Everyone has been talking about how the benefit of a Bachelor's degree is not worth the tuition cost. Covid drove that home when students were paying tens of thousand dollars just to watch videos at home.
I could go on and on about this but it just breaks my heart to see how bad universities screwed this up.
So why is your comment relevant?
"The reason given for this egregious violation of ethical and professional norms is that the university faces a dire budget crisis, and the administration has no choice but to cut academic programs in order to close their structural budget deficit."
And in the third paragraph...
"The story of how the university got into such a catastrophic financial position to begin with is a long and complex one"
I do not doubt the author's claim that the linguistics dept at WVU was profitable. I also agree with him that these decisions (sensible or not) are born from the massive financial pit they've dug themselves into.
1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enroll...
If a university is just offering online courses at other schools, it ought to be treated as if it doesn’t offer the subject at all.
I dunno, is it crucial to teach languages? I find (human) languages very difficult to learn, to the point of unpleasantness. But still, it seems frankly bizarre that a public university might not provide instruction in them. Not providing this kind of instruction puts a school in the vo-tech/community college category IMO. (Which are important places of learning but I believe the U there stands for University).
Also, in spite of the belief that language degrees are useless, they are an important first step, if not a prerequisite, towards 1) graduate studies in a field that draws on that language, and 2) various on-the-ground careers in the respective country. Lots of journalists based in and specializing in some region, started off with a degree in the language of that country, for example.
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-d295...
They somehow have 18000+ credit hours to their department in a year, but only 61 enrolled students in fall 2022 which, means an average student enrolled was taking 310 credits? Or ~150ish if the 2022 credit hours is for both fall & spring?
My guess is that these are $0 credits. Most universities allow you to meet your "foreign languages requirement" by showing your High School transcripts, and then you get those credits applied to your degree. $0 profit. The later part of the spreadsheet clearly shows how impossible this is - they did not make $6.7M with 61 students' tuition. Clearly the spreadsheet is just a dumb formula multiplying by the credits..
So either they're somehow the most expensive foreign language school in the world, with 1 instructor per 2 students that folks are paying $50k+/semester..
Or their research grants aren't being accounted for correctly? (I don't know how grants work, I am but a lowly swe)
Or they're a wildly expensive department that almost no one major's with, and their research grants don't cover their millions in losses to the university.
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.
Why?
Because engineers should take a fair number of English courses as part of their major, and you attract the best teaching talent if you have an actual program, even if you only have a few explicitly-majoring students.
Eliminating foreign language requirements seems insane to me, though. How much of the world is missing to you without a second language?
https://governor.wv.gov/News/press-releases/2023/Pages/Gov.-...
And we're forcing the primary state university to gut its programs and/or risk complete shutdown over $45-million budget deficit, partially due to inadequate state funding.
Why? Because - tragically - West Virginians pride themselves on ignorance, consistently vote against their own longterm best interests, and loathe the idea of liberal higher education in all its forms.
(To be fair, the current WVU administration is to blame for letting this get out of hand rather than proactive budget cuts, but eduction should also be one of our literally-poor state's biggest investments.)
This cynical perspective has been brought to you by a lifetime WV resident and WVU Computer Science grad, consistently disappointed by my state's active rejection of progress.
I'm tired of people saying that people vote against their own interests.
Is it so insane to believe that maybe they have different interests that don't make sense to you or me?
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/solutions/2021/07/14/wes...
https://mooney.house.gov/west-virginia-losing-us-house-seat-...
https://www.wvnews.com/statejournal/news/we-have-this-viciou...
https://www.register-herald.com/news/life/w-va-leads-all-oth...
It is a fact that West Virginians vote to perpetuate these circumstances. Our governor is the richest coal baron in the state, and we're going to overwhelmingly vote out centrist Joe Manchin to put that coal baron into the US Senate.
I've lived here for four decades, the son of a coal miner who was the son of a coal miner, the first person in my extended family to ever earn a college degree. Do you actually know what you're talking about, or are you just angrily shouting into the wind?
Can you really not imagine that some people don't care about money or education and instead care about other things that are seemingly unimportant to you?
Unhealthiest. Unhappiest. These are literally studies where WV comes in at the bottom of the list. You just seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing.
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/rankings-and-ratings/1...
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/most-unheal...
WV has been at the bottom of these lists for 50 years - and it has had a massive politic shift over the last 20...
It's almost as if things aren't as reductive as you think.
Mon ami this is HN -- any posts that aren't about node.js or autism are generally people pissing into the wind
I'm tired of people thinking the people who disagree with them must be morons and incapable of rationality, and that the people who agree with them are smart and rational.
People have different interests.
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.
You roll your eyes at kids in “book clubs”, then use a freaking STEM program as your example. Botanists, the people studying plants so they can make healthier crops among other things, are your example of bad educational investments? I don’t think you understand the whole university system as well as you think you do.
It’s pointless for a middle class kid of average or even slightly above average ability with nothing to fall back on. These people need to make a living.
Once you’re earning a living then there’s nothing stopping you from exploring botany. The internet is full of resources. Your local college will probably let you sit in for free. Do that.
Your claim is directly analogous to “study physics on your own once you have a real job”.
The notion that only the wealthy should be able to pursue critical fields is dystopian as hell. I’m not a botanist. I don’t even know that I know any. I bought a cartful of their research at the supermarket today, though.
Has to do more with ability than wealth - although wealth lets you do w/e because you’re rich.
There’s reality and there’s how it “ought to be”. You’re stuck on that. Dystopian is millions of people with massive debt and unable to act on what they paid for it.
It’s not dystopian to say you need practical skills that are useful. Once you’ve established that then go learn whatever you want.
Costs of $300,000 for a 4-year degree ($75K/year for tuition, fees, and housing) is not just possible, it's essentially the norm for many schools that aren't even top-tier. Even state schools will run about $200,000, all-in. God forbid you have more than one child.
Universities tout their need-based financial aid, but the cut off is often far below the median salary in high cost of living areas. At that point the aid is "Congratulations, you qualify for student loans!"
It's great that more lower-income families can get a full scholarship, but the middle class has been priced out of everything but state schools and community college.
It also forces 18 year-olds to commit to a high $ major on day 1, then stick with it no matter what. What if you're undecided, but still want to be in a good university while you figure it out? What if you realize you hate computer science but don't want to transfer universities? These would be horrible causes of anxiety, stress, and burn-out.
However, the "financial back-up plan" of in-state 4-year universities is not exactly affordable either. In-state cost of UCLA, for example, is $37,385. UC Davis is $38,956 for California residents.
The largest component of that is $13k living expenses which you would spend anyway if not attending. If you want lower living costs you can attend a non-prestigious university in a smaller town like I did with lower tuition and noticeably lower living costs. Combine this with taking AP classes and CLEP tests in high school and using community college in the summer for the worthless "common core" college credits and the savings are much larger. You don't have to spend $200k!
However, it sucks to tell your kid that worked their ass off their whole life that they can't go to their first choice schools because of administrative mismanagement. Read the WSJ article that is linked elsewhere to see the systemic issues facing higher education. It's bleak.
"Congratulations, you got into Rice! Can I interest you in University of North Texas instead?"
UNT has some perfectly good programs by the way, some of the most brilliant and successful people I know graduated from their math and physics programs.
But dude, after all that I wanted to give my kids the college experience I couldn't have. Let them live on campus, not have to work to pay tuition, be able to enjoy the benefits of both a strong curriculum and extra-curriculars and maybe even a social life to build networks for the future.
After working my own ass off my whole life, I make good money and have kids that can go almost anywhere. But...can't. All the living in a trailer park and full-time work will barely make a dent in some of these numbers.
But this really isn't a "woe is me" - I talk to a lot of other parents in exactly the same situation. I'm just at one end of a systemic middle class problem. You're either rich, in which case dropping $200K-$400K for a bachelors isn't a problem, or you're poor, in which case there's huge need-based aid available today.
If you're in the middle though, you're either squeezed out or taking on massive debts. This isn't even touching on the declining value of a bachelors and possible need to pay another $50-$60K for a Masters just to have an ROI.
(and I really wasn't slagging UNT. It's a fine school. My point was that it's hard to shift a teenager's thinking from a "dream school" to an affordable school without a significant amount of disappointment -- and the concomitant feelings of failure as a parent.)
It's classic vertical versus horizontal scaling, just with people's life work.
It seems most of the authors’ colleagues have external funding sources which they can take with them.
Make a clean break. The relationship right now is broken. I wouldn’t try to mend it. It’ll just cause more stress as time goes on.
while I'm sympathetic to their plight, the notion of "profit" for an individual department of a university is probably laughable to a real accountant (which I'm not).
College finances are indeed a disaster, though, and it's mostly their own fault:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37090403
This kind of hints at a deep growing conflict inside of higher-ed - is the primary beneficiary the students and undergraduate programs, or is it the academic community and graduate program?
Having niche programs is only debatably good for students! While it may feel fancy to have some as feathers in your cap, the reality is that most students would be better off going to a college that specializes in their field rather than getting a sub-par experience from a novelty program added to round out "offerings".
> Beyond the irregular manner in which she was hired, the most unusual thing about Maryanne Reed as a Provost is that she does not hold a doctorate in her field (or any other). The Provost is responsible for overseeing graduate education, assessment of Faculty research, and the administration of tenure, which is normally based on research and limited to faculty with doctorates (Reed herself was a rare exception to this pattern as a professor of journalism). A Provost with no experience in any of these areas is highly unusual.
As far as I'm aware, a Provost, or any academic executive, at a four-year research university without a PhD is super duper shady.
Imagine a Distinguished Fellow at Microsoft or somewhere like that whose previous job was a rank consultant at Deloitte. It's like that, afaik.
While Maryanne Reed, who holds an MS in Journalism, spent a lot of time at WVU (30 years as an assistant professor, which is usually the highest teaching position you can get without a PhD), her progression is still very unusual in academia.
Outside that, it appears as if WVU is being robbed from the inside.
I feel bad for the students.
[0] https://archive.ph/uhQi1