[HN Gopher] The Cuts at WVU
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The Cuts at WVU
Author : lightlyused
Score : 61 points
Date : 2023-08-14 22:13 UTC (47 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (community.wvu.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (community.wvu.edu)
| SkipperCat wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| obviouslynotme wrote:
| 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.
|
| 1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-
| enroll...
| bee_rider wrote:
| > 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).
| computerliker wrote:
| https://archive.ph/dsTN2
|
| Just in case.
| yuy910616 wrote:
| here's the archive linked to the paywalled article he mentioned
| in the post
|
| https://archive.ph/gGqvX
| codemac wrote:
| 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.
| parl_match wrote:
| If their budget numbers are true, it demonstrates serious
| mismanagement.
| codemac wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
| deaddodo wrote:
| 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?
| tssva wrote:
| > 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.
| deaddodo wrote:
| It's profitable and requires little overhead. Just do both.
|
| That's like saying "I don't want a free PS5, because I
| think I'd play my Nintendo Switch more often".
| rehitman wrote:
| 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.
| footy wrote:
| > 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.
| frob wrote:
| 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.
| clintonb wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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
| foota wrote:
| Are we related?
| footy wrote:
| I guess we are now
| driggs wrote:
| Meanwhile our coal baron Governor is trumpeting that the State of
| West Virginia has a historic record $1.8-billion tax surplus this
| year:
|
| 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.
| silisili wrote:
| 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?
| rjbwork wrote:
| 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.
| bsder wrote:
| > 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 higest 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.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| 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...
| sgustard wrote:
| "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?
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(page generated 2023-08-14 23:00 UTC)