The American Association of University Professors is urging the State University of New York at Albany to reconsider a plan to phase out five academic programs and lay off 20 full-time professors in those areas. In a letter sent today to the university’s president, George M. Philip, the association says faculty members at SUNY-Albany have complained that administrators there decided to phase out the programs without sufficient faculty input and without showing the move was truly necessary for budgetary reasons. A university spokesman said officials there are reviewing the letter and will respond directly to the AAUP.
RSS
Follow The Ticker through your favorite RSS reader.
9 Responses to AAUP Challenges SUNY-Albany Program Cuts
nydave - November 5, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Aren’t the people complaining here the same people who have taken two pay raises in the midst of the largest consecutive state allocation reductions in SUNY history? Maybe if they had forgone their raises (as others did) during this period, programs might have been saved.
lsmaterna - November 5, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Higher education is being eviscerated in the name of saving money. The decisions are being taken by people who have no commitment–either ethical or moral–to the real education of America’s young people. Whether people took pay raises or didn’t is not relevant. What is relevant is to remain dedicated to the idea of the “universe”ity, that higher education involves educating for material, intellectual, moral and spiritual reasons. A country that simply funds programs that make money because they are directly tied to economic “productivity” narrowly defined–science and math, technology, vocational fields (and this is even more shortsighted since these fields are highly susceptible to change and even disappearance), engineering and medical, cannot continue to flourish. We need to sustain and retain the humanities and less applied social sciences in order to infuse our lives, our work and our country’s future with thinking, feeling and ethically aware citizens. This is what is at stake in these reductions. In addition, the fact that the faculty, the heart of the institution and those charged with educating and shaping their students minds, were not even consulted makes it yet more evident that economic technocrats, shaped by notions of supply and demand unrelated to the life of the mind and heart that universities claim to cultivate, run the show. Shame on them and woe for the young of today whose vision is being narrowed without them even knowing it.
tee_bee - November 6, 2010 at 6:36 pm
@nydave: SUNYA faculty are not represented by AAUP; they’re represented by UUP, which has an odd relationship, if you could call it that, with AAUP. But you’re right about the union and raise problem. I used to be at SUNYA; I am now at a southern university where we haven’t had raises in three years. But our buildings aren’t always falling apart, and we’ve not had to resort to the scorched earth policies that SUNYA seems to be using.
@lsmaterna: you’re not at SUNYA, are you? Your theories of how SUNYA makes decisions are charming in their ignorance, but they’re wrong. And your general “humanities really matter” plea is also charming, and I want to agree, but this doesn’t resonate during cutback times, and never will.
astrolake - November 8, 2010 at 6:39 am
The notion of blaming people for “taking a pay raise” is an odd one. Of course, one can roll back salaries via furloughs or other means as many Universities have. It will depend on the level of pay and local cost of living, but generally this is a policy that causes the best people to leave which is not where any University wants to make the cuts.
collegechoice - November 8, 2010 at 7:54 am
To lsmaterna – November 5, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Yes! Thank you for your eloquent statement. See also http://www.semmelweissociety3.net/collegechoice/ which I just amended in your honor.
Remember, money talks in the Land of the Free, and there is just one college which declines public funds.
mchag12 - November 8, 2010 at 10:51 am
Ismaterna, a great and true statement. What is sad is that the students are not aware and not active in this process. My generation did react to administrative policies, and one has to wonder and analyze what has changed to make this generation so uninvolved in their own education. The attack on higher education rarely is budget related–money is always found when it needs to be. It is a philosophical statement about education, about an informed citizenry and about the concept of what a university is. I am at a university in Florida that is now in a constant state of crisis. We had no raises for four years, the administration and board of trustees ignores the faculty and is hostile to intellectual engagement, and has given itself lots of high-cost raises along with the hiring of more and more administrators. The students seem hardly to have noticed that they cannot get into the classes they need to graduate and have not organized around the deterioration of their education. This is sad indeed.
texasguy - November 8, 2010 at 12:11 pm
When a university gives tenure to a professor, it binds itself to give them lifetime employment. Firing them is the mere breaking a contract.
When customers get a new cell phone, they typically sign a two-year contract with the cell phone company. If they break the contract, they have to pay significant penalty. I do not see why universities should be allow to do otherwise.
drj50 - November 8, 2010 at 1:27 pm
@lsmaterna: how does offering and staffing programs that enroll virtually no students “infuse our lives, our work and our country’s future with thinking, feeling and ethically aware citizens.”
You can look up, as I did, the number of graduating students from these programs at nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator. When you look at the SUNY system as a whole, there is considerable duplication of programs that graduate only 2-3 students per year. Couldn’t we do a better job of developing citizens by consolidating some of those programs and adding faculty positions to reduce class size in some of those core general education courses or more heavily enrolled majors?
drj50 - November 8, 2010 at 1:29 pm
@texasguy: Umm, no. I suggest you review the AAUP Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure as well as the faculty handbook or bargaining agreement at your university.