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[systeme_d_]

I very much enjoyed this article: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Crisis-of-the-Public/130135/

Full disclosure:  I just left a public university for a private one.  The legislature in my old state was de-funding its state universities bit by bit, and I didn't want to be a victim of the resulting departmental reshuffling and program elimination.

My favorite sentence in the article:

"Meanwhile, the infiltration of corporate business models into every aspect of academic life has led to the devaluation of the arts, humanities, and social sciences, which are seen either as luxuries or intellectual enemies of the global economy."

In the comments section, a reader of this article notes that "if you want nice things, you have to pay for them."  

Thoughts?

[secundem_artem]

I also enjoyed the article. 

I'm extremely sympathetic to those who argue that a liberal arts education is an intrinsic good.  But as somebody who teaches in a professional degree program I'd admit that faculty in my program train students, we don't really educate them.  Their education is provided by our liberal arts and humanities faculty members.  And it can be an uphill battle in students who think "I didn't come here for an education, I came here to become a clinical basket weaver.  Just teach me something useful."

It troubles me that such education is seen as frivolous.  I have no idea what to do about it beyond express my gratitude to the humanities, fine arts, and social sciences faculty on the fora.  Your work is valuable - but it's hard to measure its value using traditional definitions and measures.

[systeme_d_]

It troubles me that such education is seen as frivolous.  I have no idea what to do about it beyond express my gratitude to the humanities, fine arts, and social sciences faculty on the fora.  Your work is valuable - but it's hard to measure its value using traditional definitions and measures.

You just made my day there, Secundem_artem.  Thanks.

I guess the only other things you can do is (1) tell your students and your administrators why you value the humanities, fine arts, and social sciences and why they are important for your students, and (2) vote for people who share your convictions.

[dale1]

What we need is to de-couple the business end (that is, tuition/fee revenue) with academic needs.

We have to fund the departments and programs in a way that doesn't make it worthwhile to pack your degrees with courses from your own discipline or subdiscipline(s), while still ensuring a depth of knowledge in a particular area.  It's a difficult thing, but faculty are smart.  They can figure out a solution that works well in each individual context.

I'm afraid the push for accountability and productivity is going to mean, practically, a reduction in the things that make a university education really valuable - the time to think, grow, and learn at a pace that suits the individual and in ways that encourage lifelong learning and success. 

[helpful]

There is lots of (shudder), empirical and scientific evidence that, for example, the learning of music contributes to intelligence and the learning of other subjects like mathematics and science. Last I looked, music was considered a fine art subject, but this research indicates its effects go beyond that subject.

[quasihumanist]

Historically, one of the reasons the public thought the study of the liberal arts was valuable was religious.  During the Reformation, both the Catholic Church and various Protestant Churches considered knowledge of the humanities to be important in bringing the individual closer to God.

Now, God Is Dead (and one could argue one of the features of modern American evangelical Christianity is precisely that it worships a dead god - one that has long ceased to change in any way - rather than a living one) and is starting to get cold.

[jackofallchem]

The humanities and social sciences?  You haven't seen what they really think of the science yet.  At a research school, they like the sciences because they get to such off 50% of the research grants as "overhead".  That money lets them pay their salaries, run the bus line*, and buy yachts the University can use to schmooze donors**.  At the undergraduate level, however, they hate the sciences.  We are expensive.  It just costs more to educate a chemistry major than a math or sociology student. The lab classes have to be small and the equipment is expensive. You just can't bring in as much money with a science program than you can with humanities, for example.  On top of that, if you try to pay the faculty with ALPO, the science faculty have a tendency to find higher paying jobs elsewhere and leave.

So now we have eliminated the arts, humanities, social sciences, the hard sciences, and engineering (same problem as science with money).  Do they think they can just do away with all these fields because it is too hard to fund?  What kind of univeristy will they have left?  (thinks for a minute)... well...there's math...and...uh oh...BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION!.  We're all DOOMED!!!



* University of Michigan
**Stanford University

[spinnaker]

Interesting article, though I don't think anything would have been lost by omitting three paragraphs congratulating professors on their dedication and frugality (we don't have secretaries, we buy our own pencils, etc.)

[daniel_von_flanagan]

jack, mathematics is actually a frequent target for departmental closures.  It happened briefly at Rochester, some programs in England have been shut down, and Nevada-Reno's department was nearly dissolved this year.  The reason is that it is often a department with a small number of majors and with small classes at the senior undergraduate level  Also, many administrators secretly resent mathematics professors for having ruined their undergraduate GPAs. (They don't resent you chemists because they weren't forced to take chemistry.) - DvF

[msparticularity]

jack, mathematics is actually a frequent target for departmental closures.  It happened briefly at Rochester, some programs in England have been shut down, and Nevada-Reno's department was nearly dissolved this year.  The reason is that it is often a department with a small number of majors and with small classes at the senior undergraduate level  Also, many administrators secretly resent mathematics professors for having ruined their undergraduate GPAs. (They don't resent you chemists because they weren't forced to take chemistry.) - DvF

It was the grad program that was slated to be cut at UNR, not the entire math program--but faculty were, indeed, to have been laid off. The German program actually was cut entirely, and many others did lose their grad programs.

And yes, I'm afraid that public education is, indeed, broken--perhaps irreparably, at least in its present form. Unfortunately, too, I think that the problem, at least in some states (like my own), has been made worse by bad management. Too many universities have been engaged in a Ponzi scheme, spending funds obtained through bonds, loans, and hikes in student fees and tuition to attract more students, because increased per-student funding from the state would pay for all of the spending to attract those new students... Also, the grant funding is not necessarily without cost. At many places the infrastructure cost involved in improving facilities in order to secure grants is quite considerable. While the overhead looks pretty extravagant, the construction costs for the new buildings that were required to attract the grants are very significant. Again, it amounts to a Ponzi scheme: the grants are needed to pay for the funds already spent to attract them.

So here we are, with something that used to be considered a public good now a matter for the private sector, available only to those who can pay for it. We are, in other words, right back where we were a century ago on this issue.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

It was the grad program that was slated to be cut at UNR, not the entire math program--but faculty were, indeed, to have been laid off.

According to the April 2011 detailed budget proposal, it was the entire degree program.  Some math faculty would have been retained (or rather, allowed to reapply for positions) in order to teach service courses.  This is one advantage math has over the languages: a university will lose its accreditation if it doesn't teach mathematics at the freshman/sophomore level. - DvF

[cc_alan]

jack, mathematics is actually a frequent target for departmental closures.  It happened briefly at Rochester, some programs in England have been shut down, and Nevada-Reno's department was nearly dissolved this year.  The reason is that it is often a department with a small number of majors and with small classes at the senior undergraduate level  Also, many administrators secretly resent mathematics professors for having ruined their undergraduate GPAs. (They don't resent you chemists because they weren't forced to take chemistry.) - DvF

I wonder how some admins look at general education chemistry classes when it comes to budgets. We take up large amounts of space because of dedicated lab rooms that aren't occupied by students for the same amount of time as typical lecture rooms. The lab occupancy is often capped at anywhere from 15 to 24 for safety reasons. Supplies for labs aren't cheap, either, since there is equipment upkeep and periodic chemical purchases. Oh, and these chemical supplies are often kept in dedicated supply rooms with special fire protection equipment and other specialty equipment like fans, exhaust hoods, dilution pits, etc. And many people now look at chemistry not as a program of study but as a service to nursing, medical, engineering. etc.

I'm at a community college so I don't know how admins at R1s and other universities look at the chemistry department's budget. It's got to be expensive at the community college level but the few times I've discussed the budget with my dean, he's entirely sensible about it and tells me that it's simply the cost of offering science courses. I'm sure it helps that we have good enrollment in our chemistry classes.

Alan

[octoprof]

Full disclosure:  I just left a public university for a private one.  The legislature in my old state was de-funding its state universities bit by bit, and I didn't want to be a victim of the resulting departmental reshuffling and program elimination.

I wonder if you are from my birth state...?  It's one of those states that keeps the budget balanced and does it mostly by slashing higher ed every time there's any blip in the economy.

These days, I live in <current state> that is not rich. It is probably one of the poorer states, as is <birth state>. However, <current state> also keeps the state budget balanced. In <current state>, which is not too dissimilar from <birth state> on most dimensions, the state government and universities have managed to avoid slashing higher ed budgets, even through the recession. Recent budget currently are basically flat, but that's a heck of a lot better than what I've seen happening in <birth state>.

My field is accounting and I only know personally of one academic accounting department that has been cut in recent years (I'm sure others exist) and it was at a private university that got into horrible financial difficulty through the mismanagement of the president/chancellor/whatever.

[spinnaker]

I'm trying to figure out why when faculty complain about the high cost of tuition the culprit is administrative bloat and other unnecessary spending, but when the public complains about the same thing it's because the are philistines who just someone to show them how to make money in as little time as possible.

[polly_mer]

There is lots of (shudder), empirical and scientific evidence that, for example, the learning of music contributes to intelligence and the learning of other subjects like mathematics and science.

This falls into the category of sh*t people make up about my field.

What has been shown are correlations between being good at one of the endeavors and having a tendency to be good at the other ones.  Strong positive correlations have been shown for people who get a solid liberal arts education starting from an early age that includes math, science, and math then being able to do well in college-level math and science, even if not majoring in those areas.

Music education alone does not make people smarter; however, music education is often an indicator that a person is in a good system getting a solid education in all areas instead of getting a poor education that focuses on rote memorization in areas like math and science that are often neglected.