First article I’ve seen in a while that paints the university and administrators as victims. The way school costs have risen, post secondary is sold as a golden ticket, alumni are shaken down for cash, not to mention the endowment industry… it’s hard to understand exactly why they’re struggling financially to the point where they’re cutting programs that people have already started and began paying for.
Every time my school calls me I feel so bad for the phone operator, because I can’t help but laugh in their face. You want me to give you money while the entire 4 years I attended you would randomly raise tuition because your massive (unnecessary) new football stadium kept going over budget. Tell the chancellors to go fuck themselves.
Oh, and the entire 4 years no other new renovations were made while my like 70 year old decrepit dorm fell into disrepair.
The schools doing okay financially aren’t the ones cutting these programs for cost-saving reasons. In bigger state universities eliminating programs, the cuts are largely political. School admins are worried that state legislators will target school budgets in the near future if cuts aren’t made to “useless” subjects in the humanities and social science.
In regional state universities and private liberal arts schools, however, the situation really is dire. They’re cutting to survive. The US has started to experience a decline in college enrollment. Universities have known it would happen since the late 2000s, but not in the way it has.
Big universities are growing or maintaining class sizes, which is putting tremendous pressure on the regional and liberal arts schools as the available students evaporate. It’s pushed the timeline for change up at many universities and it’s only going to get worse.
Do I feel sorry for university admins? No, they should’ve taken action sooner, with real wind-down plans for students. But we’re going to continue to see cuts to small programs for decades to come; it’s unavoidable.
As access and access quality deteriorates, I wonder if having formal post secondary is going to remain such a big thing in industry.
