Posted on 08/19/2023 5:16:39 AM PDT by karpov
In the face of shrinking enrollment and a $45 million budget deficit, West Virginia University (WVU) has made the responsible decision to cut many low-productivity programs across the institution. Its actions should be a model for struggling universities across the country.
The cuts are part of WVU’s Academic Transformation efforts, which began in 2021. The program is intended to “align our resources to support and invest in areas of growth and opportunity and identify areas where we can have greater impact and be more effective.” Since then, several programs across the campus have been recommended for elimination by the Provost’s Office. Earlier this year, WVU raised tuition by three percent and cut expenses by roughly $10 million in an effort to fill its budget deficit. It also implemented a hiring freeze and decreased budgets for supplies, printing, employee hospitality, and most travel.
But even before then, WVU had been making strategic decisions to be more efficient. According to the WVU Government Relations Office, the university shrunk its non-faculty staff by approximately 509 positions between October 2015 and October 2022, from 4,068 to 3,559. The cuts were made through “a series of transformation efforts over that period of time,” according to an email made available to the Martin Center.
The latest round of cuts began with preliminary recommendations, on August 11, to discontinue 32 programs, most of them on the graduate level. A few of the programs to be eliminated are the MA and PhD programs in higher-education administration and master’s programs in acting, collaborative piano, and jazz pedagogy. Final recommendations will be made on August 18.
According to WVU’s press release, the provost’s preliminary recommendations “also included 169 potential faculty line reductions, or 7% of total faculty in Morgantown.”
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
Cutting useless college programs is considered responsible? Who would've thunk it--way to go West Virginia.
When they eliminate black studies and gender studies, then I’ll know they’re serious.
There may be a few unnecessary programs eliminated, but the WVU President Gordon Gee is the epitome of everything that is wrong with higher education.
When Gee took over WVU a decade ago, he inherited a university that was gaining enrollment rapidly on the basis of growth in STEM fields and in sound financial condition. Gee’s mismanagement has systematically caused the dire budget crisis WVU now faces. He draws an enormous salary and has an even bigger personal expense account, well above what presidents earn at larger, more successful schools. He’s tripled the size of the university’s upper administration (vice presidents/associate provosts, etc), mostly unqualified cronies that were hired without any advertisement or search and paid well above market rates.
Despite demographic trends, Gee went on an unbelievably irresponsible spending spree. He bought the campus of a bankrupt diploma mill in southern West Virginia. He bought an abandoned pharmacuetical factory (from the company that Joe Manchin’s daughter bankrupted). He’s put millions into the pockets of private developers, building private dorms that now sit underoccupied. He spent $35M in 2020 rennovating a building for one of the academic departments he’s now eliminating. And every year he’s been in charge, he’s cut funding to STEM and Engineering programs to fund his spending spree.
While we might cheer cuts to some of the programs that make headlines, make no mistake that the WVU administration are no conservatives. They spared the Gender Studies program that has 5 full-time faculty and 7 student majors. Meanwhile they are eliminating the entire graduate programs in Math and Chemistry. They are cutting the Civil Engineering program by 22%. They are cutting the Computer Science program which is bursting with student enrollment by 20%. Seriously, what kind of buffoon says we need fewer computer scientists? And a university that teaches zero foreign languages?
So cheer cuts to a state university if you like, but don’t for a moment think that this a conservative move. It’s being done to ensure that administrative bloat and wasteful spending can continue unabated.
“programs in acting, collaborative piano, and jazz pedagogy”
You have to be kidding me.
Now cut Gee’s $800K salary and perks, and we’ll be convinced.....
I saw the cuts in math which was stupid stupid beyond believe.
I didn’t see cuts in graduate chemistry education. Do you have a source for that?
You left out the fact he hired 11 assistant provosts!
Previous presidents got by with just 1 or 2.
Thank you for explaining what is going on.
Also, they didn’t cut the undergraduate program Esports!
Just what the 2nd fattest state needs an undergraduate program in being a couch potato!
“....He bought the campus of a bankrupt diploma mill in southern West Virginia. ....”
I assume you are talking about Beckley\Mountain State College & not WV Tech?
Many in Charleston think that WVU** taking over WV Tech was done just to keep Marshall from taking it over and acquiring a engineering program. If so, jokes on Gee, Marshall seems to be growing its own engineering program on its on!
** Another expense that WVU didn’t need!
Here’s one lost of the cuts:
Yes, Mountain State was a diploma mill.
WV Tech is an excellent small school, but like you say it might have been more cost effective for both schools to let Marshall be the one to administer it. Marshall wanted an engineering program. That region of the state needs an engineering program. Bow-tie Gee wanted to grab headlines and feed his ego.
Well, every business entity, college, university, non profit organization, family, needs to balance their budgets. Every entity except the federal government must balance their budgets.
I wonder what the college financial scene will be like in a few years. With fewer college age students coming of age, and a growing sense that the college degree at any cost, or any amount of borrowed money, just isn’t worth it, colleges could be in for a rough ride, financially speaking.
I saw that but I didn’t see Chemistry listed.
My daughter got her PhD in Chemistry there she will be horrified!
Yes, back in the 1970s when I was in high school, I remember being told that WV Tech had high standards then the WVU engineering program.
If my old algebra is correct, a 7% reduction in faculty (169) means there are 2414 faculty, compared to 3559 non-faculty.
Wow, those profs certainly need a lot of administrators.
I'm not cheering the university--I'm mocking the fact that cutting stupid, worthless degree programs is now considered "responsible"--trust me--when I think West Virginia the first thing that comes to mind is how in the hell could they vote for the same open borders, yellow dog who claims to be a moderate (Joe Manchin) for decades.
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