26 ms·

West Virginia University to drop 32 majors including all world language programs

217 points by joe5150 3y ago

SeanLuke 3y ago
So music and dance fields are not impacted, but a host of enginering and computer science fields are? What? Do these departments really not bring in any grant money?
slim 3y ago
Katz said there’s been speculation that the school’s in-person foreign language studies will be replaced by the use of computer program interesting...
joe5150 3y ago
Also being dropped are MS and PhD programs in math. https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/62ea2c4f-99bd-431d-9e97-7199271fecab/preliminary-recommendation-mathematical-and-data-sciences.pdf https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/62ea2c4f-99bd-431d-9e97-7199...
- basementcat 3y ago
  The institution is facing a $40+ million deficit. It isn’t clear if athletic programs will be affected.
  - joe5150 3y ago
    WVU is about to become the world's first vocational school with a D-1 football program.
  - bsder 3y ago
    I suspect they could put a big dent in their $40 million deficit simply by wiping out their football program. The head coach gets paid $4 million per year. Extrapolate that to the lackeys and you could probably wipe out almost half of the deficit.
    - KeplerBoy 3y ago
      Aren't most of these athletic programs actually earning money for the universities? At least if they are well-run, which probably isn't the case here.
      - matwood 3y ago
        Most of the men's football and basketball programs revenue covers the cost for all the other sports and typically have some leftover for the university.
      - maxerickson 3y ago
        It's bifurcated. The programs in conferences with big TV deals earn money, smaller schools are probably spending money on athletics.
    - dustincoates 3y ago
      Athletics is revenue positive for WVU: > WVU produced $102,684,423 in revenue, which was a decrease from the $110.5 million produced by the department the previous year. However, it was still more than enough to cover the program’s $91,807,281 in expenses. https://wvmetronews.com/2019/08/12/west-virginia-ranked-37th-in-revenue-fourth-in-big-12-in-2017-18/ https://wvmetronews.com/2019/08/12/west-virginia-ranked-37th... Football isn't broken out here, but it generally subsidizes other sports, so if you wipe out the football program, you aren't going to help the deficit.
codevark 3y ago
[dead]
toomuchtodo 3y ago
https://tuitiontracker.org/fitness/school.html?unitid=238032 https://tuitiontracker.org/fitness/school.html?unitid=238032
mazugrin2 3y ago
West Virgina is on the vanguard of US states in this sort of thing. I'm surprised they beat Florida and Texas though. Ten years from now, how many more public university systems will have jettisoned their world language departments? Does anyone believe it will be a small number?
- pseudo0 3y ago
  World languages majors in some respects seem like an anachronism in an age of globalization and machine translation. For low-end work, Google translate will do it for free, and for the high-end market, why not just hire someone with native fluency of both languages? It's hard for a four-year college degree to compete with immersion learning.
  - manuelabeledo 3y ago
    > For low-end work, Google translate will do it for free This is a terrible take. Google Translate is really not at a level where it can provide consistent and reliable results, that convey exactly the same meaning as the original texts. “Low-level work” is also not a thing. Either you need a professional translator, or you don’t. > and for the high-end market, why not just hire someone with native fluency of both languages? So you would only need to find people with native fluency in, let’s say, Japanese and German, to get official paperwork translated? Genius. Can’t wait for a world where there is only one translator for every million people.
    - Firmwarrior 3y ago
      Having a 4 year degree in Japanese from some random US flyover state isn’t going to make you fluent enough to translate business contracts anyway. I studied 4 years at a higher-rated university and could barely get by in the language until I studied a lot more on my own
      - manuelabeledo 3y ago
        > Having a 4 year degree in Japanese from some random US flyover state isn’t going to make you fluent enough to translate business contracts anyway That's not the point. Random native speakers of two or more languages aren't equipped to do that either.
CSMastermind 3y ago
These degrees are not impacted: Music; Music Business and Industry; Music Education; Music Therapy; Conducting; Acting; Dance; Musical Theatre; Theatre Design and Technology; Wildlife and Fisheries Resources; Natural Resources Science; Genetics and Developmental Biology; Plant and Soil Sciences; Natural Resource Economics; Women’s and Gender Studies; Philosophy; Health Services and Outcomes Research; Pharmaceutical and Pharmacological Sciences; Epidemiology; Social and Behavioral Sciences These degrees are remaining with reduced staff: Mining Engineering; Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering; Civil Engineering; Computer Engineering; Computer Science; Electrical Engineering; Software Engineering; Elementary Education; Literacy Education; Music Composition; Music Performance; Law; Agriculture; Design Studies; Fashion Design and Merchandising; Interior Architecture; Human and Community Development; Environmental, Soil, and Water Sciences; Chemistry; Communication Studies; English; Secondary Education; Professional Writing and Editing; Mathematics; Management; Human Resource Management; Communication Sciences and Disorders; Exercise Physiology; Health Informatics / Information Management; Human Performance and Health; Athletic Training; Occupational Therapy; Speech Language Pathology; Audiology; Physical Therapy; Pharmacy; Health Administration; Biostatistics These degrees are remaining with reduced staff and getting merged together: Theatre with Puppetry; Costume Design with Lighting Design with Scenic Design with Technical Direction; Energy Land Management with Environmental and Energy Resource Management; Forest Resource Management with Wood Science and Technology; Horticulture with Sustainable Food and Farming; Agribusiness Management with Environmental and Natural Resource Economics; Public Health with Health Services Management and Leadership These degrees are remaining with reduced staff but with some specializations eliminated: Art and Design; Art Education; Art and Design; Environmental Microbiology These degrees are being eliminated entirely: Biometric Systems Engineering; Higher Education Administration; Multicategorical Special Education; Art History; Jazz Studies; Jazz Pedagogy; Composition; Collaborative Piano; Acting; Environmental and Community Planning; Landscape Architecture; Recreation, Parks, and Tourism; Energy Environments; Resource Management; Creative Writing; MS/PhD Mathematics; Legal Studies; Public Administration; Chinese; French; German; Russian; Spanish; Linguistics; TESOL; Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences --- Also note that these are just recommendations not final decisions yet.
- ketzo 3y ago
ketzo 3y ago
I wonder how much more of this "middle class" of colleges we will see hollowed out over the next few years/decades. So many of these places are in really serious financial straits. Families are more and more unwilling to pay, and students are taking the possibility of trade/vocational school seriously. Harvard will be fine. Stanford will be fine. Prestigious schools could last for quite a long while on their endowments alone, and besides, the Ivies have no shortage of eager customers. The brand value is too strong. And I actually think 1) biiiiig state schools 2) small community colleges will mostly be fine. The government support is there, and the bang-for-your-buck is there. But the middle-tier private university might be a dying breed.
- KoftaBob 3y ago
  > the middle-tier private university might be a dying breed. Given how absolutely awful the bang for your buck is on these overpriced private universities, good riddance.
- femiagbabiaka 3y ago
  WVU is a public land grant university no? If trends hold, we might see regional instead of “state” public schools.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- peanuty1 3y ago
  Not only will Harvard/Stanford/MIT/Caltech/Berkeley/Princeton be fine, they will continue to thrive as ever before.
- Shawnj2 3y ago
  Honestly good riddance to them. Less universities is bad but public colleges are generally cheaper and if equivalent quality.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
Colleges of the humanities may need to completely separate themselves from universities. The bloat of college tuition simply makes those fields of study uneconomical on a fundamental level, and it is only getting worse. Choose, be in debt for most of the cost of a new house on graduation with no employment prospects, or major in something more focused? Yeah. The professors of these programs are generally all old and simply riding out tenure to retirement, just like all boomers. And what will happen when they retire? I predict there won't be tenured professors in huge swathes of humanities, just adjuncts ... everywhere. Basically, TAs for whatever classes the revenue majors demand for at least SOME depth. You may need to have entirely new institutions form around humanities without labs, housing, football stadiums, etc. Maybe they are adjacent/satellite to the main institutions. A throwback to basically what higher education used to be without the Oxford look. Basically, small cloister of students. And good lord, eliminate ALL the goddamn vampire management. Really, the professors will need it for getting any decent salary. Get rid of all those useless middle managers. Contract out teaching humanities to the big-fish university they are nearby. And is this the hallmark of the breaking point of universities? I roll my eyes at humanities as much as another science guy, but they are still a living core of real higher education. Hollowing out humanities means the soul of a college is dead. It's just a bunch of grade-seeking premeds, MBAs, etc. What does humanities need? A classroom, a blackboard, chalk. Even a big library isn't that necessary with internet resources.
- slt2021 3y ago
  > What does humanities need? an LLM model soon (if not already) will be enough to provide humanities education. I am not sure humanities research will even survive
  - ngetchell 3y ago
    AI will never replace in-person instruction. If I pay to learn something, it needs to be from an expert, not from a computer that needs guardrails to prevent it from becoming a Nazi.
    - slt2021 3y ago
rblatz 3y ago
This is interesting, Gordon Gee is their current President. He was the president at Ohio State while I was there he was well-loved by the students and would routinely make appearances at off-campus parties and pose for photos with students. He also had a razor-sharp memory for people and recognized me multiple times when I bumped into him. But that wasn't his strongest suit, he was a fund raising machine, that man brought a lot of money into the university from alumni and other donors. I'm shocked to hear that WVU is having financial issues under his leadership.
- gilbetron 3y ago
  While they have many skills, connections being one of the most useful to their employer, my theory is that the greatest skill of executives is the ability to gain credit and avoid blame. They hone that razor sharp and wield it constantly to achieve their positions.
- goodbyesf 3y ago
  > that man brought a lot of money into the university from alumni and other donors. He did or urban meyer and the buckeyes did? > I'm shocked to hear that WVU is having financial issues under his leadership. He forgot to bring urban meyer and the ohio state football program with him.
- stainablesteel 3y ago
  if that's truly the case then i imagine there might have been problems with how wvu has been operating, and this may be an overhaul to remove bloat.
- kalverra 3y ago
  My freshman year at WVU was the year Gee took over as president. That was definitely his thing to ingratiate himself to the students. The whole frost couple weeks he would go up and down frat row, and through all the big house parties and shake hands, pose for pictures, etc. He quickly got this vibe as the "cool dad" with his cute bow ties. This won the student body over easily, so we were confused when our professors were really bummed about it. Apparently word gets around on your management style and spending habits. The dude ripped through money he didn't have, hired a ton of bloat, and is now cutting staff in nearly all the programs I held dear.
dchuk 3y ago
I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of speaking multiple languages, but the basic fact is that technology is clearly going to make the idea of speaking different languages completely irrelevant in the next few years. We’ll all have real time Rosetta stones in our pockets, at which point why not just everyone speak the same language going forward? I get that there’s something romantic about the idea of regional dialects, but practically speaking in a global world with advanced tech, it’s simply only a point of friction.
- lionkor 3y ago
  different languages come with entirely different ways of thinking and reasoning about the world - it would be a shame to throw that away
  - jl6 3y ago
    As someone who learnt a foreign to fluency as an adult, I am skeptical of the stronger interpretations of the Sapir Whorf hypothesis. I believe a second language is primarily a source of cultural richness (mutual understanding, interesting vocabulary, intriguing turns of phrase, and so forth) - but not a prerequisite for accessing any novel forms of thinking or reasoning, i.e. I can not recall ever feeling like my thought processes or understanding of the world were fundamentally different to my monolingual colleagues.
    - blackbear_ 3y ago
      I think it depends on how close the two languages are, but also I think that the effect is much more powerful when you are a child and your brain is more malleable. For example, compared to Western languages, Chinese has very little grammar and words that are more ambiguous and with several meanings. This translates to a way of thinking that is more fuzzy, holistic, and high level, relying more on connections (intuitively, when you don't have grammatical constructs telling you the connection between things, you are forced to seek/guess it by yourself)
      - 3y ago
mitchbob 3y ago
https://archive.ph/yczwH https://archive.ph/yczwH
Gabrys1 3y ago
Lol 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact support@wvgazettemail.com or call 304-348-5140.
- gpvos 3y ago
  It is very ironic that HTTP code 451 was originally added so it could be used to mark censorship (i.e., forced upon the publisher by legal means), but now it is almost exclusively used by sites that want to set cookies in a way that doesn't conform to GDPR, and so inhibiting access to information (i.e., chosen because of laws inconvenient to the publisher).
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    > and so inhibiting access to information. How's that not censorship?
    - gpvos 3y ago
      I don't know how I could have been more clear, sorry.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
mobilefriendly 3y ago
Medicaid spending-- driven by huge federal incentives-- is crowding out state dollars for higher education. Medicaid enrollment has increased 50% in WV in the last decade (while the state population has declined). The US is making a policy choice to funnel more of GDP into a wildly inefficient health care system to support obese and aging populations, instead of funding K-12 and higher education.
- naijaboiler 3y ago
  Or WV's population is getting older and pooree
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    In a situation with declining proportion of working age population (and lack of sufficient automation to offset it), one will lead to the other, as more and more of the share of resources from the working population are reallocated to the non working population.
- Spooky23 3y ago
  We’re getting the worst possible universal healthcare at the maximum cost. In New York, 8 million people or 40% of the population are enrolled.
- evantbyrne 3y ago
  Medicaid enrollment went way up but federal spending growth remained relatively close to the trend. They didn't even overhaul the system to combat the price gouging that is going on. To me this trial run proves the opposite of your conclusion: the US would be able to afford public healthcare if it adopted an intelligent model. We need to set the bar higher as a society when it comes to social well-being, not pull back on our ambitions.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  We are screwed on healthcare and most of the proposed "solutions" will only make things worse. We need smart legislation to eliminate global free ridership on medication as well as less insurance, not more (combined with universal catastrophic high deductible insurance a la Singapore's medishield). We also need occupational licensing reform and to decouple healthcare from employment (ie. the politically impossible cadillac tax that Obama tried to push through). Shielding people more from the true cost of healthcare is the politically popular option but does not improve health outcomes and drives utilization (and thus resource allocation) higher.
Communitivity 3y ago
I think the reduction/dropping of technology majors such as software engineering will make getting into WV Institute of Technology harder, due to more competition. It currently has a 68% acceptance rate, which is not low. I would be more ok with this is the money was being shifted to WV IT, so they could improve programs and support more students.
tomohawk 3y ago
They are recommending reductions in faculty even for STEM programs. https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/262cec3c-3098-48e9-a4ed-5061ea5431ae/preliminary-recommendation-computer-science-and-electrical-engineering.pdf https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/262cec3c-3098-48e9-a4ed-5061... It would be interesting to see the admin staff to faculty ratio at WVU and if there are any recommendations to trim that. Many universities spend more on administration than faculty.
ajkjk 3y ago
I kinda like this, if only because I already believe that the way universities in the US are structured is very ossified and some kind of shock is definitely inevitable. I mean.. we'd rather everyone be able to take whatever degree they want, learn a lot, and still be able to afford life and get good employment after. But given that that's not really working and shows no sign of changing, some kind of "phase transition" is necessary. Hopefully whatever emerges on the other side is better somehow.
- joe5150 3y ago
  That's an...optimistic point of view, especially given the departments being threatened are not the source of the university's financial troubles and this "transformation" process doesn't promise to address the things which are.
  - ajkjk 3y ago
    Yeah true. I don't mean to argue this is a good end state. Just that the threat of 'colleges as we know them are going to vanish' might get people to start caring about fixing them.
partitioned 3y ago
As a graduate of WVU during the Gee era we all saw this coming he is a terrible president, only known for his bow ties. I notice that they eliminate majors and cut faculty but no word on the admin staff they’ve been bloating for years. Shame on Gee and WVU.
hoppyhoppy2 3y ago
The radio show On Point had an episode the other day about the budget cuts and other challenges rural U.S. colleges are facing: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/08/10/what-a-decline-in-rural-colleges-means-for-rural-students https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/08/10/what-a-decline-in-ru...
trey-jones 3y ago
Much like Mr. Katz of the linguistics program I have bias because of the amount of time that I spent in the Linguistics department as well as the departments of multiple foreign languages in college. In addition to my linguistics major, I took classes in Chinese, Japanese, French, and German. It's also been quite a long time since then, and things have surely changed. So, with that bias out in the open: I think that the discussions here generally underestimate how much these language programs contribute to university life beyond just a degree: 1. Will international students be attracted to this university with no program that represents their native language? My experience was that a lot of Chinese students spent quite a lot of time in the Chinese department, even if their focus was engineering. 2. In the same vein, what meaningful partnerships will WVU have with non-English speaking institutes of higher education in the future? Seems like not very many! Even if computers will do the translating in the future, we're still talking about a global economy and relationships are important. 3. What about students of all disciplines (history especially comes to mind) that are interested in texts that weren't published in English. jUSt uSe gOoGlE? I'm rolling my eyes. There's still plenty of knowledge for English speakers in non-English texts. Provincial is the word that comes to mind, which I think of as the opposite of "Education".
Jedd 3y ago
Seemingly the president (a weird title, but okay) of that university brings in about US$750k / year - and is also noteworthy for being one of the highest paid public university presidents for some time[1] - netting US$6m for 2013 from Ohio, while stepping down from there after making some inappropriate comments. My point is slightly tangential to the above - one might expect one of the most highly paid professionals in this role to be highly skilled, and to avoid this kind of oversight or blindsiding. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/05/19/the-highest-paid-public-university-presidents-2/?sh=6cd6ea881fd0 https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/05/19/the-highe...
- rblatz 3y ago
  I was at Ohio State while Gee was President. He was very good at fundraising, that’s how he commanded that salary.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- CydeWeys 3y ago
  > Seemingly the president (a weird title, but okay) That's what the title is all across the US.
- dmix 3y ago
  Are we even sure this is a bad thing for the school? Sounds like they are streamlining their business, just with a lot of the usual useless administrative bloat and incompetence slowing it down.
  - joe5150 3y ago
    The administrative bloat and incompetence is why they're in the position to cut academic programs in the first place. You seem to think the tail is wagging the dog.
pfdietz 3y ago
Expecting to see an announcement that administrative staff will be increased to manage the transition.
miek 3y ago
I recommend this website [0] for some details about how they got into this situation. Included are comparisons to peers (public Big XII schools), which are considerably better off. Hilariously, over the past 3 years, WVU was unable to generate actionable data on costs & revenues of their academic programs, though they spent over $1mm on consultants specifically for this purpose and pay $3mm annually on internal roles whose job functions have considerable overlap and include doing this type of work. Administration hired a second consultancy for the same purpose in 2023. [0] https://wvufacts.wordpress.com/ https://wvufacts.wordpress.com/
- sneed_chucker 3y ago
  > though they spent over $1mm on consultants specifically for this purpose and pay $3mm annually on internal roles whose job functions have considerable overlap and include doing this type of work. Administration hired a second consultancy for the same purpose in 2023. Is consulting the ultimate late capitalism grift?
  - brendoelfrendo 3y ago
    I wouldn't even say late capitalism; consulting has been the ultimate grift for decades now.
    - incongruity 3y ago
      It was, arguably, part of the beginning of the end. Most of the most harmful strategies have consultants in their roots.
    - azinman2 3y ago
      Late capitalism refers to 1940s+, but typically the term has no real understanding by the masses that use it online.
    - skinpop 3y ago
      Late stage capitalism got started started in the thirties...
jccalhoun 3y ago
According to this article, between 2008 and 2018 West Virginia cut their funding for higher ed by 25%. https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-higher-education-funding-cuts-have-pushed-costs-to-students https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-hig... And according to this pdf, "Between FY 1980 and FY 2001, after being adjusted for inflation, federal on-budget program funds for [...] postsecondary education funds declined 33 percent." https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/2002129.pdf https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/2002129.pdf
MengerSponge 3y ago
Cultural vandalism.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
School shutdowns and scale-backs are required when a nation is getting older and the share of youth population decreases.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  That’s exactly wrong. Who’s going to take care of the olds if the youngs aren’t educated? If the young have lower incomes, who are the olds going to tax? School shutdowns and scale-backs are an effective path toward insuring a country drives off a cliff with their foot on the gas pedal.
causality0 3y ago
7% of staff teaching 2% of students seems like a good choice for a cutback unless there are even less efficient departments.
dankle 3y ago
”451: Unavailable due to legal reasons We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact support@wvgazettemail.com or call 304-348-5140.” Sounds like an amazing site
xhkkffbf 3y ago
A university setting with university-grade tuition prices isn't the best place to be learning a language. Something like Duolingo is much cheaper and better too. There's no reason to start to learn a language from someone with a PhD is some form of literature in that language.
- commonlisp94 3y ago
  You just don't understand what's in a language degree. Also do you know a single person who has ever learned to actually speak a language with duolingo?
- joe5150 3y ago
  I can't understand your last sentence, which is undermining your point about the low value of language education...
bmitc 3y ago
They're also dropping the mathematics department, getting rid of the graduate program and keeping a skeleton crew, I guess to teach other majors, somehow. It's unclear how that will work given that graduate students often do a lot of teaching and assisting.
bwanab 3y ago
One might rationally ask if all colleges should offer all things for all people. I know they don't strictly do this, but I think there is more overlap in functions than there should be. When looking at colleges for my kids, I was impressed by the consortium of schools in western Massachusetts (UMass Amherst, Amherst, Hampshire, Smith, Mount Holyoke) that allowed the smaller schools to concentrate on specific areas, while at the same time giving students the ability to take courses in other fields from the other schools in the consortium (mostly at UMass). Maybe more schools should do more of this.
m3kw9 3y ago
A casualty of AI translation trends
paulsutter 3y ago
"dropping 32 majors, ... The cuts will affect ... less than 2% of total student enrollment"
kalverra 3y ago
This is sad to see as a WVU CS grad. WVU is pretty much the only place to go outside of Marshall and some teeny tiny schools if you're in WV. I suspect a lot of this has to do with bad management by Gee and admin bloat, but the state is poor as shit. Most talented students go to WVU on scholarship, and get the fuck out of the state ASAP. It can't be easy to keep a state school funded when nearly every graduate of that school's #1 goal is to bail out of the state.
- callalex 3y ago
  Isn’t this one of the exact reasons every smart person leaves the state ASAP? An entrenched royalty class running everything with heavy corruption?
Merrill 3y ago
It is more efficient to hire a native speaker educated in a foreign language who speaks good English to teach the language than it is to educate an English speaker in the foreign language well enough to teach it.
pseingatl 3y ago
How many fluent graduates did the programs produce? I would guess precious few.
Jellyfish19 3y ago
I graduated from the CS program in the late 00s and have interviewed grads of the program over the years since. The old, out of touch professors that were there then are still there today. Many of the good professors teaching useful, applicable skills moved on to greener pastures. The "reduce staff" guidance should motivate the department to cut off that dead weight, but it won't. They'll keep the worst and tank the program more. The program has also taken the position that it's more important to teach the theory than any hands on application of skills in a modern environment. It's a disservice to the students because they graduate not knowing how to use something as pervasive as git. The program's faculty and administration - already gainfully employed - aren't the ones being turned down for jobs for being unqualified after all. They get to carry on with their cushy lifestyles existing outside of reality. Make no mistake - there are quality professors and talented people coming out of the program. It's just that the quality professors aren't the ones setting the course of the program, and the talented students would probably have been as successful no matter which school they attended. It's so frustrating to know that the program could be more, it just chooses not to. So goes the story of West Virginia.

217 points by joe5150 3y ago

So music and dance fields are not impacted, but a host of enginering and computer science fields are? What? Do these departments really not bring in any grant money?

slim 3y ago

Katz said there’s been speculation that the school’s in-person foreign language studies will be replaced by the use of computer program interesting...

joe5150 3y ago

Also being dropped are MS and PhD programs in math. https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/62ea2c4f-99bd-431d-9e97-7199271fecab/preliminary-recommendation-mathematical-and-data-sciences.pdf https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/62ea2c4f-99bd-431d-9e97-7199...

basementcat 3y ago
The institution is facing a $40+ million deficit. It isn’t clear if athletic programs will be affected.
- joe5150 3y ago
  WVU is about to become the world's first vocational school with a D-1 football program.
- bsder 3y ago
  I suspect they could put a big dent in their $40 million deficit simply by wiping out their football program. The head coach gets paid $4 million per year. Extrapolate that to the lackeys and you could probably wipe out almost half of the deficit.
  - KeplerBoy 3y ago
    Aren't most of these athletic programs actually earning money for the universities? At least if they are well-run, which probably isn't the case here.
    - matwood 3y ago
      Most of the men's football and basketball programs revenue covers the cost for all the other sports and typically have some leftover for the university.
    - maxerickson 3y ago
      It's bifurcated. The programs in conferences with big TV deals earn money, smaller schools are probably spending money on athletics.
  - dustincoates 3y ago
    Athletics is revenue positive for WVU: > WVU produced $102,684,423 in revenue, which was a decrease from the $110.5 million produced by the department the previous year. However, it was still more than enough to cover the program’s $91,807,281 in expenses. https://wvmetronews.com/2019/08/12/west-virginia-ranked-37th-in-revenue-fourth-in-big-12-in-2017-18/ https://wvmetronews.com/2019/08/12/west-virginia-ranked-37th... Football isn't broken out here, but it generally subsidizes other sports, so if you wipe out the football program, you aren't going to help the deficit.

codevark 3y ago

[dead]

toomuchtodo 3y ago

https://tuitiontracker.org/fitness/school.html?unitid=238032 https://tuitiontracker.org/fitness/school.html?unitid=238032

mazugrin2 3y ago

West Virgina is on the vanguard of US states in this sort of thing. I'm surprised they beat Florida and Texas though. Ten years from now, how many more public university systems will have jettisoned their world language departments? Does anyone believe it will be a small number?

pseudo0 3y ago
World languages majors in some respects seem like an anachronism in an age of globalization and machine translation. For low-end work, Google translate will do it for free, and for the high-end market, why not just hire someone with native fluency of both languages? It's hard for a four-year college degree to compete with immersion learning.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago
  > For low-end work, Google translate will do it for free This is a terrible take. Google Translate is really not at a level where it can provide consistent and reliable results, that convey exactly the same meaning as the original texts. “Low-level work” is also not a thing. Either you need a professional translator, or you don’t. > and for the high-end market, why not just hire someone with native fluency of both languages? So you would only need to find people with native fluency in, let’s say, Japanese and German, to get official paperwork translated? Genius. Can’t wait for a world where there is only one translator for every million people.
  - Firmwarrior 3y ago
    Having a 4 year degree in Japanese from some random US flyover state isn’t going to make you fluent enough to translate business contracts anyway. I studied 4 years at a higher-rated university and could barely get by in the language until I studied a lot more on my own
    - manuelabeledo 3y ago
      > Having a 4 year degree in Japanese from some random US flyover state isn’t going to make you fluent enough to translate business contracts anyway That's not the point. Random native speakers of two or more languages aren't equipped to do that either.

CSMastermind 3y ago

These degrees are not impacted: Music; Music Business and Industry; Music Education; Music Therapy; Conducting; Acting; Dance; Musical Theatre; Theatre Design and Technology; Wildlife and Fisheries Resources; Natural Resources Science; Genetics and Developmental Biology; Plant and Soil Sciences; Natural Resource Economics; Women’s and Gender Studies; Philosophy; Health Services and Outcomes Research; Pharmaceutical and Pharmacological Sciences; Epidemiology; Social and Behavioral Sciences These degrees are remaining with reduced staff: Mining Engineering; Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering; Civil Engineering; Computer Engineering; Computer Science; Electrical Engineering; Software Engineering; Elementary Education; Literacy Education; Music Composition; Music Performance; Law; Agriculture; Design Studies; Fashion Design and Merchandising; Interior Architecture; Human and Community Development; Environmental, Soil, and Water Sciences; Chemistry; Communication Studies; English; Secondary Education; Professional Writing and Editing; Mathematics; Management; Human Resource Management; Communication Sciences and Disorders; Exercise Physiology; Health Informatics / Information Management; Human Performance and Health; Athletic Training; Occupational Therapy; Speech Language Pathology; Audiology; Physical Therapy; Pharmacy; Health Administration; Biostatistics These degrees are remaining with reduced staff and getting merged together: Theatre with Puppetry; Costume Design with Lighting Design with Scenic Design with Technical Direction; Energy Land Management with Environmental and Energy Resource Management; Forest Resource Management with Wood Science and Technology; Horticulture with Sustainable Food and Farming; Agribusiness Management with Environmental and Natural Resource Economics; Public Health with Health Services Management and Leadership These degrees are remaining with reduced staff but with some specializations eliminated: Art and Design; Art Education; Art and Design; Environmental Microbiology These degrees are being eliminated entirely: Biometric Systems Engineering; Higher Education Administration; Multicategorical Special Education; Art History; Jazz Studies; Jazz Pedagogy; Composition; Collaborative Piano; Acting; Environmental and Community Planning; Landscape Architecture; Recreation, Parks, and Tourism; Energy Environments; Resource Management; Creative Writing; MS/PhD Mathematics; Legal Studies; Public Administration; Chinese; French; German; Russian; Spanish; Linguistics; TESOL; Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences --- Also note that these are just recommendations not final decisions yet.

ketzo 3y ago

ketzo 3y ago

I wonder how much more of this "middle class" of colleges we will see hollowed out over the next few years/decades. So many of these places are in really serious financial straits. Families are more and more unwilling to pay, and students are taking the possibility of trade/vocational school seriously. Harvard will be fine. Stanford will be fine. Prestigious schools could last for quite a long while on their endowments alone, and besides, the Ivies have no shortage of eager customers. The brand value is too strong. And I actually think 1) biiiiig state schools 2) small community colleges will mostly be fine. The government support is there, and the bang-for-your-buck is there. But the middle-tier private university might be a dying breed.

KoftaBob 3y ago
> the middle-tier private university might be a dying breed. Given how absolutely awful the bang for your buck is on these overpriced private universities, good riddance.
femiagbabiaka 3y ago
WVU is a public land grant university no? If trends hold, we might see regional instead of “state” public schools.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
peanuty1 3y ago
Not only will Harvard/Stanford/MIT/Caltech/Berkeley/Princeton be fine, they will continue to thrive as ever before.
Shawnj2 3y ago
Honestly good riddance to them. Less universities is bad but public colleges are generally cheaper and if equivalent quality.
- kstrauser 3y ago

AtlasBarfed 3y ago

Colleges of the humanities may need to completely separate themselves from universities. The bloat of college tuition simply makes those fields of study uneconomical on a fundamental level, and it is only getting worse. Choose, be in debt for most of the cost of a new house on graduation with no employment prospects, or major in something more focused? Yeah. The professors of these programs are generally all old and simply riding out tenure to retirement, just like all boomers. And what will happen when they retire? I predict there won't be tenured professors in huge swathes of humanities, just adjuncts ... everywhere. Basically, TAs for whatever classes the revenue majors demand for at least SOME depth. You may need to have entirely new institutions form around humanities without labs, housing, football stadiums, etc. Maybe they are adjacent/satellite to the main institutions. A throwback to basically what higher education used to be without the Oxford look. Basically, small cloister of students. And good lord, eliminate ALL the goddamn vampire management. Really, the professors will need it for getting any decent salary. Get rid of all those useless middle managers. Contract out teaching humanities to the big-fish university they are nearby. And is this the hallmark of the breaking point of universities? I roll my eyes at humanities as much as another science guy, but they are still a living core of real higher education. Hollowing out humanities means the soul of a college is dead. It's just a bunch of grade-seeking premeds, MBAs, etc. What does humanities need? A classroom, a blackboard, chalk. Even a big library isn't that necessary with internet resources.

slt2021 3y ago
> What does humanities need? an LLM model soon (if not already) will be enough to provide humanities education. I am not sure humanities research will even survive
- ngetchell 3y ago
  AI will never replace in-person instruction. If I pay to learn something, it needs to be from an expert, not from a computer that needs guardrails to prevent it from becoming a Nazi.
  - slt2021 3y ago

rblatz 3y ago

This is interesting, Gordon Gee is their current President. He was the president at Ohio State while I was there he was well-loved by the students and would routinely make appearances at off-campus parties and pose for photos with students. He also had a razor-sharp memory for people and recognized me multiple times when I bumped into him. But that wasn't his strongest suit, he was a fund raising machine, that man brought a lot of money into the university from alumni and other donors. I'm shocked to hear that WVU is having financial issues under his leadership.

gilbetron 3y ago
While they have many skills, connections being one of the most useful to their employer, my theory is that the greatest skill of executives is the ability to gain credit and avoid blame. They hone that razor sharp and wield it constantly to achieve their positions.
goodbyesf 3y ago
> that man brought a lot of money into the university from alumni and other donors. He did or urban meyer and the buckeyes did? > I'm shocked to hear that WVU is having financial issues under his leadership. He forgot to bring urban meyer and the ohio state football program with him.
stainablesteel 3y ago
if that's truly the case then i imagine there might have been problems with how wvu has been operating, and this may be an overhaul to remove bloat.
kalverra 3y ago
My freshman year at WVU was the year Gee took over as president. That was definitely his thing to ingratiate himself to the students. The whole frost couple weeks he would go up and down frat row, and through all the big house parties and shake hands, pose for pictures, etc. He quickly got this vibe as the "cool dad" with his cute bow ties. This won the student body over easily, so we were confused when our professors were really bummed about it. Apparently word gets around on your management style and spending habits. The dude ripped through money he didn't have, hired a ton of bloat, and is now cutting staff in nearly all the programs I held dear.

dchuk 3y ago

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of speaking multiple languages, but the basic fact is that technology is clearly going to make the idea of speaking different languages completely irrelevant in the next few years. We’ll all have real time Rosetta stones in our pockets, at which point why not just everyone speak the same language going forward? I get that there’s something romantic about the idea of regional dialects, but practically speaking in a global world with advanced tech, it’s simply only a point of friction.

lionkor 3y ago
different languages come with entirely different ways of thinking and reasoning about the world - it would be a shame to throw that away
- jl6 3y ago
  As someone who learnt a foreign to fluency as an adult, I am skeptical of the stronger interpretations of the Sapir Whorf hypothesis. I believe a second language is primarily a source of cultural richness (mutual understanding, interesting vocabulary, intriguing turns of phrase, and so forth) - but not a prerequisite for accessing any novel forms of thinking or reasoning, i.e. I can not recall ever feeling like my thought processes or understanding of the world were fundamentally different to my monolingual colleagues.
  - blackbear_ 3y ago
    I think it depends on how close the two languages are, but also I think that the effect is much more powerful when you are a child and your brain is more malleable. For example, compared to Western languages, Chinese has very little grammar and words that are more ambiguous and with several meanings. This translates to a way of thinking that is more fuzzy, holistic, and high level, relying more on connections (intuitively, when you don't have grammatical constructs telling you the connection between things, you are forced to seek/guess it by yourself)
    - 3y ago

mitchbob 3y ago

https://archive.ph/yczwH https://archive.ph/yczwH

Gabrys1 3y ago

Lol 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact support@wvgazettemail.com or call 304-348-5140.

gpvos 3y ago
It is very ironic that HTTP code 451 was originally added so it could be used to mark censorship (i.e., forced upon the publisher by legal means), but now it is almost exclusively used by sites that want to set cookies in a way that doesn't conform to GDPR, and so inhibiting access to information (i.e., chosen because of laws inconvenient to the publisher).
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  > and so inhibiting access to information. How's that not censorship?
  - gpvos 3y ago
    I don't know how I could have been more clear, sorry.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

mobilefriendly 3y ago

Medicaid spending-- driven by huge federal incentives-- is crowding out state dollars for higher education. Medicaid enrollment has increased 50% in WV in the last decade (while the state population has declined). The US is making a policy choice to funnel more of GDP into a wildly inefficient health care system to support obese and aging populations, instead of funding K-12 and higher education.

naijaboiler 3y ago
Or WV's population is getting older and pooree
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  In a situation with declining proportion of working age population (and lack of sufficient automation to offset it), one will lead to the other, as more and more of the share of resources from the working population are reallocated to the non working population.
Spooky23 3y ago
We’re getting the worst possible universal healthcare at the maximum cost. In New York, 8 million people or 40% of the population are enrolled.
evantbyrne 3y ago
Medicaid enrollment went way up but federal spending growth remained relatively close to the trend. They didn't even overhaul the system to combat the price gouging that is going on. To me this trial run proves the opposite of your conclusion: the US would be able to afford public healthcare if it adopted an intelligent model. We need to set the bar higher as a society when it comes to social well-being, not pull back on our ambitions.
whimsicalism 3y ago
We are screwed on healthcare and most of the proposed "solutions" will only make things worse. We need smart legislation to eliminate global free ridership on medication as well as less insurance, not more (combined with universal catastrophic high deductible insurance a la Singapore's medishield). We also need occupational licensing reform and to decouple healthcare from employment (ie. the politically impossible cadillac tax that Obama tried to push through). Shielding people more from the true cost of healthcare is the politically popular option but does not improve health outcomes and drives utilization (and thus resource allocation) higher.

Communitivity 3y ago

I think the reduction/dropping of technology majors such as software engineering will make getting into WV Institute of Technology harder, due to more competition. It currently has a 68% acceptance rate, which is not low. I would be more ok with this is the money was being shifted to WV IT, so they could improve programs and support more students.

tomohawk 3y ago

They are recommending reductions in faculty even for STEM programs. https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/262cec3c-3098-48e9-a4ed-5061ea5431ae/preliminary-recommendation-computer-science-and-electrical-engineering.pdf https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/262cec3c-3098-48e9-a4ed-5061... It would be interesting to see the admin staff to faculty ratio at WVU and if there are any recommendations to trim that. Many universities spend more on administration than faculty.

ajkjk 3y ago

I kinda like this, if only because I already believe that the way universities in the US are structured is very ossified and some kind of shock is definitely inevitable. I mean.. we'd rather everyone be able to take whatever degree they want, learn a lot, and still be able to afford life and get good employment after. But given that that's not really working and shows no sign of changing, some kind of "phase transition" is necessary. Hopefully whatever emerges on the other side is better somehow.

joe5150 3y ago
That's an...optimistic point of view, especially given the departments being threatened are not the source of the university's financial troubles and this "transformation" process doesn't promise to address the things which are.
- ajkjk 3y ago
  Yeah true. I don't mean to argue this is a good end state. Just that the threat of 'colleges as we know them are going to vanish' might get people to start caring about fixing them.

partitioned 3y ago

As a graduate of WVU during the Gee era we all saw this coming he is a terrible president, only known for his bow ties. I notice that they eliminate majors and cut faculty but no word on the admin staff they’ve been bloating for years. Shame on Gee and WVU.

hoppyhoppy2 3y ago

The radio show On Point had an episode the other day about the budget cuts and other challenges rural U.S. colleges are facing: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/08/10/what-a-decline-in-rural-colleges-means-for-rural-students https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/08/10/what-a-decline-in-ru...

trey-jones 3y ago

Much like Mr. Katz of the linguistics program I have bias because of the amount of time that I spent in the Linguistics department as well as the departments of multiple foreign languages in college. In addition to my linguistics major, I took classes in Chinese, Japanese, French, and German. It's also been quite a long time since then, and things have surely changed. So, with that bias out in the open: I think that the discussions here generally underestimate how much these language programs contribute to university life beyond just a degree: 1. Will international students be attracted to this university with no program that represents their native language? My experience was that a lot of Chinese students spent quite a lot of time in the Chinese department, even if their focus was engineering. 2. In the same vein, what meaningful partnerships will WVU have with non-English speaking institutes of higher education in the future? Seems like not very many! Even if computers will do the translating in the future, we're still talking about a global economy and relationships are important. 3. What about students of all disciplines (history especially comes to mind) that are interested in texts that weren't published in English. jUSt uSe gOoGlE? I'm rolling my eyes. There's still plenty of knowledge for English speakers in non-English texts. Provincial is the word that comes to mind, which I think of as the opposite of "Education".

Jedd 3y ago

Seemingly the president (a weird title, but okay) of that university brings in about US$750k / year - and is also noteworthy for being one of the highest paid public university presidents for some time[1] - netting US$6m for 2013 from Ohio, while stepping down from there after making some inappropriate comments. My point is slightly tangential to the above - one might expect one of the most highly paid professionals in this role to be highly skilled, and to avoid this kind of oversight or blindsiding. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/05/19/the-highest-paid-public-university-presidents-2/?sh=6cd6ea881fd0 https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/05/19/the-highe...

rblatz 3y ago
I was at Ohio State while Gee was President. He was very good at fundraising, that’s how he commanded that salary.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
CydeWeys 3y ago
> Seemingly the president (a weird title, but okay) That's what the title is all across the US.
dmix 3y ago
Are we even sure this is a bad thing for the school? Sounds like they are streamlining their business, just with a lot of the usual useless administrative bloat and incompetence slowing it down.
- joe5150 3y ago
  The administrative bloat and incompetence is why they're in the position to cut academic programs in the first place. You seem to think the tail is wagging the dog.

pfdietz 3y ago

Expecting to see an announcement that administrative staff will be increased to manage the transition.

miek 3y ago

I recommend this website [0] for some details about how they got into this situation. Included are comparisons to peers (public Big XII schools), which are considerably better off. Hilariously, over the past 3 years, WVU was unable to generate actionable data on costs & revenues of their academic programs, though they spent over $1mm on consultants specifically for this purpose and pay $3mm annually on internal roles whose job functions have considerable overlap and include doing this type of work. Administration hired a second consultancy for the same purpose in 2023. [0] https://wvufacts.wordpress.com/ https://wvufacts.wordpress.com/

sneed_chucker 3y ago
> though they spent over $1mm on consultants specifically for this purpose and pay $3mm annually on internal roles whose job functions have considerable overlap and include doing this type of work. Administration hired a second consultancy for the same purpose in 2023. Is consulting the ultimate late capitalism grift?
- brendoelfrendo 3y ago
  I wouldn't even say late capitalism; consulting has been the ultimate grift for decades now.
  - incongruity 3y ago
    It was, arguably, part of the beginning of the end. Most of the most harmful strategies have consultants in their roots.
  - azinman2 3y ago
    Late capitalism refers to 1940s+, but typically the term has no real understanding by the masses that use it online.
  - skinpop 3y ago
    Late stage capitalism got started started in the thirties...

jccalhoun 3y ago

According to this article, between 2008 and 2018 West Virginia cut their funding for higher ed by 25%. https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-higher-education-funding-cuts-have-pushed-costs-to-students https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-hig... And according to this pdf, "Between FY 1980 and FY 2001, after being adjusted for inflation, federal on-budget program funds for [...] postsecondary education funds declined 33 percent." https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/2002129.pdf https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/2002129.pdf

MengerSponge 3y ago

Cultural vandalism.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

School shutdowns and scale-backs are required when a nation is getting older and the share of youth population decreases.

kstrauser 3y ago
That’s exactly wrong. Who’s going to take care of the olds if the youngs aren’t educated? If the young have lower incomes, who are the olds going to tax? School shutdowns and scale-backs are an effective path toward insuring a country drives off a cliff with their foot on the gas pedal.

causality0 3y ago

7% of staff teaching 2% of students seems like a good choice for a cutback unless there are even less efficient departments.

dankle 3y ago

”451: Unavailable due to legal reasons We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact support@wvgazettemail.com or call 304-348-5140.” Sounds like an amazing site

xhkkffbf 3y ago

A university setting with university-grade tuition prices isn't the best place to be learning a language. Something like Duolingo is much cheaper and better too. There's no reason to start to learn a language from someone with a PhD is some form of literature in that language.

commonlisp94 3y ago
You just don't understand what's in a language degree. Also do you know a single person who has ever learned to actually speak a language with duolingo?
joe5150 3y ago
I can't understand your last sentence, which is undermining your point about the low value of language education...

bmitc 3y ago

They're also dropping the mathematics department, getting rid of the graduate program and keeping a skeleton crew, I guess to teach other majors, somehow. It's unclear how that will work given that graduate students often do a lot of teaching and assisting.

bwanab 3y ago

One might rationally ask if all colleges should offer all things for all people. I know they don't strictly do this, but I think there is more overlap in functions than there should be. When looking at colleges for my kids, I was impressed by the consortium of schools in western Massachusetts (UMass Amherst, Amherst, Hampshire, Smith, Mount Holyoke) that allowed the smaller schools to concentrate on specific areas, while at the same time giving students the ability to take courses in other fields from the other schools in the consortium (mostly at UMass). Maybe more schools should do more of this.

m3kw9 3y ago

A casualty of AI translation trends

paulsutter 3y ago

"dropping 32 majors, ... The cuts will affect ... less than 2% of total student enrollment"

kalverra 3y ago

This is sad to see as a WVU CS grad. WVU is pretty much the only place to go outside of Marshall and some teeny tiny schools if you're in WV. I suspect a lot of this has to do with bad management by Gee and admin bloat, but the state is poor as shit. Most talented students go to WVU on scholarship, and get the fuck out of the state ASAP. It can't be easy to keep a state school funded when nearly every graduate of that school's #1 goal is to bail out of the state.

callalex 3y ago
Isn’t this one of the exact reasons every smart person leaves the state ASAP? An entrenched royalty class running everything with heavy corruption?

Merrill 3y ago

It is more efficient to hire a native speaker educated in a foreign language who speaks good English to teach the language than it is to educate an English speaker in the foreign language well enough to teach it.

pseingatl 3y ago

How many fluent graduates did the programs produce? I would guess precious few.

Jellyfish19 3y ago

I graduated from the CS program in the late 00s and have interviewed grads of the program over the years since. The old, out of touch professors that were there then are still there today. Many of the good professors teaching useful, applicable skills moved on to greener pastures. The "reduce staff" guidance should motivate the department to cut off that dead weight, but it won't. They'll keep the worst and tank the program more. The program has also taken the position that it's more important to teach the theory than any hands on application of skills in a modern environment. It's a disservice to the students because they graduate not knowing how to use something as pervasive as git. The program's faculty and administration - already gainfully employed - aren't the ones being turned down for jobs for being unqualified after all. They get to carry on with their cushy lifestyles existing outside of reality. Make no mistake - there are quality professors and talented people coming out of the program. It's just that the quality professors aren't the ones setting the course of the program, and the talented students would probably have been as successful no matter which school they attended. It's so frustrating to know that the program could be more, it just chooses not to. So goes the story of West Virginia.