2 ms·

The bitterness of current and former employees, alums, and many people around the state, does not detract from several excellent points made by the piece. To re

by miek 3y ago

The bitterness of current and former employees, alums, and many people around the state, does not detract from several excellent points made by the piece. To read it and wholly dismiss it is questionnable (especially with a birthrate comment). Birthrate in the "WVU area" should be considered, but consider a couple datapoints: Total enrollment overall increased [0] year over year for both 2021-2022 and 2022-2023, and over half of WVU students come from outside WV [1] [0] To see the increased enrollment, you need to get the '21-'22 enrollment from this site: https://www.thedaonline.com/news/wvu-continues-to-experience-declining-enrollment-despite-increase-in-retention/article_1f458cd8-f953-11ec-b526-cbf88bb92e20.html https://www.thedaonline.com/news/wvu-continues-to-experience... and the '22-'23 enrollment here: https://www.wvu.edu/faq/how-many-students-are-enrolled https://www.wvu.edu/faq/how-many-students-are-enrolled This year's enrollment was published (news claimed increase); traveling and didn't immediately find the source. [1] https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/west-virginia-university/student-life/diversity/chart-geographic-breakdown.html https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/west-virginia-univer...

refulgentis 3y ago
I'm interested for your thoughts on the excellent points. Exaggerating for conciseness: I put in a good 20 minutes. Got left with a dizzied feeling of a gish gallop or perhaps motte and bailey, repeated. The only helpful part was the end, where they clearly implicate one person and identify the problem as pushing for growth in 2014, failing to recognize it had failed and pivot after realizing shrinking was actually the trend line. None of this required any of the rest. The rest seemed to fall into: 1. Leadership should have looked at $SMALL_SET_OF_COMPARABLE_INSTANCES projections to identify their projections must be wrong. 2. $SMALL_SET_OF_COMPARABLE_INSTANCES had a smaller shortfall[2]. 3. Confusing long segments recounting slight differences in statements made multiple months apart. [3] [2] Ended up closing it once it felt like #2 had several repetitions in a row, it doesn't matter if there's a smaller shortfall somewhere else, shortfalls add up to a shortfall. [3] for example, lengthy recountings of Official $X said 2025 is where the real trouble is, but they also said next 5 years are important, and birth data shows 2006 was the start of a new era of lows, and 2006 + 18 = 2024.
etempleton 3y ago
Yes, undergraduate enrollment is increasing, but many of the programs recommended for closure are graduate programs. Depending on the graduate program, the audience may be primarily local residents. Also, if we look at graduate enrollments for WVU they are at best flat with some programs ascending and some declining. Notably, and this is a national trend, M.S. degrees are growing in popularity and M.A. degrees are declining in popularity. The recommended program closures are almost all in the humanities and so this is all in alignment. The administration and colleges in general could probably do better at pointing out how many programs they have opened over the past decade as it would probably be a similar number. Generally colleges and universities are bad about this type of messaging because they do not have to do it very often.

by miek 3y ago

refulgentis 3y ago

I'm interested for your thoughts on the excellent points. Exaggerating for conciseness: I put in a good 20 minutes. Got left with a dizzied feeling of a gish gallop or perhaps motte and bailey, repeated. The only helpful part was the end, where they clearly implicate one person and identify the problem as pushing for growth in 2014, failing to recognize it had failed and pivot after realizing shrinking was actually the trend line. None of this required any of the rest. The rest seemed to fall into: 1. Leadership should have looked at $SMALL_SET_OF_COMPARABLE_INSTANCES projections to identify their projections must be wrong. 2. $SMALL_SET_OF_COMPARABLE_INSTANCES had a smaller shortfall[2]. 3. Confusing long segments recounting slight differences in statements made multiple months apart. [3] [2] Ended up closing it once it felt like #2 had several repetitions in a row, it doesn't matter if there's a smaller shortfall somewhere else, shortfalls add up to a shortfall. [3] for example, lengthy recountings of Official $X said 2025 is where the real trouble is, but they also said next 5 years are important, and birth data shows 2006 was the start of a new era of lows, and 2006 + 18 = 2024.

etempleton 3y ago

Yes, undergraduate enrollment is increasing, but many of the programs recommended for closure are graduate programs. Depending on the graduate program, the audience may be primarily local residents. Also, if we look at graduate enrollments for WVU they are at best flat with some programs ascending and some declining. Notably, and this is a national trend, M.S. degrees are growing in popularity and M.A. degrees are declining in popularity. The recommended program closures are almost all in the humanities and so this is all in alignment. The administration and colleges in general could probably do better at pointing out how many programs they have opened over the past decade as it would probably be a similar number. Generally colleges and universities are bad about this type of messaging because they do not have to do it very often.