4 ms·

If their budget numbers are true, it demonstrates serious mismanagement.

deaddodo 3y ago
Yeah, this was my first thought reading through this. It literally makes no sense to close a department that, after operational and administrative costs, is net positive while you are facing a budget crisis. Later on, the writer mentions an ideological split/decision on the chairperson's part. I wish they would delve into that more. Do the administrative heads feel that using outsourced labor will be more profitable?
- tssva 3y ago
  > It literally makes no sense to close a department that, after operational and administrative costs, is net positive while you are facing a budget crisis. If they think investment in another department will bring a higher ROI it makes sense.
  - deaddodo 3y ago
    It's profitable and requires little overhead. Just do both. That's like saying "I don't want a free PS5, because I think I'd play my Nintendo Switch more often".
    - tssva 3y ago
      They are in a budget crunch. They likely don't have money to do both.
      - deaddodo 3y ago
        They are in a budget crunch. So they should close one of the departments that pays for itself and others? I'm having a hard time processing your logic here.
        tssva 3y ago
        If they feel they can bring in even more revenue from investing that money elsewhere then yes.
        deaddodo 3y ago
        I can only imagine that you are trolling, at this point. You understand the concept of profit, right? Let's just do numbers here: * Option A: you have 1mUSD to invest into Department X. * Option B: you have 1.2mUSD to invest into Department X and you get Department Y for free. Option A makes zero sense, logically.
        tssva 3y ago
        Not trolling. I'm not sure you understand opportunity costs. I have 5m to invest in a department. Investing that 5m in Department A and earn 800k in net revenue. If I invest that same 5m in Department B I can earn 1.4m in net revenue. If I invest in Department A I'm giving up 600k in net revenue.
        deaddodo 3y ago
        The department exists already, it needs zero investment. Did you read the article at all? If anything, it's going to absorb more opportunity cost ramping the department down than to let it continue operating. About the only way your argument would make sense is if they desperately needed the physical resources (offices, desks, etc); but considering they closed down other unprofitable departments, there are plenty available.
        tssva 3y ago
        I read the entire article and I reviewed the spreadsheet with financial data. The department costs were $5,846,146 in 2022. They had net revenues of $801,468. A 13.71 ROI. They served a student population of 61. The student population has been consistently shrinking over time. Compare this for example to the Department of Psychology which had costs of $6,485,775 and net revenue of $1,724,536 for an ROI of 26.59. This while serving a student population of 774 which has been consistently increasing over time. If they believe they can replicate the higher ROI while serving more students by switching the funding to another department they should do so.
dylan604 3y ago
Isn't pretty much any situation of layoffs/cutbacks demonstrations of mismanagement? Rarely is it a single issue that was unable to be predicted that causes things like this.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Isn't pretty much any situation of layoffs/cutbacks demonstrations of mismanagement? Only if you view the function of management as being to maximize employment at the firm, which the people hiring the managers generally do not.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    you must think that layoffs only occur because of over hiring. i've seen departments that are profitable like the TFA, but because of issues in a different department that is closer to management's interest, other departments are decimated to cover the shortcomings. however, to me, management not recognizing that head count is unrealistic is still a management problem.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > you must think that layoffs only occur because of over hiring No, in fact, I think “overhiring” is mostly based on another misapprehension of management’s function. Hiring rapidly when conditions are favorable and firing rapidly when conditions change isn’t “overhiring” and then corrections, its two different sides of the near-optimal-as-possible management of headcount int the context of capitalism. Is it bad for workers? Sure, but there’s a reason it’s called “capitalism” and not “laborism”. Obviously, management makes mistakes. But rapid reductions in staff are not particularly a sign of that.
codemac 3y ago
EDIT: Others have commented that this is just that the # of students taking courses vs. the # of students in the major. The phrase "program enrollment" meant something different to me. This would make the 800k profit make sense. When I look at their actual numbers, his comments don't make sense: https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/bf3ef02f-e90a-4e43-a316-d295fa489067/academic-transformation-public-data-table_july-17-2023-100.pdf https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/bf3ef02f-e90a-4e43-a316-d295... They somehow have 18000+ credit hours to their department in a year, but only 61 enrolled students in fall 2022 which, means an average student enrolled was taking 310 credits? Or ~150ish if the 2022 credit hours is for both fall & spring? What I think is happening, is that most universities allow you to meet your "foreign languages requirement" by showing your High School transcripts, and then you get those credits applied to your transcript. That means you actually make $0 from those credits. The later part of the spreadsheet clearly shows how impossible this is - they did not make $6.7M with 61 students' tuition. Clearly the tuition is just a dumb excel formula multiplying by the credits. So either they're somehow the most expensive foreign language school in the world, with 1 instructor per 2 students... Or they're a wildly expensive department that almost no one major's with, and their research grants don't cover their millions in losses to the university.
- legitster 3y ago
  Yeah, the student to teacher ratio was telling. With 30 something faculty it was only 2?
- SL61 3y ago
  The enrollment numbers are probably for majors, i.e. enrollment count of 5 for the French program means there are 5 students majoring in French. The vast majority of students taking French classes would be taking them for general education requirements (or whatever WVU calls that), or due to other degree programs requiring a language class, or as electives. At my alma mater, the Philosophy department had something like 10 majors, but the whole department was kept afloat by the Nursing College's requirement for their students to take an ethics class. The philosophy professors would teach a few high-level philosophy courses to tiny classes, and then several massive ethics seminars with hundreds of nursing students.
legitster 3y ago
The requirements for the provost department are that the department had to make above $1 million in external grants annually to be exempt from review. https://provost.wvu.edu/academic-transformation/academic-program-portfolio-review https://provost.wvu.edu/academic-transformation/academic-pro... Tiny programs with not a lot of student interest did not make the cut.
zerocrates 3y ago
The department, if I've found it correctly on the sheet, has very few students enrolled in it but logs tens of thousands of credit hours a year: this is presumably mostly students taking a foreign language course as part of general education requirements. I imagine that's where the bulk of the tuition income allocated to the department is coming from. Presumably the idea is something like, if we axe the department, we dump 16 tenure-track and 32 total FTEs and something like 60 students lose their program: good trade. You just write off the linguistics and TESOL programs completely along with the handful of foreign language majors, and you figure that you can give out uhhhh... Duolingo credits to the students in other programs that cared about their foreign language/lit classes and keep them around. Of course you're abandoning the pretense of really being a university and offering well-rounded education and broad opportunities and all that... but at least you can keep all the administrators.

Yeah, this was my first thought reading through this. It literally makes no sense to close a department that, after operational and administrative costs, is net positive while you are facing a budget crisis. Later on, the writer mentions an ideological split/decision on the chairperson's part. I wish they would delve into that more. Do the administrative heads feel that using outsourced labor will be more profitable?

tssva 3y ago
> It literally makes no sense to close a department that, after operational and administrative costs, is net positive while you are facing a budget crisis. If they think investment in another department will bring a higher ROI it makes sense.
- deaddodo 3y ago
  It's profitable and requires little overhead. Just do both. That's like saying "I don't want a free PS5, because I think I'd play my Nintendo Switch more often".
  - tssva 3y ago
    They are in a budget crunch. They likely don't have money to do both.
    - deaddodo 3y ago
      They are in a budget crunch. So they should close one of the departments that pays for itself and others? I'm having a hard time processing your logic here.
      - tssva 3y ago
        If they feel they can bring in even more revenue from investing that money elsewhere then yes.
        deaddodo 3y ago
        I can only imagine that you are trolling, at this point. You understand the concept of profit, right? Let's just do numbers here: * Option A: you have 1mUSD to invest into Department X. * Option B: you have 1.2mUSD to invest into Department X and you get Department Y for free. Option A makes zero sense, logically.
        tssva 3y ago
        Not trolling. I'm not sure you understand opportunity costs. I have 5m to invest in a department. Investing that 5m in Department A and earn 800k in net revenue. If I invest that same 5m in Department B I can earn 1.4m in net revenue. If I invest in Department A I'm giving up 600k in net revenue.
        deaddodo 3y ago
        The department exists already, it needs zero investment. Did you read the article at all? If anything, it's going to absorb more opportunity cost ramping the department down than to let it continue operating. About the only way your argument would make sense is if they desperately needed the physical resources (offices, desks, etc); but considering they closed down other unprofitable departments, there are plenty available.
        tssva 3y ago
        I read the entire article and I reviewed the spreadsheet with financial data. The department costs were $5,846,146 in 2022. They had net revenues of $801,468. A 13.71 ROI. They served a student population of 61. The student population has been consistently shrinking over time. Compare this for example to the Department of Psychology which had costs of $6,485,775 and net revenue of $1,724,536 for an ROI of 26.59. This while serving a student population of 774 which has been consistently increasing over time. If they believe they can replicate the higher ROI while serving more students by switching the funding to another department they should do so.

dylan604 3y ago

Isn't pretty much any situation of layoffs/cutbacks demonstrations of mismanagement? Rarely is it a single issue that was unable to be predicted that causes things like this.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> Isn't pretty much any situation of layoffs/cutbacks demonstrations of mismanagement? Only if you view the function of management as being to maximize employment at the firm, which the people hiring the managers generally do not.
- dylan604 3y ago
  you must think that layoffs only occur because of over hiring. i've seen departments that are profitable like the TFA, but because of issues in a different department that is closer to management's interest, other departments are decimated to cover the shortcomings. however, to me, management not recognizing that head count is unrealistic is still a management problem.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > you must think that layoffs only occur because of over hiring No, in fact, I think “overhiring” is mostly based on another misapprehension of management’s function. Hiring rapidly when conditions are favorable and firing rapidly when conditions change isn’t “overhiring” and then corrections, its two different sides of the near-optimal-as-possible management of headcount int the context of capitalism. Is it bad for workers? Sure, but there’s a reason it’s called “capitalism” and not “laborism”. Obviously, management makes mistakes. But rapid reductions in staff are not particularly a sign of that.

codemac 3y ago

EDIT: Others have commented that this is just that the # of students taking courses vs. the # of students in the major. The phrase "program enrollment" meant something different to me. This would make the 800k profit make sense. When I look at their actual numbers, his comments don't make sense: https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/bf3ef02f-e90a-4e43-a316-d295fa489067/academic-transformation-public-data-table_july-17-2023-100.pdf https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/bf3ef02f-e90a-4e43-a316-d295... They somehow have 18000+ credit hours to their department in a year, but only 61 enrolled students in fall 2022 which, means an average student enrolled was taking 310 credits? Or ~150ish if the 2022 credit hours is for both fall & spring? What I think is happening, is that most universities allow you to meet your "foreign languages requirement" by showing your High School transcripts, and then you get those credits applied to your transcript. That means you actually make $0 from those credits. The later part of the spreadsheet clearly shows how impossible this is - they did not make $6.7M with 61 students' tuition. Clearly the tuition is just a dumb excel formula multiplying by the credits. So either they're somehow the most expensive foreign language school in the world, with 1 instructor per 2 students... Or they're a wildly expensive department that almost no one major's with, and their research grants don't cover their millions in losses to the university.

legitster 3y ago
Yeah, the student to teacher ratio was telling. With 30 something faculty it was only 2?
SL61 3y ago
The enrollment numbers are probably for majors, i.e. enrollment count of 5 for the French program means there are 5 students majoring in French. The vast majority of students taking French classes would be taking them for general education requirements (or whatever WVU calls that), or due to other degree programs requiring a language class, or as electives. At my alma mater, the Philosophy department had something like 10 majors, but the whole department was kept afloat by the Nursing College's requirement for their students to take an ethics class. The philosophy professors would teach a few high-level philosophy courses to tiny classes, and then several massive ethics seminars with hundreds of nursing students.

legitster 3y ago

The requirements for the provost department are that the department had to make above $1 million in external grants annually to be exempt from review. https://provost.wvu.edu/academic-transformation/academic-program-portfolio-review https://provost.wvu.edu/academic-transformation/academic-pro... Tiny programs with not a lot of student interest did not make the cut.

zerocrates 3y ago

The department, if I've found it correctly on the sheet, has very few students enrolled in it but logs tens of thousands of credit hours a year: this is presumably mostly students taking a foreign language course as part of general education requirements. I imagine that's where the bulk of the tuition income allocated to the department is coming from. Presumably the idea is something like, if we axe the department, we dump 16 tenure-track and 32 total FTEs and something like 60 students lose their program: good trade. You just write off the linguistics and TESOL programs completely along with the handful of foreign language majors, and you figure that you can give out uhhhh... Duolingo credits to the students in other programs that cared about their foreign language/lit classes and keep them around. Of course you're abandoning the pretense of really being a university and offering well-rounded education and broad opportunities and all that... but at least you can keep all the administrators.