Posted on 03/25/2020 4:52:35 AM PDT by karpov
Suffering from self-inflicted wounds, the University of Tulsa is sick and getting sicker. This is a case study in how “progressive” academic leadership can wreck a once-excellent university.
Last April 11, the university’s administration rolled out “True Commitment,” a radical restructuring that gutted the liberal arts, raised course loads, dissolved academic departments, and effectively turned the university into a technical and vocational school. I wrote about the turmoil that caused in this article for the Martin Center, but I’ll recap the events below.
A campaign of opposition to the restructuring formed immediately, sparked by the circulation of an article that appeared in City Journal on April 17. Concerned Faculty of TU (CFTU) was born at a meeting attended by four hundred people. Faculty votes in the colleges of Law and Arts and Sciences overwhelmingly rejected True Commitment. Students drafted a petition and held a funeral for the liberal arts. Facebook pages and a website were launched, and roughly 20 academic associations and societies wrote letters condemning True Commitment.
The administration quickly launched a venomous counterattack, attempting to muzzle and intimidate faculty and student critics. One low point was an Astroturf email campaign orchestrated by president Gerard Clancy. In September, four college deans and several other administrators denounced the “selfishness and negativity” of the “faceless faculty members”—or perhaps just the “anonymous message board troll”—known as CFTU.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
Sounds like the Liberal Arts teaches and this guy in particular are upset about losing the phony-baloney jobs teaching useless crap.
Screwy article. He says that TU has insanely high administrative costs and then goes on to whine about the attempt to fix it. Is he in solidarity with the moochers? It’s hard to tell.
Just the opposite. They are turning the college into a Maoist center for social justice.
Since minorities can’t pass the classes, they have to destroy academic standards, and replace liberal arts essay tests with a trade school and a welding project.
This year is going to be very challenging for most universities. If the country is still largely locked down this summer, almost no students will enroll in traditional brick and mortar schools (with the exception of, maybe, the most elite ones).
I agree with other posters here that the article is poorly written for anyone who doesn’t know the back story.
But college admissions people are scrambling across the country. The pool of incoming students is declining quickly, year after year. Enrollments are down. Many colleges are finding that they can’t maintain the status quo.
Smaller liberal arts colleges are especially at risk. Students are finding that LA diplomas don’t get them jobs that pay the bills.
Business and technical majors are much more in demand. If that is the direction the university is taking, I applaud it.
Objectively-graded endeavors are easier to scale grades up than anything done in trade school. Never known a SJW who could do anything as useful as welding.
Unfortunately the end of classical education at TU did NOT mean the end of political indoctrination.
Oh, and yes, there's got to be lots of foreign money influencing things judging from the numbers of Chinese and middle eastern students at TU, who all pay cash.
The islamic student association still has their big, windowless building with lots of cameras, of course.
This all culminated with a consultant firm who reorganized a school back east somewhere - one wants to recall North Carolina but not sure. They just packaged up the same restructuring plan they sold that school and sold it to TU again. Ka-ching.
TPTB at TU really screwed the pooch and now they're trying to do damage control. Anyone interested in classical education has one less choice now, although that choice had deteriorated before this.
I agree. Poorly written.
Thank you for getting to the crux of the matter. This is what's really going on, behind the "STEM" facade.
Read the article, quite the lefty. From what he describes Tulsa U is doing, there is hope for higher education, afterall. Tulsa is doing exactly what the city of Tulsa and our country needs.
” technical and vocational school.”
I have a BA in political Science. I also took an International Trade program at a vo-tech. I learned how to do a job at the tech. I learned how to drink beer and talk politics at University.
technical and vocational schools are better.
True! Besides, it’s fun to see the outcome of real actions.
My wife learned to weld.
Good for you!
Exactly correct. A recently hired school president was seen pissing into a planter outside of Fleming’s Steakhouse in Utica Square. He didn’t last long. That was good for some laughs.
Be careful. Staring into that flame too much makes them crazy. ;)
Two of my co-workers are Tulsa Alums - they refused to send their kids there. One guy let the University know how he felt about the liberal changes. Tulsa really didn’t care what this guy had to say.
Obviously, they need to lower the cost of instruction lower. zero would be ideal. Then all tuition dollars could be spent on Vice Presidents and other such priorities.
As for jobs, if students want jobs, they can go to a community college and learn something like welding after getting the bachelor of video-game playing, staying drunk or high for four years, and learning about LBGT/diversity/green new deal/communism.
This year is going to be very challenging for most universities. If the country is still largely locked down this summer, almost no students will enroll in traditional brick and mortar schools (with the exception of, maybe, the most elite ones).
The only, ones who can’t continue or take their courses on line are the nursing, PA’s and pre med students. They need that eyes on, ear listening and developing the verbal skills to become good Nurses, PA’s and future doctors.
I took welding courses at the Tulsa Vo-Tech, and dated a girl from TU. Back in the 1970s. It was a good school then.
We are talking about the Tulsa Hurricanes aren’t we?
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