Thanks Oldeconomybuyer. The money has to be shifted to decolonization, community organizing, fragility, empowerment, rioting...
Posted on 08/11/2024 3:42:13 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Christina Westman dreamed of working with Parkinson’s disease and stroke patients as a music therapist when she started studying at St. Cloud State University.
But her schooling was upended in May when administrators at the Minnesota college announced a plan to eliminate its music department as it slashes 42 degree programs and 50 minors.
It’s part of a wave of program cuts in recent months, as U.S. colleges large and small try to make ends meet. Among their budget challenges: Federal COVID relief money is now gone, operational costs are rising and fewer high school graduates are going straight to college.
The cuts mean more than just savings, or even job losses. Often, they create turmoil for students who chose a campus because of certain degree programs and then wrote checks or signed up for student loans.
“For me, it’s really been anxiety-ridden,” said Westman, 23, as she began the effort that ultimately led her to transfer to Augsburg University in Minneapolis. “It’s just the fear of the unknown.”
“This year going into next fall, it’s going to be bad,” said Katharine Meyer, a fellow in the Governance Studies program for the Brown Center on Education Policy at the nonprofit Brookings Institution. “I think a lot of colleges are really concerned they’re not going to make their enrollment targets.”
Arkansas State University announced last fall it was phasing out nine programs. Three of the 64 colleges in the State University of New York system have cut programs amid low enrollment and budget woes.
Other schools slashing and phasing out programs include West Virginia University, Drake University in Iowa, the University of Nebraska campus in Kearney, North Dakota State University and, on the other side of the state, Dickinson State University.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
It’s way past time colleges cut these basket weaving degrees.
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money.”
Margaret Thatcher
Are they cutting grievance programs or ‘stuff worth knowing if you want a job’? As soon as any profession or organizations becomes over half female, it loses status. Not saying it’s fair - just that it is.
Mostly I wholeheartedly agree. But music at least requires skill and some mental acuity and discipline. It was among the Ancient Greek arts that were foundational to a good education.
When I think back on those days, very few of us went to school to ensure employment and many valued education just for its own sake.
Now one of the most important statistics for schools are their job placement rates.
All the colleges now compete with each other for the same students and recruiting men to campuses has become particularly difficult.
So many colleges planned based on those baby boomer years and now families aren’t having children any more. My alma mater continues to succeed but it occupies a small educational niche … four year school, no nontraditional students, everyone lives on campus, located in the woods on lakes on monastery grounds. It’s expensive but competitive with other small private schools but the campus experience is unique. And in at 18 and out at 22. No five year students.
1. Administrators. There are a veritable army of them at universities across the country. They have grown in proportion to students at an almost exponential rate over the last 50 years. Many of them are paid well into 6 figures in salary every year. They're also overwhelmingly communists. Cut. Cut. Cut.
2. Cut majors like East African Transgender Theory Studies in Oppression. All those future HR employees and future Cat Ladies will just need to find something else to major in. There are always the old standbys like English they could major in instead. That at least might be marginally useful. The boutique communist majors have no value at all.
They’ll probably cut engineering and hard sciences in favor of LGBT Dance Theory
The big one my my area is “film major” ???????
Trade schools are doing pretty good. I’ve been telling my grandkids, go for electronics, plumbing, welding, etc. Those are real jobs.
When I was in engineering school, I had to take a welding class. The prof told me, if I failed at engineering, I’d make a great welder. And being female would be a a plus because I had smaller hands, body than males and could fit into places they couldn’t get into.
The number of bizarrely specific majors offered, entirely a factor of marketing by the department and college, is ridiculous. Many represent weirdly specific vocational tracks, such as music therapy for the elderly (I’m just making that up here to fit the example), as opposed to more basic groupings such as music in general.
Also, departments that have made their subjects miserable to study, such as English, are often fracturing into ever smaller departments as the number of students majoring in their subject shrinks.
Strangely, the AP article only mentioned Mediterranean “studies” and Physics.
“But music at least requires skill and some mental acuity and discipline.”
The problem with universities is they “industrialize” degrees. What happens when there’s a demand in the culture for, say, fifteen hundred pots each year but you build a plant to manufacture fifteen thousand pots each year? There’s a heck of a lot of “unemployed” pots. That’s the problem with subsidizing a degree for anything. That’s what in industry is called a “push” system. A normal economy would create a natural “pull” system and only produce enough pots for what is needed.
There’s only so much demand for, say, pharmacists. Yet the local college is pumping out hundreds of pharmacists each year who then have to go get a degree in something needed, like nursing. So instead of getting the promised hundred plus thousand per year they spend even more money and start at forty thousand dollars per year.
The whole university system is built as a push system when it should reflect the actual need of society and act as a pull system.
The feel-good story of the day.
Thanks Oldeconomybuyer. The money has to be shifted to decolonization, community organizing, fragility, empowerment, rioting...
Universities need to train for the future—online speech censors and concentration camp guards.
:-(
Then how will young people develop the skills needed to get in demand jobs like barista or InstaCart associate?
My new favorite: Influencer
What the heck is that?
China’s economy generates 11 - 12 million college graduates in June, plus others the rest of the year.
Over half cannot get jobs this year, and since patronage is such a part of the economy, they won’t get a traditional “college job” for a long time, if ever.
A lot of people want the Indiana Jones job teaching college courses. Now that our economy isn’t generating those kind of soft jobs, what will we do if even 10% of those college grads in China want to come to America?
With our current border policy, it is only $1,500 to fly over here and disappear into the hidden economy.
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