Deep cuts at West Virginia University

Colleges and Universities A-Z West Virginia University
105

They.
Have.
Done.
This.

The fact that you are unaware of these efforts does not mean that they do not exist.

But their options are limited—they ultimately don’t have any real power in this beyond raising awareness, so it’s basically social media (and they’ve been ringing alarm bells there for months over the process) and making noise throughout West Virginia. But in the end, faculty are not really all that powerful, whether individually or collectively, no matter the pop culture conceptualization of them.

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106

I just went through the WVU process in more detail.

The recommendations we are talking about came from the Provost’s office. They were tasked with getting information from each academic dept, analysis of that info, and making recommendations., so from the academic side of the house.

RPK was retained “…to help with analysis and to ensure that we are being thorough and following the best practices”.

So, it doesn’t sound to me like these cuts are RPK’s recommendations at all.

Here is the process the Provost’s office undertook:

Programs or Departments for Formal Review

The Provost’s Office reviewed several key metrics to identify programs and departments for formal review. These metrics include:

Enrollment in the major/program (as of Fall 2022)
Enrollment trends in the major/program over a five-year period (Fall 2018-Fall 2022)
Additionally, the Provost’s Office evaluated department-level metrics, such as:
    Student credit hour (SCH) production trend from AY 2020 to AY 2022
    Full-time faculty headcount and trend from 2020 to 2022
    Full-time faculty-to-student ratio
    Net tuition revenue trends over 2020-2022 (Tuition revenue, based on SCH production, minus expenses)
    Total unrestricted expenses trend from 2020-2022
    Net financial position and trend from 2020-2022

Additional considerations include:

R1 research contributions - Doctoral programs and associated non-terminal master’s programs within a unit that has annual (FY 2022) external research expenditures of $1 million are exempted from review.
State priority program (land-grant mission)
Area of distinction/differentiation

How programs are excluded from consideration:

Non-terminal master’s programs attached to doctoral programs (only reviewed if the associated doctoral program is identified for review)
Pathways and completion degrees, such as multidisciplinary programs
Programs with three or fewer years of data
Potomac State and WVU Tech programs

https://provost.wvu.edu/academic-transformation/academic-program-portfolio-review

Here is the review process in excruciating detail: BOG Academics Rule 2.2 - Program Creation and Review | Policies | West Virginia University

Once the Provost’s Office completed its Board of Governors Rule 2.2 Program Review process for the programs and departments identified for formal review, they notified each unit of their preliminary recommendations. There are four possible recommendations for programs:

  • Continue at the current level of activity with no specific action (i.e., no recommended changes for the program)
  • Continue at the current level of activity with specific action (i.e., the program will continue to exist, but there are recommended changes for the program, including reduction of faculty positions)
  • Development of a cooperative program (i.e., potentially merging one or more programs together to create a new program / curriculum)
  • Discontinue the program (i.e., program will no longer exist after a teach out is completed)

The Board of Trustees meeting is Sept 15, where they will accept/change/not accept these recommendations from the Provost’s office.

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107

I assume the Deans’ views expressed their own self-interest. If they can’t articulate publicly an alternative vision, then they should expect to be steam-rolled by those who can. Budget deadlines are firm.

Lots of adults have figured out how to garner popularsupport for their causes. If WVU faculty can’t, then I guess its cause isnt so popular after all.

108

While the maelstrom continues- perhaps it’s time to question the dogma that every state in the country needs its own state flagship university- regardless of geography, population trends, overall economic development and job growth, net immigration, etc.

Seen in that light- maybe this is a positive development. The “economic unit” of OhioWV or Mass/RI or MD/DE could create a more robust higher ed system than any single state alone. This could be a good thing although for sure the next few years will be quite painful.

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109

FL at WVU provides a lot of student credit hour teaching (and therefore tuition revenue) for students who are not their majors. Students do, after all, take courses outside of their major, sometimes because they’re required to and sometimes because they’re simply interested and take them as electives.

Also, many FL majors weren’t counted as FL majors because of the way the counting occurred—so it’s not even that they didn’t have a lot of majors, it’s that they weren’t allowed to take credit for the majors they actually have!

110

Ahh, the old education as a jobs program…yeah, that’s a popular refrain, but is not strategic or efficient. Government can make anything a jobs program. But more importantly, where in teh Mission of WVU does it say jobs program?

111

I assume at some point the realities of economics, enrollment, and academic quality collide.

Look at the bottom tier of law schools for example- low bar passage rates, low rates of employment in jobs requiring a JD, high loan balances upon graduation, significant contraction in the industry leading to fewer jobs in the future. At what point does a state decide "we don’t need our own law school. We can offer a $20K subsidy for any resident going to law school in a nearby state for far less than it costs to run our own law program.?

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112

It doesn’t. But it is in the mission of the WV state legislature, which has way more to worry about ( and fund) than WVU

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113

This was basically patterned after the process that the University of Alaska System came up with 5ish years ago, with a bit more window dressing added. At WVU, just like at UA, faculty input was requested, but in a “justify your existence” way—and, at both of them, even doing sensible basic things like pointing out errors in the numbers that were provided by administration was rejected out of hand, even when the errors were clear and demonstrable.

So yeah, faculty input, but in reality it was more faculty “input” (scare quotes important here), which provided a fig leaf for mostly predetermined results.

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114

of course, but in addition to majors, class enrollment is also a hard cold fact and just as easy to review. Were the FL classes were packed with a WL?

115

Who are you saying is responsible then, or who had predetermined the resulting recommendations of the Provost? The Provost? The President? The Board?

116

Student credit hour production was not a metric programs were allowed to use to justify their existence.

Which, I hope we can all agree, is stupid. It’s also IMO indirect but solid evidence that programs’ self-reviews weren’t intended to be taken seriously.

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117

Were the students enrolled there grudgingly to begin with? Most schools of WVU caliber do not have FL requirements; some can use ASL or even computer languages to satisfy such a requirement in some places.

118

Yes, those three entities, and similarly situated upper administrators. Possibly some lawmakers as well, but that’s purely speculative.

119

This is why there are relatively few veterinary schools in the US (32).

120

I expect there are politics happening, but we can’t talk about that here!

Regardless, $45M is a huge sum to cut and all choices are bad.

WVU can’t sustain itself with only in-state students, so must attract OOS and international students. Cutting programs will make that harder, so the programs that are left better be attractive to those target customers. If not, it will be a downward spiral as someone mentioned above.

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121

Off topic for the wider discussion, but as a linguist I am compelled to offer the following as an important corrective: American Sign Language is a foreign language for English speakers, and it is a fully-formed language in the same way German and Japanese are. (Further, there are multiple signed languages, and they don’t match up with their expected spoken “counterparts”. For example, ASL and British Sign Language are not mutually intelligible, with ASL and French Sign Language being much, much closer than ASL and BSL—think English and Dutch as opposed to English and French.)

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122

Can I get $500k for my proposal from above? I’ll even make the images nicer. Where should I send the invoice? :wink:

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123

Seems like it (over)spent to upgrade various aspects of itself to attract (unsuccessfully) out-of-state students. So it ended up with the worst of all worlds, higher spending without the higher revenue that the higher spending was supposed to attract.

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124

Gee might have been brought in to be the hatchet man. When times are tough and cuts have to be made corporations bring-in outsiders. They don’t have any ties or loyalties. Usually paid well and leave after the dirty work is done which seems to be the case at WVU.

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