Someone sent the Maroon full sets of faculty minutes. The resulting articles are fascinating to see. Per the minutes and faculty belief, the Chicago administration has moved from thinking that “intellectual quality was the only thing that mattered” to being “intensely interested in the University’s standing compared with peer institutions.”
(I’ll let you guess what peer institutions - here’s a hint: it ain’t duke and UPenn and washu)
Per lots of faculty input, the top-down admins just care about eminence and resources. So, they expand the college and masters programs, while greatly shrinking certain PhD programs - to increase revenue. The faculty bring up merited concerns about growing a college but then not having enough top level PhD students to support such a research based college.
A U admin primarily concerned about institutional eminence, to the detriment of intellectual quality? I say bravo to the provost and president Zimmer!
“To the detriment of intellectual quality”? You’re over-interpreting, Cue, as is your wont - or else taking at face-value the grumbles of disaffected faculty whose undiminished programs seem to each of them synonymous with beauty, truth and virtue.
The faculty did more than grumble when Robert Maynard Hutchins goaded and gored them, yet no one would say that his was a time of deterioration of intellectual quality. At this university it’s more like par for the course, though it is natural for young Maroon reporters in receipt of a plain vanilla envelope slipped under the door to think they have snagged a story unprecedentedly scandalous.
The detriment here appears rather to be in the numbers admitted to certain Ph.D. programs. That would not necessarily indicate that the numbers were being cut simply because they cost too much, though of course that’s the spin a Department head might put on it. But ask the sixteen recent graduating Ph.D.s. of the Columbia English Department how they feel about having been admitted to and having spent many years of the their lives in one of the most storied programs in the nation: Not one of them found a full-time position at even so much as a junior college or minor state U. To them that Ph.D. was a catastrophe and a bitter disappointment. Several felt they had wasted the best years of their lives pursuing a cruel chimera. Could the situation of Chicago English Ph.D.s be that much better? And, if not, should the numbers admitted to that and similar programs be reappraised for reasons other than their cost to the University?
Ph.D. programs at Chicago have been trimmed and abolished in the past. In the sixties Chicago still offered Ph.D.'s in Education, Geography and Library Science. When those programs were chopped did the intellectual quality of the place deteriorate?
The hard cold facts can never be the enemy of the intellect. St. Augustine is my source for that one, and you can take it to the bank.
@marlowe1 - you’re missing some of the larger points. Trimming certain PhD programs may indeed be necessary. But what process leads to this result? It looks like faculty have a lot of concerns with the way the U. makes decisions, and is being run. That’s the larger concern.
Further, trimming the PhD programs is only part of the picture. Much of the Maroon’s focus is on the tremendous growth of Masters programs - and the admittance of certain students who simply aren’t up to snuff. This points to a new balance being reached between intellectual quality and the pursuit of revenue.
Unless my Chicago-developed reading skills have indeed deteriorated quickly (and, hey, that’s gonna happen inevitably), the Maroon’s articles indicate valid concerns raised about fairly big-picture issues.
The underlying complaint is that some faculty aren’t consulted as much as they wish to be. The link is a fascinating “room where it happened” sort of read, but hardly a unique series of events either to UChicago or universities in general.
Had that letter contained a university-wide representation of faculty, it would be taken a bit more seriously.
Masters programs are proliferating everywhere and serve two purposes: 1) provide additional specialized education needed for certain professions, and 2) via collaboration with faculty, provide a needed entryway to further study in a PhD program. Both are driven by industry and academe demand. Where is the data showing that they are associated with poor outcomes? The reason they have proliferated is due to quite the opposite.
The concern about sub-par MA admits is notable, but the decisions to admit those students made at the division or department level. The president and provost certainly aren’t making those. Any faculty member concerned about quality of degree of preparedness is more than likely welcome to participate on the respective admissions committee. And if students are avoiding needed curriculum, that’s the job of the respective department’s curriculum committee to correct. These complaints read more like senior faculty trying to get out of doing more work.
Issues of governance are interesting and likely ongoing. But the advice not to fix if it ain’t broke seems very sensible. @Cue7, how about actually showing us where the current structure of UChicago has resulted in it’s having sacrificed “intellectual quality.” Or that the Ivy’s have done so, which is your clear implication. Your last couple of comments are more energetic than accurate.
If the bigger point I am supposedly missing is the revolt of the profs against a heavy-handed administration, then it’s time for me as a non-academic to tune out: the details of university governance, consultation and process just aren’t that interesting to me or, I suspect, to most of the profs themselves. Not many of them actually signed that letter of remonstrance: I counted only seven from the English Department, which has a faculty of over sixty.
If it is really true that unqualified M.A. candidates are being admitted, that would be a problem. If the Departments want to push back on any pressures they feel under in that regard, that would be okay in my book. However, I’m not entirely convinced that the M.A.'s are inferior so much as that they are simply not the dedicated long-haul academics-in-training that the profs most want to teach , whom they see as most like their own younger selves, and with whom they are most able to have a long-term mentoring relationship.
I was once at the U of C doing a one-year M.A. I felt no less able than the Ph.D. candidates sitting beside me to understand and discuss the texts and to write the papers, but I did feel for the reasons given that the profs tended to have a somewhat cozier relationship with the Ph.D.s. That was a world in which Chicago Ph.D.s had their pick of jobs. That world is gone. I am not so sure today’s Ph.D.s are the happy campers of yore. On the other hand there could be many reasons why a bright college grad would want to spend an additional year to acquire an M.A., perhaps as some sort of credential in its own right, perhaps as a trial preliminary to actually entering a Ph.D. program, perhaps just for the fun of it. Why are such goals less legitimate than the more narrowly professional one of the devoted Ph.D.s? And why would these humanities departments, with their diminishing numbers, not be happy to teach any student with a bona fide interest and ability in the field in question?
So, in short, Cue, you ought to read that letter not only closely but with some skepticism.
@JBStillFlying said - “the decisions to admit those [masters] students made at the division or department level.”
But I am confused - a long-time Chicago professor is quoted as saying: “The real problem is that we are told that we have to admit a certain number of students,” English professor Elaine Hadley told The Maroon, referring to master’s programs. “We have to admit so many that we are often in a position where we take students who aren’t very well prepared.”
Those divisional or departmental decisions, then, stem from central admin mandates. That’s the entire point of this series - that the central admin makes mandates (e.g., shrink PhD programs, merge schools/institutes, admit more masters students) and then the schools need to conform to these directives. (By the way, a tenured professor stating she feels forced to accept students who aren’t well prepared is literally a statement about sacrificing intellectual quality for some other goal - in this case, hitting enrollment targets.)
Also, for the staunch Chicago supporters, I’m not sold by the “well, lots of other Universities are doing it.” argument. That’s weak sauce for Chicago backers. Lots of Unis focused on fundraising and grooming their endowment for decades, but Chicago wasn’t deterred!
Keep in mind, I’m in favor of laser focus on eminence and standing. It’s the most important currency in higher ed today. But, it is at odds with the more traditional Chicago approach to these issues, at least per these articles and my own memory of older admins views on the topic.
Re ivies being primarily concerned with their own eminence, JB - feel free to read speeches and articles by Lee Bollinger at Columbia or Berkeley prof Jerome Karabel’s work in this space. Often at Chicago’s ivy peers, intellectual quality is sacrificed for other concerns.
And, I should add, that policy has made those schools the wealthiest and most powerful institutions of higher education in human history. Bravo, Chicago, for shedding its old model!
There is a glut of newly minted PhDs in most of the humanities fields. Yet universities keep on churning them out, despite the fact that most are underemployed or unemployed. That, in itself, is enough to justify shrinking the number of PhD students in humanities departments.
Faculty of PhD programs whose PhD’s mostly take non-TT jobs in academia are being irresponsible by taking on large numbers of PhD students. The fact that so many of the faculty provide their students with the illusion or fantasy that they are sure to get TT positions, and if the students do not, it is because something is wrong with the student moves it from irresponsible to criminal.
I don’t care what reasons any administrator has for reducing the number of PhD students in fields with much lower rates of hiring for TT than for producing PhDs who expect to get jobs in academia, it is a positive step. Perhaps if universities did not have hordes of PhDs looking for few jobs, they wouldn’t be able to hire underpaid adjuncts on a contingent basis to teach important basic courses, and would need to actually pony up the money to pay a decent salary and provide some job security for the instructors who are teaching students basic writing skills.
Here, as sometimes happens, I think marlowe1 and JBStillFlying are maybe going a bit overboard in their defense of the university.
With respect to the MAPH program, you have the Wellbery Report nine years ago recommending that the program be capped at 100 students, and this year it has over 200. At the time the Wellbery report was delivered, and the MAPH program had about 150 students:
How can that situation have been ameliorated when the MAPH program has grown 65% (not 165%) in the past 5 years, while PhD enrollment has declined 12%? And the number of first or second year PhD students who are actually taking those classes has likely declined by much more than 12%, with the university seeking to cut back even further. There has to be an issue with quality in graduate education if a majority of students in your graduate classes aren’t people who have met the criteria for admission to a PhD program.
My son was in the MAPSS program in 2013-2014. His experience was very mixed. On the one hand, he pretty much got what he wanted out of it. He exited gracefully from a job he did not like, and he qualified himself for a job he did like. He buffed up the marketable segment of his skills in a way that he might have been able to achieve as an undergraduate had be been more sophisticated, more practical, and, yes, better advised. He learned that (at the time) he really didn’t want to be a PhD student. He got enough financial aid that the whole experience was worth the cost. His pre-existing relationships with faculty gave him access that many of his fellow students never got.
Some of his colleagues in the MAPSS program had similar decent experiences and outcomes, but many did not, and there was a lot of unhappiness. Access to faculty supervision for research was a constant problem, and even basic curriculum advice was very spotty. The MAPSS students were very much at the bottom of everyone’s list, below all of the PhD students and the college students. A couple people were smart, aggressive, and charming enough to attract some faculty sponsorship, but most of the students interested in improving their PhD prospects (as my son initially was) were very disappointed with the program.
You can’t keep expanding a program primarily designed to enhance people’s credentials for PhD programs at the same time you, and everyone else, are shrinking the PhD programs. The math doesn’t work. And it has to impact educational quality if the high-level classes are half-full (or more) of unhappy, unguided people who are really not prepared to be there.
MAPH and MAPSS may be excellent ways to monetize the university’s eminence, but the current situation could easily wind up undercutting that eminence by compromising the graduate student and faculty experience that is the true engine of the university’s prestige, even more than USNWR rankings.
The Maroon articles point to some significant concerns, although JB and Marlowe seem to be taking a “very little to see here” stance…
For me, it’s really hard to keep pace with schools that are vastly more wealthy. While some have praised Chicago’s “leaner” model, data suggests there have been some significant trade-offs over the past 5-10 years. The growth in these masters programs over such a short time is striking to see.
count me in the “move along” camp. Newsflash: tenured faculty believe that they run Universities. And after the commercial break, we have a story on dog bites man. Film at eleven.
The way to get more first and second year grad students is to help ensure that current grad students get out in ~6 years. Having students hang around for 10 years (looking at you Philosophy) is helping no one.
What are those 140 “students” doing? At certain point in life, gotta fish (and finish your dissertation) or cut bait (and join the ranks of ABD).
Hmmm, my simpleton math says that 585-140 = 445 active students. (Not far from the so-called 420, which as admitted, has not even been made public yet, so its an educated guess?.)
Agreed, but the cynic in me says that such programs are more valuable as a cash cow* and not to enhance training for a PhD. (yeah, I know how they are marketed, but someone who desires a PhD needs to be looking at a true MA/MS program.)
*Columbia has a lot of Master’s programs which bring in big bucks to the Uni. I’m surprised that other Unis haven’t copied that model.
@MohnGedachtnis not sure who your son’s colleagues were or whether they were discerning placement in a PhD program, but your recollection of their particular experience contradicts the data for those years.
As for MAPH and the humanities division, a few points:
some departments are declining in the number of PhD’s organically due to lack of demand for the credential on both the academic and professional circuit, so shifting to and increasing the number of Master’s degree students makes a lot of sense (assuming there is demand for the master’s degree);
According the Maroon’s charts, the number of PhD’s enrolled still swamps the number of MA’s and is very likely way too high (hence the decision by the provost and division head to scale it back in some departments). It’s quite possible that declines of 12% or more are happening in some departments, but that the actual number should be something like 1/3 or 50%.
As stated on other threads, funding your PhD’s better and reducing time to graduation leads to better market outcomes, which is precisely why UChicago has opted to rein in some of those programs. BTW, that’s the sort of thing that provosts and their division heads are supposed to do.
It’s quite possible that some humanities departments are facing a potential overhaul/restructuring unless they get in better shape. Those “directives” tend to emanate first from the division head and then from the provost. Perhaps this is what esteemed Professor Elaine Hadley is confused about. See my earlier comment about senior professors complaining about having to do more work.
@Cue7 - Please point out where either Berkeley or Columbia has slipped in peer rankings of any PhD program or academic department peer review due to “other concerns.” Or are you mixing up these schools’ undergraduate and graduate programs?
@JBStillFlying - you’re kidding right? The “data” you present is incomplete at best. It presents the programs where MAPSS grads were admitted. It’s very possible a few of the best grads could be racking up the admits to the best programs.
Also, maybe I’m looking at this through my old (elitist?) Chicago lens, but the actual admit data doesn’t look great. There are a lot of admits at places that don’t have great PhD programs in these areas. It’d be much better if we could see where the grads were actually going for their phds.
Keep in mind, PhD programs should LOVE MAPSS graduates - these grads basically PAY to do initial PhD-level work, and their courseload can probably shorten the amount of time they need to spend in a PhD program elsewhere. Nevertheless, this placement data looks “meh”.
Additionally, the other placement stats are paltry at best. What are the starting salary figures? What’s the range?
These people are PAYING a lot of money to do the MAPSS program. If this was the only data I saw, I would run - not walk - away from this program.
Finally, re Columbia, and Karabel’s work on the ivies – they often make decisions that degrade intellectual quality (NOT faculty quality - all top schools guard faculty quality tenaciously - hey, it drives the rankings!). Expanding/investing in athletic programs, courting major-donor kids, etc. - all these common practices amongst the ivies come at the expense of intellectual quality at the undergrad level. Further, many also employ these “cash cow” masters programs, which does the same.
The more I look into this the more I see it as a real problem with the Humanities division faculty. Compared to Social Sciences (where faculty on average are responsible for about four PhD students each) or physical sciences (ranging from a ratio of 1:2 to 1:8 depending on the specific department), Humanities faculty have something like a 1:1 ratio. That is, every hum faculty member has something like one PhD student on average to advise. That is not a lot of work. And these departments don’t seem to be smaller than peers in terms of faculty hires - they seem about comparable. So that’s a lot of faculty relative to the number of available graduate students. You would think, with all that extra time on their hands, that hum faculty would welcome the masters program because it brings in more grad students. My guess is that many of them do, indeed, welcome it. Even still, they only bring in about 1/2 of the number of Master’s students that Social or Physical Sciences brings in. Those programs have a notably less generous faculty-to-grad student ratio as a result. So it’s unbelievable that Humanities professors are actually the ones who are complaining about admitting “so many students”!
Last I checked, Anthro, Econ, Psych, History and Poli Sci were the main departments attracting MAPPS students. You have others in mind? Also, this is the overall stat: "For the 2019 admission cycle, 111 of 125 (89%) of MAPSS graduates who applied with our assistance received funded PhD offers." That's a decent stat.
The Econ and History placements seem pretty solid to me. However, matriculations would be more helpful. It's important not to discount schools you don't clearly recognize as "elite" - UW Madison, for instance, has an excellent PhD program in both Economics and History. Also Poli Sci.
You are wrong on a few counts here: 1) even non-top-10 PhD programs are incredibly hard to get into (as they should be), 2) you probably know a lot less than you think about which programs in which specialty areas are "highly ranked", and 3) most of these particular graduates are in MAPPS because they were NOT spotted as academically-oriented stars in their undergraduate years - or they have potential but not the access to the top faculty that are necessary to get in anywhere. In this regard, MAPSS seems to be doing a fairly decent job of adding value. Now - SHOULD someone do a History PhD at U of MN? That's a separate question. But getting into that program is extremely hard, so if MAPPS is able to send a few kids there every year, that speaks well for MAPPS.
As to your other questions - I haven’t seen data like that anywhere other than College Scorecard. And that’s for undergrads. MAPPS does offer funding, BTW, though I don’t know those details. My experience with UChicago, based on my family and those I know in the various grad programs there, is that if you are well qualified for the program you should get some funding of some sort. As to whether to attend at all, most do so because they feel it’s needed to enhance their professional or academic credentials or they desire further study at a more advanced level. So lots of reasons for attending.
You are comparing apples to oranges, my friend. We were discussing PhD programs, not undergrad. And Athletics, Donor's Kids - and, yes, the cash-cow Master's programs - are all GREAT for the PhD students! They help ensure major funding and star faculty. Of the top 20 research universities in the world - so this is research, not undergraduate education - six are Ivys: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn, and Cornell. (Brown and Dartmouth understandably left out.) Removing all consideration for the undergraduate program for the moment, any PhD program you attend at any of those six schools will be top notch. You will have excellent advising, excellent funding, and excellent placement opportunities. They are truly world-class institutions at the graduate level.
@JBStillFlying - I’m asking whether the components Karabel and others mention at the undergrad AND grad level - bias for athletic programs, tips for major donors, cash cow masters programs that (per some) bring in unqualified students erode the intellectual quality of the university, at a broader level.
What do you think?
Also, re grad school placement - I meant “elite” as in excellent in that field. So Madison is elite/top-notch for a range phd programs, as is Minnesota, etc.
But looking at, say, the history placement data - unless they are good in certain sub-specialties, how are nebraska, ut-knoxville, washington-seattle, stony brook, etc. For history?
re placement stats - i saw the first-out jobs (which also look meh). What are the starting salary ranges? Where’s data on how mapss grads do 5 years out or longer?
Also re hum faculty not pulling their weight (which I wonder about, given the excellent rep and work ethic of hum faculty i knew, in any case) - the problem, again, is process. Per the articles, the admin just announced - unbeknowst to most hum faculty - these cuts. They just mandated- in contrast to faculty committe recommendations - large-scale expansion of masters programs (which even undergrads could look at and be underwhelmed by the exit stats).
It doesn’t just seem to be the hum dept with issues. But I guess it may be easier to compartmentalize the problem that way, and avoid a larger critique of the U.
Now you’re the one confusing me, Cue. You’ve really got me stumped as to what in fact your point is.
On the one hand you loudly applaud what you believe to be the Adminisration’s newfound understanding that “eminence and standing” must be achieved “to the detriment of intellectual quality”. You believe this is demonstrated in these very actions: “Bravo, Chicago, for shedding its old model!”
On the other you say that the Maroon articles indicate valid concerns, one of the most prominent being the rise of MAs and the decline of PhDs, and you proceed to criticize that phenomenon vehemently, siding with the dissident profs. But surely they represent the “old model” and the privileging of “intellectual quality” over all else. You likewise join in their procedural critique, but those are the very procedures being driven by what you have previously applauded as the Administration’s newfound commitment to “eminence and standing.”
This is incoherent. You can have one side of this argument but not both. Which is it?
I should acknowledge that I am impressed with the MAPSS data JBStillFlying linked. I had not seen it before – it’s a relatively new feature.
To me, the data registers as very good overall. It shows that MAPSS has been consistently successful in placing meaningful numbers of students in high-quality PhD programs in all of the fields it comprises, and some it doesn’t. (Including some of the highest quality, some almost at that level, and some not quite. ) And, of course, it’s not terribly surprising that the students who don’t go to funded PhD programs get jobs. Whether or not they are the same caliber as PhD students, they are hardly total losers, and if they want they can get trained in valuable skills.
I don’t think the data negates my son’s experience. There may have been plenty of people in his cohort who were dissuaded from applying to PhD programs. Also, his impressions of how the program was working for people were formed in the late fall and winter, when there was a lot of unhappiness, and he was doing quite a bit of informal mediation among classmates, the administration, and faculty. He wasn’t a malcontent, by the way. The program was also using him as a recruiter. The good PhD results for his cohort probably came a full year or more after that, by which time he was fully engaged in his new career and in regular contact with only a handful of classmates.
As I said, MAPSS was good for my son. And I know a former regular CC adult poster hired several MAPSS graduates, including one of his cohort, for her consulting firm and was very happy with the quality of the candidates and hires she got there.
Whatever its mixture of strengths and flaws, it’s clearly not a terrible program. I am still a little skeptical that it needs to grow more, but there’s a case to be made for it.
It's a good question, but I believe it does not. It erodes the intellectual quality of UNDERGRADUATE life, no doubt about that. But universities consider their undergraduate programs to be a bigger cash cow than all those Master's degrees so the Ivy's seem happy to erode if it keeps those students, their families and the alumnae network happy. All that money helps to fund graduate research and faculty salaries! Universities compete with one another for undergraduate prestige. But - less sexy and less headline-grabbing - they compete even more brutally for grad students and faculty. If you are thinking there are two separate worlds at most of the ivy's, you would be correct. And your confusion might arise out of your UChicago academic experience, because there these two worlds are far more intertwined and similar to one another - even now.
For an international student sent by his/her home country to be "credentialed" at an American university in order to get an academic or gov't job back home, it might be fine. Neb and TN are flagships. As for UW-Seattle, it's not only another flagship, but it's also a top 20 research university (ARWU) and #12 in the US. For the social sciences specifically, it's top 30 world wide and just outside the top 20 in the US. Its History ranking is #23 on USNews. So it's quite respectable.
Students apply to specific PhD programs in order to work with someone or other and sometimes non-prestigious uni’s can have a group of excellent academics who carry a lot of weight in their field. So if your prof. is at Podunk U, that’s where you go. You have the right idea that the more “elite” institutions tend to have better outcomes, but when it comes to PhD study there can be notable exceptions. I had a good friend in college, a Mellon Fellow, who got into her first choice PhD program at University of Pittsburgh. She now sits with tenure at a top research uni, along with other professors from Harvard, Yale, . . . . and Pitt. Finally, PhD hopefuls apply to several schools, not just one, and these are acceptances, not matriculations.
The larger critique would include targeting several departments in the Humanities and SS Divisions. They are the ones that fall into the third category of Diermeier's analysis - take too long to graduate and no good job prospects when they do. It speaks to quality of PhD student as much as it does negligence by faculty. Hum as a division, normalized by the number of grad students, is "people intense" relative to other divisions (just take a look at the signatures on the letter and see what department they hail from) but it's not alone. History at UChi, for instance, is dragging its feet getting the PhD's out the door. BTW, Near Eastern was a problem when I was there almost 30 years ago. Their "nth years" were dialed up to 11!
The “issues” have been characterized by specific disgruntled faculty who don’t like what they perceive as an undue focus on revenue-generation. I’ve had a few conversations over the past 24 hours with some faculty (non UChi and non-hum) who work in the liberal arts and they assure me that even the English and Philosophy profs care about increasing revenue to their departments. So not sure who decided to talk to the Maroon but they most likely don’t represent the typical viewpoint at UChi.
A few more nits: 1) Boyle edited the letter after getting signatures. Very disingenuous! Everyone signed on to certain wording and that’s what should have been delivered to the provost; 2) “out of the blue” directives are not uncommon at all in academia so it’s the responsibility of the faculty to stay connected to the buzzing (and believe me, most of them do) and 3) Your own experience was no doubt laudable (as is my kids’, both of whom are either majoring in or leaning towards hum/history). UChi has top-notch programs in both and obviously the university doesn’t want to compromise that reality. Shoring up the PhD program - and possibly overseeing future hires so that the deadwood comes to a halt - would be a very good thing.
Last Comment: I’m a tad surprised that no one has mentioned Harris and it’s new mentor: Jim Nondorf. According to the Master’s article, they are employing his admission techniques to expand the master’s program (by a huge amount) AND making it more competitive. Harris is a relatively new school to UChi (wasn’t around when I was there) and it has steadily climbed in the rankings over the past several years, currently tied with Princeton’s WW School for the #10 slot on US News (#3 in Public Policy!). Perhaps Nondorf is such a part of UChicago now that no one is surprised to find his admissions methodology spreading to other university schools and divisions. Will the Nondorf Method eventually be utilized by the History or Philosophy Admissions Committees?
@JBStillFlying - the Nondorf point was interesting, but the article didn’t explain what the Nondorf strategy is! What is it?
@marlowe1 - I assert that the Maroon can raise valid concerns, they just don’t happen to be my concerns. Rapid expansion of the masters programs - and professor’s assertions that they feel forced to admit under-qualified students - probably corrode intellectual quality more broadly. This is a valid concern, just not one I have.
My broader concern is the standing of the University - and the admin seem hyper-focused on that, to a degree not seen by past admins.
My biggest concern is that the U. seems resource/cash-strapped. I don’t know what the fix is for that, but apparently expanding the cash cow programs help.
