Another, new limit is that professors are leaving and some open positions are left empty, candidates to whom the positions had been offered went elsewhere or even chose to try again next year. Considering the state of the academic job market, it’s both telling and more than worrisome for FL. I would especially worry for CS or business professors who can just jump ship and find a job elsewhere whether in academia or in private R&D.
Fewer professors would mean fewer courses or even course cancellations and larger classes.
(2 references from the Tampa Bay Times, feel free to dig through Chronicle etc)
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My state’s public universities are cutting theater and arts majors with impunity. They are also relying on adjuncts to teach rather than full time faculty more and more in all majors. This seems like a politically motivated similar move on Florida’s/Desantis’s part. Not surprising given his ambitions.
Seems like most colleges are relying on aduncts/non-tenure track these days. 47% at UCLA.
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Many schools are relying on adjunct professors and have for decades.
When a few schools dropped German as a major a few years ago, it didn’t mean they stopped teaching all German classes but that they couldn’t afford to run a whole department and offer enough courses for only 5 students to graduate in that major. Goucher still teaches math, but you can’t major in it. Schools can combine majors and cut out some of the administrative costs to be able to offer more classes. My daughter was a history major and it’s a pretty small department. They have a lot of areas of concentrations like Latino Studies, Asian Studies, Native American Studies. None of those have enough interest to be a stand alone department, but the school can offer courses in them and allow students to have a major in history with a focus on the area that student likes the most. Admittedly, those courses are often taught by adjunct professors because the school can’t justify classes being offered every semester or even every year. There are also a number of classes that have course numbers in multiple departments. My daughter loved her courses in Native american’s in Film and NA art but used them as history courses. If a course is offered in Asian Art of Buddhism, the course my have course numbers in Religion, History, and Art History and the student would choose which department to get the credit in.
UF may have enough money to offer tons and tons of courses and majors with at least 30 people graduating each year, but smaller Florida public schools probably have to choose. Combining departments is not unheard of and many of the now stand alone departments once started as part of bigger departments. Back in my day, Women’s studies courses were part of history, English, political science depts and I think you could get a certificate in women’s studies but you had to major in history or English or some other ‘main line’ department.
Two of my favorite classes in college were in ‘experimental studies’, which wasn’t a department at all. Genealogy was taught by a woman who was definitely not a professor (not even sure she had a college degree) and before the days of Ancestry.Com, computer research , or modern ways to get information. We learned a ton about birth records, cemeteries, the LDS library, how to contact old churches for info, etc. The other was called “War Movies” and taught by two guys who were about 22 years old and who I wouldn’t have trusted babysitting for my kids, but boy did we learn a lot about WWII. That course could have been in the history or poli sci departments. I just saw a documentary on Netflix about 5 directors who went to the war and how it changed them as directors (very good, some of the same info I learned 45+ years ago).
While I think DeSantis has an adgenda, I don’t think this law (as I read it) requires colleges to drop courses or departments.
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