Four Languages & Theatre Cut at SUNY Albany

Student Lounge College Life
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<p>College</a> cuts blasted - Times Union</p>

<p>Long story short, last week the president announced, essentially without warning, that five departments were being cut from the university: French, Italian, Russian, Classics, and Theatre. People are understandably upset but I don't feel that there is a big enough uproar over this yet.</p>

<p>As somebody who has been pleasantly surprised after about half a semester into my freshman year at SUNY Albany, I am absolutely appalled by the complete disregard that president George Philip has shown for the humanities. Not only has this entire debacle been carried out with a complete lack of tact, but to cut these programs is to deprive students of a means for cultural understanding and to blatantly contradict the motto of the university- "The World Within Reach."</p>

<p>Not only will tenured faculty be cut in this decision, but *allegedly<a href="there%20has%20been%20some%20confusion%20over%20this">/i</a> students will only have until 2012 to complete a major or minor in one of these programs. This attack on languages in particular is quite disheartening to me and to many across the country. SUNY Albany is the only SUNY institution that even offers Russian (one of the most critical languages), so once again U Albany faculty and students find these cuts more and more puzzling. Cutting any of the language departments means that there is less and less of an emphasis on humanities, diminishing the field as a whole and affecting several other departments in the process.</p>

<p>I would love to hear your thoughts on this but we at U Albany would love even more to receive any form of support you can give us. Tell anybody who will listen about this so that more and more people can realize how vital it is to keep these departments in tact, lest other SUNY schools and eventually other universities around the country begin to feel that they can devalue the languages and the humanities to the point where everybody in the country is expected to become an engineer. We have already caught some media attention but the more we can receive, the better it will be for us.</p>

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<p>schools have to save money some how :confused: if thats the best way they could see of doing it, they’ll do it.</p>

<p>Its annoying that such a Large school would have to resort to something like this, but its not surprising.</p>

<p>My school has yet to do that, in fact they just redid the entire anthropology department :smiley: So no bad signs there yet. Though word on campus is that their trying to increase tuition again :/</p>

<p>I really wish the government would invest more into these schools. I mean its gonna get to the point where only the super rich will be able to get a good education. Its getting ridiculous.</p>

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<p>The article says that the five programs “collectively enroll about 200 students.” That’s an average of 10 students per department and class year, or a mere 1.5% of the student body. I am sad for the faculty who are losing their jobs and the students who are under time pressure to finish their majors before the departments get eliminated; but I don’t quite see how a decision that affects so few students merits so much attention.</p>

<p>On the other hand, I suspect that the president chose 5 departments in a single academic area (humanities) on purpose to provoke an uproar. The more attention this decision gets, the more pressure will be on the NY state government to provide adequate funding to their public universities.</p>

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Interestingly, classics is one of the few notable programs at Albany. More specifically, it’s the only university that has any sort of devotion to Cypriot studies in the entire western hemisphere.</p>

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<p>^^ The thing is though, that dismantling a department like French is detrimental on several OTHER departments that remain in tact. How do you have a linguistics department without those language opportunities? How do you do Africana Studies, one of the most popular minors in the school, without access to French? The school is well known for its business education and yet they’re removing a program which offers an MBA in French. Anthropology, Latin American studies, history, even English are all equally affected by this. It’s not just an attack on these departments, it’s an attack on the humanities as a whole which is the major problem for me.</p>

<p>It’s simply ridiculous that a school as big as SUNY Albany would not have a French department, would not have a theatre department (ironic considering they advertise their alumni all around campus, a few of whom have connections to theatre). And think about going to grad school: several programs would expect a language background in French, classics, etc. It’s affecting everybody.</p>

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<p>I go to SUNY Albany also (I’m a junior) and I’m not sure how I feel about it just yet…I mean, we have to save money somehow, but cutting theatre also? Wth is PAC for? </p>

<p>Did you end up going to the “Defend Public Education” rally?</p>

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<p>How dumb. I understand reducing/cutting programs is necessary, but several popular languages? Dumb move.</p>

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<p>Common sense tells us that there is no way those figures are accurate; or at the very least, they are misleading.</p>

<p>Russian, Italian, and French programs are typically extremely popular. Theater participation typically swells at universities as well, in addition to classics programs.</p>

<p>There is no way in hell those departments average 40 students per year.</p>

<p>It MAY be that 40 students <em>major</em> in each of those departments on a given year, but even that (1-1.5% of the student body) seems very unlikely. Someone is definitely fudging the numbers or cooking the books using “creative” counting - and badly.</p>

<p>Even if that were true, have we included minors? Have we included people who take those courses as electives? (In languages this number is particularly high - I bet 90% of people populating the Russian courses are NOT majoring in Russian or Russian studies - yet they are oddly discounted from the numbers).</p>

<p>This school has a student body of 18,000.</p>

<p>My school has a student body of 3,000, and having taken a few Russian courses, I can tell you at least 90 people a year take a course in the department (that’s 3% of the student body alone, in by far the LEAST popular department compared to French/ Italian/ Theater/ Classics.) Presumably 15% in total would take a course in any of those departments, but my guess is that it’s a LOT higher. I personally have taken multiple courses in Russian, theater, and classics, and I didn’t major or minor in any of those.</p>

<p>Those numbers are guaranteed lies ----- but non-withstanding, language departments are vital to attracting students to the university and helping students land jobs — you can see how language fluency is an extremely marketable skill, esp among the humanities.</p>

<p>They are definitely shoveling b.s. here…</p>

<p>There are also many, many other ways to solve revenue problems, particularly other than slashing academics, aka the focus of the university.</p>

<p>Underutilized buildings and extracurriculars should definitely be cut before academic departments.</p>

<p>And I know this is a big step, but the average college football team loses $7 million a year. I love watching football, but it’s something to consider. Of all the budget areas to put pressure on (new construction projects? new gadgets on campus?) they put pressure on academic departments? Not smart.</p>

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<p>I wish. I had a really important class to attend and it was unfortunate since I was talking & walking with one of the French professors who was giving a speech during the rally, which I really wanted to hear. But I wasn’t able to take an absence in the class.</p>

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<p>This is a very good point. I’m willing to bet that those numbers apply to majors only, because it’s MUCH more common to take a minor in a language than a full on major (especially at SUNY Albany). And let’s not forget the amount of majors that require high proficiency in one or more languages (like linguistics, any ethnic/global studies program, etc.). The French class I am in is one of the higher level classes and we have about 20 or so students in it, almost all of whom have expressed some interest in continuing on in the language even if they are NOT majoring/minoring in it.</p>

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<p>This is something that is being widely criticized as well. It is a shame that universities insist on turning to academic cuts before they even dream of cutting a sports program or even just demoting its importance/prevalence somehow. Reminds me an this satire piece by The Onion…</p>

<p>[Struggling</a> High School Cuts Football?Nah, Just Kidding, Art It Is | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source](<a href=“http://www.theonion.com/articles/struggling-high-school-cuts-footballnah-just-kiddi,17728/]Struggling”>Struggling High School Cuts Football—Nah, Just Kidding, Art It Is)</p>