<p>And will Texas be hiring newly-minted physics grads, especially those who have gone into debt to obtain their degrees? Or will they be at the mercy of employers who would prefer to see a specific engineering degree, and graduate programs that prefer to see higher GPA’s than are typical of physics grads?</p>
<p>I seriously find this shocking. Physics is one of the mainstay fields of higher education. </p>
<p>Searching around for other articles on the proposed shutdown (the idea is to close departments that aren’t graduating an average of 5 majors a year), I found this quote from an article on the National Society for Black Physicists website [Texas</a>’ Decision to Close Physics Programs Jeopardizes Nations Future - 14-Sep-11: Physics & Astronomy article: contact NSBP Headquarters](<a href=“http://www.nsbp.org/en/art/312/]Texas”>http://www.nsbp.org/en/art/312/) :</p>
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<p>California has a lot of powerhouse physics departments, with the UCs, Harvey Mudd and Caltech, and Stanford. UT Austin for many years offered star physicists big salaries to lure them down to Texas, so at one time the state was either prestige hunting or saw benefits to having a strong science program. Frightening that they want to backtrack. The Austin program won’t shut down, but if access to the major is restricted to just a few high-powered campuses, that gives fewer entry points for students to access the major.</p>
<p>Wasn’t it W who famously said “I don’t trust … science.” Maybe all those TX students are simply following a proven path to the Presidency.</p>
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<p>And this is a bad thing?</p>
<p>Reasonable response to limited resources. Better to have three good depts across the state than a bunch of subpar ones.</p>
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<p>My son is a freshman physics major at the University of Missouri. The department has added an introductory physics seminar class (2 hours) for physics majors to do just this–increase the appeal of physics to science-oriented students and the number of students who stay in the major through graduation. They do research in career fields in physics, shadow a professor, do outreach work with elementray and high school students, etc. Not just a lecture, discussion, lab as the 5-hour Physics I and II classes are.</p>
<p>He loves the class and it creates some camaraderie among the physics students that they don’t get in a large lecture class with students majoring in other sciences. There are four freshman physics majors on his dorm floor–but then it is a Math & Science learning community.</p>
<p>Two resgional state universities in Missouri have eliminated physics due to budget cuts. The governor wants schools to cut any program that graduates less than 10 majors per year.</p>
<p>My opinion – students should not be accepted into programs if they do not have reasonable chance of succeeding. Yes, programs may have to cut size.</p>
<p>“Members of the American Physical Society requested yesterday’s meeting with the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Board (HECB) after announcements in recent weeks that nearly half of the 24 undergraduate physics programs at state funded universities could be on the chopping block if they fail to graduate at least 25 students every 5 years.”</p>
<p>There are multiple questions here.</p>
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<li><p>Does the State have the responsibility to fund departments which won’t graduate at least 5 students in an year?</p></li>
<li><p>Does Physics need its own department if it can’t graduate at least 5 students in an year?</p></li>
<li><p>Is the State saying Physics won’t be taught at the undergraduate level or just can’t be offered as a major (I am going with “not as a major”).</p></li>
<li><p>Doesn’t it make more sense to have bigger physics departments in some schools in order to provide more depth and support as opposed to having every state school offering the major but not having any students?</p></li>
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<p>^ I had similar questions. Why is it important to have a department graduate students? A department may be extremely important to students across many majors, offering necessary and critical courses to students going into a large number of majors whereas some departments may graduate a lot of students, yet what they offer is relatively little (in terms of courses, actual job outcomes and so forth).</p>
<p>I actually see the value in consolidating programs by closure, even whole universities that provide little in the way of graduation or outcomes for students. But this policy, as described, sounds rather wonky. I think framing it around putting responsibility to graduate students upon faculty is a bit absurd. </p>
<p>At some schools, you are getting primarily students who are not equipped in their prior 12 years of public education to do an undergraduate degree in physics. That big problem rests with the state, and a failed education system, not the professors trying to teach those that aren’t college ready (despite what their transcript says). </p>
<p>What exactly will this policy motivate? Are the professors supposed to somehow find and attract stronger students, competing with the other colleges in the state (which then is a rather zero sum game for the state)? </p>
<p>Are they supposed to offer a ton of remediation- basically taking on the work that the state was supposed to be offering in the public highschool system but also get through a 4 year curriculum of physics? These two ‘solutions’ both seem entirely unrealistic.</p>
<p>The only realistic response to this incentive structure is to harshly dumb down the curriculum so its easy, everyone likes it, everyone passes, and everyone comes out a graduate! Even though they aren’t at all qualified. Basically what has already happened to them in the highschool system before! And rather scary outcome at that given the types of jobs physics are hired to do.</p>
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<p>Could it be less shocking when the focus is placed on the term education? </p>
<p>Why is it so wrong to measure the cost of maintaining educational programs in terms of successful students? Physics is indeed an important element of STEM, but does it have to be offered on every campus, and as in the case of Texas, on campuses that are truly horrendous. </p>
<p>Fwiw, rather than attack the decision to curtail programs such as the UT-Brownsville described in the article, we should applaud the introduction of a small particle of fiscal responsibility in a sector that is in massive need of it! Programs that are only placed on the map to solely support research should be clearly identified as such.</p>
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For example, Mario D</p>
<p>I am interpreting it as not requiring a separate department when you don’t have students majoring in that subject. So instead of a Physics department with its own head, secretaries, resources, it will become part of science department where the faculty will share resources with other faculty from chemistry, biology or whatever else is part of that bigger pool.</p>
<p>Companies restructure and drop products and people when they have no demand. Why should universities keep their overblown bureaucracy without the appropriate demand or utilization?</p>
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<p>Physics courses would still have to be offered to students who major in engineering, chemistry, and biology, as well as pre-meds.</p>
<p>^ yes and they will staff them appropriately to teach those classes. Not having a separate physics department with its own major does not result in eliminating all Physics classes.</p>
<p>I saw a story a while ago that Yale school of engineering and applied sciences decided applied physics did not belong and applied physics had to move to graduate school of arts and sciences.</p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_School_of_Engineering_%26_Applied_Science[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_School_of_Engineering_%26_Applied_Science</a></p>
<p>The worrisome thing with consolidation of departments is that it restricts access to the major to the students who attend the larger schools that house the department. Those larger departments would mostly be at campuses that have tougher admissions standards. Students could still access the major by taking the lower division courses at their local campus and then transfer to the larger campus, difficult for students who are living at home to save money. A degree in Physics then becomes more costly than, say, a degree in biology or English or whatever else is offered locally. </p>
<p>Someone’s now going to point out that this affects very few students. After all, they’re not majoring in the subject, so you’re not harming anyone by shutting down the programs. I’d argue that this is a subject and field where it’s in the state’s best long-term-big-picture financial interests to encourage more students to major in physics. That’s Texas’s call; I just think they’re wrong. :)</p>
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<p>Okay sure but this is a tiny tiny fraction of costs. I really don’t think it will make much difference if they share a secretary or not. The costs involved in staff courses, faculty costs, and labs and such remain the same. Grants will pick up the lab coverage. And so on. </p>
<p>I work on a place that only has ‘divisions’ within a school rather than departments. Some division have a lot of majors, some have a lot of students in their majors, others have almost no major but offer popular and useful courses. It’s an on paper structural reality but i don’t see the cost savings or impact. It really makes very little difference to anyone. So something is missing here in the information we are provided. What exactly happens to faculty and resources if they don’t bring up their graduation rates? They lose department status but what else? And who is going to be teaching the much needed physics courses then? Maybe then they are dropping physics altogether. </p>
<p>I don’t want to be misunderstood. I have no problem looking for cost savings, having accountability, consolidating education (not just programs but entire schools shutting down or being cut off of public funding where few graduate, if they aren’t transferring elsewhere!). I just don’t see the value of using the metric of how many graduate from a department and then making them a non-department on that basis. I fail to see how this will improve anything, increased the needed accountability, or result in big savings. I’d much rather the focus be on measurable outcomes such as how many take, pass and use physics courses for their intended majors, how many get employment after a particular major at a particular school, or even the quality of research output if they want to sustain funds for research. The proposed plan, at least as told by this story, seems grossly overly simplistic and probably appeals to voters so makes a good headline, but makes no real difference to anyone.</p>
<p>One additional point I would like to make is with regards to research vs. teaching. I realize that is somewhat tangential to this story, but inevitably this issue comes up in such debates. I appreciate the need for striking a balance between research and teaching and the rewards should be such that faculty and schools care about both. But I would like to remind those that don’t get the value of, nor want to fund- via tuition or taxes- research efforts: what is taught in class, what students get “educated about” is the knowledge that was and is created by research. Taken to the extreme, if each state and voter no longer supported research…what do they want their students to be taught? What material should be covered in the classroom? One should be paying not just for the delivery of knowledge but also it’s source.</p>
<p>There’s a big difference between moving a department like Applied Physics from one administrative entity to another and getting rid of the department altogether. Besides, the Yale Applied Physics department probably saw the move as a step up, since it allows it to be more closely allied with Yale’s prestigious physics department rather than its not-so-prestigious school of engineering.</p>
<p>If I were in charge and my college were being forced to close its physics department I would probably consolidate physics and chemistry into a Department of Physical Sciences and require undergrad majors to choose a concentration in either physics or chemistry. There’s always a way to work around short-sighted bureaucrats.</p>
<p>“Physics courses would still have to be offered to students who major in engineering, chemistry, and biology, as well as pre-meds.”</p>
<p>Why, why, why? Have them take a couple liberal arts courses instead. Everyone knows it’s non-technical types who make the big decisions anyway. E.g., managed care, Challenger “mishap,” Katrina response, etc.</p>
<p>There may or may not be savings when a state school shuts down a department. However, it would make sense to shut down individual departments when they are considered not being productive as a separate department. If not that, then have signature departments at some state schools and close others to attract renowned faculty as well as students to those schools and give them all the funding to make it a popular program.</p>
<p>That way, not everyone needs to go to UT or A&M but may be go to UT Dallas or UT Brownsville because they have the top physics department and a kid serious about Physics can go there. Bureaucrats need a measuring stick of productivity and they started with number of graduates. They can just easily turn around and say keep your departments but we are cutting funding 50% to your department and then we would not be having this discussion.</p>
<p>Yale Engineering school did not want Applied Physics while applied Physics did not want to be tied into regular Physics which is why they went with Engineering in the first place. Someone might know more about this but this is what YDN said a while ago (at least what I remember).</p>
<p>While people in this thread have been throwing the blame around to state governments, university administrations, faculties in physics departments, etc., what about the students?</p>
<p>Physics does not seem to be that popular a major; indeed, it is typically far less popular than biology, even though the job and career prospects for (and, from the state’s point of view, future tax revenues generated by) biology graduates are worse than for physics graduates. Perhaps the lack of interest in majoring in physics among students is really what is driving this type of thing. When lack of interest falls to the level that is below the critical mass for a school to cost effectively (by whatever definition) offer the major, the few remaining students interested in the major lose out when it is cut.</p>