<p>Under pressure to cut $30+ million from the University of Maine system budget, it was announced today that they would eliminate men's soccer. (Soccer is a "bigger" sport at many Maine high schools than football.) It was noted that 9 students had just committed to the school as recruited athletes in the sport.</p>
<p>Last year, the University of Southern Maine announced that it was cutting certain majors, including some that would be considered standard anywhere, such as Chemistry. (A chemistry dept will remain, but will not offer a major.) Not long ago, USM announced that it was eliminating the child care program that served both students and faculty.</p>
<p>I'm wondering what the result of the financial pressure on state schools is going to do to the education picture nationally. Are we going to have a widening gap between the haves and have-nots?</p>
<p>I think your heading is a bit misleading. It is a very big deal if University of Maine eliminates a major like chemistry, less so if a regional university does. I assume it has been eliminated in the name of reducing system overlap, something that has been going on at some state systems for a while now. </p>
<p>These sorts of reductions seem much more reasonable to the budget-makers than to people who are forced to attend a school further away from their hometown. And of course, reducing overlap makes it harder for adults to attend part-time while working. I’m not a big fan of the approach, but unless taxpayers want to make a much bigger commitment to college funding, it is here to stay.</p>
<p>USM is actually the largest campus of the system, and includes such entities as the law school, the nursing school, the business school, and the music school. It grants PhDs. It has about the same number of undergrads as the University of Maine campus in Orono. It is located in the state’s largest city, in the population center of the state. So it is not a “regional” university in the usual sense: it’s closer to being a co-flagship.</p>
<p>I agree that such cuts reflect rationalization of scarce resources, but that is precisely my point: it seems that the state schools are going to be taking ever-larger hits when it comes to offering a full-fledged university experience.</p>
<p>It might be the “firemen first” way of cutting budgets: that is, the policymakers cut the things people really like and really understand, in hopes of getting support for increased revenue.</p>
<p>If they cut the packaging major, no one would care.</p>
<p>Cutting soccer will probably generate more howls of protest than cutting the chemistry major.</p>
<p>I will say that the budget cutting and price increases at public universities undermines the argument that students will flock from private to public colleges.</p>
<p>MSUDad, that may be the case with the soccer program. The chem major is a done deal, as far as I know. The other majors that were on the list included: four-year degree programs in women and gender studies, chemistry, biochemistry, economics, geosciences, environmental health and safety, physics, exercise science, radiation therapy, humanities, self-designed majors in classical humanities, classical studies, German and Russian studies, social science.</p>
<p>I would not weep over the loss of things such as “gender studies,” but I have a real problem with a place that calls itself a university not offering majors in chemistry, economics, and physics.</p>
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<p>Exactly. Since the advice to students w/o money here is often “go to your state school and work,” this kind of thing illustrates how difficult that is going to be to accomplish if the trend continues.</p>
<p>Or, on a grander scale, UC Berkeley is now $24,000 a year tuition, room, and board for **in-state **students. At what point do monster price increases, rapid erosion of quality with more 1000 seat lectures, and the reality of five years to graduate start to compare unfavorably to a private college?</p>
<p>I think the theory of major shifts in distribution of students is short-sighted. This really is a case of a receeding tide lowering all boats, so jumping from boat to boat is unlikely to produce much advantage.</p>
<p>The Harvard 19% cut in operating budget should get the attention of parents and students who are not really paying attention to college budgets as a selection criteria. There is no amount of fiddling around the margins that will reduce a college’s operating budget by 19%. That’s cutting meat and bone. And, it is going to have a major impact on every student selecting a college this month for the next four years. What’s there now in terms of amenities and programs and services, won’t all be there in four years.</p>
<p>^ Wow, those are enormous cuts at Harvard—not to say they didn’t have a lot of fat that could be trimmed.</p>
<p>I think it’s a mistake to generalize about whether “state schools” or “private schools” are going to be hurt worse in the current economy. As best I can see, they’re all hurting, but their individual circumstances vary widely on both sides of the public/private divide. Some (like Harvard and Yale) made riskier bets on their endowments, which allowed their endowments to swell in flush times but that strategy came crashing down in them when their investmetns went sour last year. Others managed their investments more cautiously, and some have suffered far smaller losses. Worse off, probably, are small private colleges with no endowment to speak of; they’re heavily dependent on tuition revenue and with more students shopping harder for the best FA, some of these schools may have trouble filling the seats, which takes them perilously close to a death spiral. By the same token, some public universities are taking a big hit from their legislatures, while other states are in better fiscal shape. And then there are those like the University of Michigan that have been so starved by their legislatures for so long that they’re barely even “public” anymore, with legislative appropriations making up such a small fraction of their budget that even significant cuts in state aid will likely have only a relatively minor impact on the university’s overall budget. (Though so far, Michigan’s governor is only talking about a 3% cut to higher education, which amounts to a small fraction of 1% of the University’s overall budget).</p>
<p>So I think the title of this thread should be “Whither state schools in Maine?” because it’s really quite misleading to generalize on the Maine experience.</p>
<p>Who needs a chemistry major these days when the entire industry has been outsourced to China and India? :rolleyes: Our graduate programs in chemistry are happy to accept foreign students who majored in chemistry in their native countries.</p>
<p>No kidding, Bunsen. As much as I loved chemistry and my erstwhile chemistry career, I can’t exactly recommend it as a stable career choice for those who love the lab…</p>