Last month we saw that the Philosophy program at SUNY Potsdam is as soon as once more underneath menace.
In the intervening time, an unofficial philosophy website has been up to date with some additional details about the cuts.
[This post was originally published on October 2nd; it has been republished and moved to the top today because of the Update 2: “higher education consultants turn out to be the story behind the story, and it is a story that bodes ill for the future of liberal arts education in America.”]
The assaults on philosophy and different packages has are available in three phases:
First got here the realignment plan… The choices reached in that course of have by no means as soon as been publicly defended; there was no knowledge launched, no case made, certainly no justification of any type provided for why the focused packages had been focused.
Second: Huge non-renewals (an correct quantity the faculty refuses to launch) within the Spring of 2023. A lot of my junior colleagues will probably be unemployed come fall of 2024.
Three: the lengthy threatened ‘Draconian’ programmatic cuts that may remodel the establishment are revealed in a gathering referred to as for 10 a.m on Tuesday, September 19 2023, one of the well-liked instructing hours on campus. No questions had been entertained by the SUNY Chancellor, who blessed the plan, or by the President, who presented it.
The web site says that there was little to no college enter in these selections:
There was no significant campus collaboration throughout any of those phases—every was merely imposed by the administration underneath the duvet of a monetary disaster. Fred Kowal, UUP President, argues that this disaster was largely created by a failure of the state of New York to adequately fund the SUNY and CUNY methods, together with plenty of selections taken by SUNY Central over the past decade which have severely deprived the SUNY 4 yr schools and have favored the Analysis establishments and a couple of yr schools. SUNY Potsdam additionally had years of economic mismanagement and neglect, although nobody will both take or place any blame for that neglect.
Nobody denies that the faculty is in determined monetary straits. However this would appear all of the extra motive to take an proof pushed, cost-benefit evaluation strategy to righting the ship. As a substitute we now have realignment, non-renewals, and now, Part Three, the lengthy threatened ‘Draconian’ programmatic cuts that may remodel the establishment.
It’s value noting, as one of many extra scandalous components of this sordid story, is that directors began telling college that massive cuts had been coming no less than as early as December 2022, and had been referring to the “Monetary Stability Plan” no less than as early as January 2023. Part Three has been no less than 8 months within the coming, throughout which period no effort was made to speak to school aside from… threats one thing massive was coming. And it got here.
Additional particulars here.
UPDATE 1 (10/4/23): The division’s unofficial website has been up to date with additional particulars, together with details about what you are able to do to assist:
Please take into account writing a letter calling for a fast halt to implementing the SUNY Potsdam Financial Stability Plan till, because the Faculty Senate Resolution says, “such a time as data-driven justifications, together with cost-benefit analyses, are offered to justify the declare that there’s a monetary profit to be gained from discontinuing every of the packages slated for discontinuance.”
Please ship it to the entire following:
John B. King Jr., Chancellor of the SUNY System ([email protected]);
Suzanne Smith, SUNY Potsdam President ([email protected]);
Alan L. Hersker, Interim Provost ([email protected]);
June F. O’Neill, Chair of SUNY Potsdam School Council ([email protected]);
Greg Gardner, School Senate Chair ([email protected]);
Kevin Smith, UUP President ([email protected]);
Timothy G. Murphy, Philosophy Division Chair ([email protected]).
Right here’s a listing of these e-mail addresses to repeat and paste: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
I like to recommend that readers take a look at the “Commentary” part on the web page. Right here’s an excerpt:
It can’t be reiterated sufficient that all through this complete almost three yr realignment course of no metrics have ever been provided, no rubrics to evaluate the tutorial or monetary well being of those packages. Nobody has carried out a cost-benefit evaluation on eliminating any of those packages. No knowledge or proof has but been offered as to why these packages are focused or how eliminating them will save any cash. “Why these packages?”, has by no means been addressed, a lot much less “why are we shifting the faculty on this course?”, in the direction of the destruction of the liberal arts. The entire course of has been fully opaque, with none try made to justify any resolution made aside from by crying out that we’re in a monetary disaster and that one thing must be carried out.
UPDATE 2 (10/26/2023): “We received a few battles… however, as predicted, it seems we now have misplaced the struggle.” That’s the newest replace from Potsdam’s Philosophy Division. They write:
In an e-mail to college students in affected packages the administration asserts “This was a tough resolution, however vital to make sure the monetary well being of the School.” As this web site has greater than demonstrated, and the administration has but to even try and repudiate, this declare is at finest deceptive and maybe an outright lie. Up to now on no account, form, or type has the administration proven that any monetary profit in any respect will accrue to the faculty from these draconian cuts to the liberal arts.
The cuts at SUNY Potsdam had been made on the suggestion of consultants they employed, rpk Group. Such instructional consultants are “the story behind the story”:
It has by no means been made clear what metrics are getting used to guage packages. They name them “Key Efficiency Indicators” (or KPI’s, in fact: they provide us a nifty acronym however no particulars on the purported indicators it stands for). I’ve speculated that in our case it’s purely numbers of majors (which seems to be partly proper). However that doesn’t clarify all of the packages confronted with discontinuation. I’m now extra assured that I do know what metrics they’re utilizing.
If you happen to take a look at the info the SUNY Potsdam administration provided to the packages to be discontinued and evaluate it to the template that the rpk GROUP used on the College of Virginia (as summarized by Aaron R. Hanlon), they’re the identical knowledge – these are the one numbers that matter, in rpk’s little profit-centered world.
Hanlon says, “Rpk Group’s technique includes analyzing tutorial departments and packages based mostly on scholar utility numbers to a given program (earlier than college students enroll, and no matter whether or not they change their thoughts as soon as they do) and counting what number of college students have been enrolled in majors and packages (for a 2018 presentation, the agency used common knowledge from 2013 to 2015).”
He continues with a, to my thoughts, fairly prescient however severely understated warning,
“Making bets on this crude type of evaluation is dangerous and shortsighted as a result of predicting scholar pursuits and enrollment patterns, in addition to financial wants that will affect enrollment, is notoriously fraught.”
Key right here is the ‘making bets’ half. We would ask why ought to we consider these metrics are significant in any respect? The place are the profitable establishments which have applied this ideology? However we received’t obtain any reply, although somebody someplace should no less than assume they’ve one.
The underside line is that SUNY Potsdam goes to be fully remade in rpk’s picture on of venture. And of venture on what’s clearly at finest an ideologically pushed principle about the way forward for increased schooling (and on the face of it, one traditionally ignorant and fairly foolish). Additional, it’s a gamble grounded in a knowledge set of two years? Is that this a joke? Is rpk laughing all the best way to the financial institution, or do they actually consider this nonsense?
Rpk Group and different increased schooling consultants grow to be the story behind the story, and it’s a story that bodes unwell for the way forward for liberal arts schooling in America. If this web site achieves nothing else, I hope it’ll put these insidious forces at work in increased schooling right into a extra public eye. That they don’t seem to be within the public eye is sort of intentional. A school member at UVA needed to FOIL for the rpk report there, and we should do the identical right here at SUNY Potsdam. One wonders why that could be – why are secret machinations with increased schooling consultants to develop plans to rework the very nature of a public establishment finest stored on the low-down?
As soon as upon a time, I hear inform, college – , the specialists in schooling – managed the curriculum. Now it’s increased schooling consultants, whose {qualifications} are fairly unclear, at finest. School have been disadvantaged of arguably the final true bastion of school governance on school campuses. The curriculum is now being decided by ‘market forces’ (or in order that they blatantly assert with out proof), not the concept of a liberal schooling.
Extra here.
