Academia also needs to cut back on low-quality graduate programs. Too many universities tried to become research institutions during the lost decade [1999-2009], adding graduate programs and research faculty, often using tuition dollars to finance their expansions. Today, too many of these programs remain far short of their goals, and their ambitions have come at a great cost to their core mission of educating undergraduates (as well as producing many dropouts and unemployed Ph.D.’s).

Fine.  Perhaps Selingo and all the other Chicken Littles are right: the times, they are a changing and universities must respond by making tough choices.  Okay.  I get it.

But this suggests a number of hard questions few in power are (publicly) asking.

On one level, we should wonder: How much should the many stakeholders in universities be involved in the ‘evolution’ of the industry?  I.e., should parents, students, non-TT educators (including graduate students), faculty, administrators, and all the many “support” staffs be involved in the process?  In what proportion?  How (by what communicative mechanisms)?  What about taxpayers and politicians?

Yet also, even assuming there are ready and agreeable answers to these questions, on another level we should also wonder: How should we decide what criteria to use when judging graduate programs?  How do we decide what “low quality” means?  Should we use comparative metrics against similar programs in other universities?  Should they be 5-year or 50-year metrics?  What’s fair?

And finally, as a philosopher I think we must ask how we ought to define these “shoulds” too.  Are these moral principles, legal regulations, or the many ethical intuitions of boots-on-the-ground decision-makers?

That is, how we decide who is permitted to be involved in these decisions – and hence who is permitted to be involved – will have consequences for what criteria are used to define “low quality” programs.  As Selingo notes,

Higher education is a conservative, risk-averse industry. Add to this the fact that a majority of its leaders are nearing the safety net of retirement, and we have a recipe for the status quo. We can’t afford another lost decade.

Indeed, let’s not lose another decade.  Perhaps it is time for more power-holders to include more stakeholders in the decision-making processes as universities evolve.  There are many of us and some of us care and have good ideas.  Invite us in.

I understand that the Commonwealth has been steadily defunding Pitt and other state and state-related universities in PA, so I also understand why it would be reasonable to reconsider funding patterns within the university.  And I understand that this is egregious as the commonwealth simultaneously seeks to provide tax breaks to Big Oil to the tune of $66 mil. a year. But, what I wonder is whether this particular restoration of funds undermines the justification of the particular, recent proposals to “suspend” graduate studies in Classics, German, and Religious Studies.

The Pitt Board of Trustees meets tomorrow.  And Pitt budgets also must be approved soon.  Maybe answers to some of our questions are forthcoming.

Of note, past Senate president and current Senate budget policies committee chair, John Baker, presented his report on the proposed suspensions, where he questioned the sufficiency of the criteria used for deciding which programs to target.

Baker said the general criteria used by the arts and sciences administration for evaluating graduate programs included the following: the scale of the program; the cost of the program relative to the graduate education goal, as measured by teaching assistant/teaching fellow (TA/TF) advancement per doctoral degree granted; levels of net tuition revenue generated; quality of the program as measured by the qualifications of incoming students, such as student honors; strategic national positioning of the program; external perceptions of the quality of the program as evidenced in peer evaluations, and standing in popular rankings, such as those done by U.S. News & World Report.

“I think the criteria that the deans use are criteria that you would want to consider if you were going to evaluate programs. I don’t think that’s the issue. The issue I am trying to raise is that those criteria may have been incomplete,” Baker said.

In addition to echoing this concern, the Department Chairs also discussed the effects of suspensions on Pitt graduate student life, Pitt’s regional impact without these programs, the consequences of replacing graduate student teachers with non-tenure-stream faculty, and anticipated changes to Pitt’s image nationally and globally.   The anticipated effects are not good.

Frankly, it is absurd that these factors were not considered during the initial decision-making process and that they have, as yet, received no thorough public response by appropriate university administrators.

THE AAUP SAYS…

In sum, the AAUP provides a strong argument for our view that the proposed suspensions were done without sufficient transparency, and not merely transparency in the sense of what is required to be just and equitable (as I think our memo expresses), but specifically the transparency required by the University’s own operating procedures:

It is clear from the University’s Guidelines for the Review of Academic Planning Proposals (1995) (http://www.academic.pitt.edu/pb/proposal-guidelines.htm) that any decision to terminate or substantially modify a graduate program requires approval by the Provost, not merely by the dean of a school, and that any proposal to do so must follow detailed procedures which include significant involvement of unit and center Planning and Budgeting Committees and other academic bodies. …

 

[Specifically] Section 1B, …says that proposals should include (#7) “A list of the faculty groups and relevant administrators who were consulted, and a summary of their comments on the proposed change(s), including a statement from the Planning and Budgeting committees of the relevant department (if applicable) and responsibility center.” Proposals are also supposed to consider (#4) “The effects that the proposed change(s) will have on other University programs in both the short- and long-term. This should include an analysis of the impact that the proposed change(s) will have on other academic programs.” 

The AAUP report documents just how the administration failed to follow these procedures. Provost Beeson’s response is unfortunately unapologetic. (Now only if we could get a response to our memo…)

More below the fold.

According to the AAUP:

• in none of the public minutes for the meetings where suspensions or closures were purportedly discussed are such discussions reflected; 
• in seven such meetings the currently available minutes show no discussion of suspensions, etc.;
• after department chairs were notified, they contested the justifications of the proposed suspensions by disputing the statistics provided by the deans of A&S, amongst other things, and it is not clear whether a satisfactory response has been given.

I believe the AAUP has done the whole community a service by documenting the failings of the current administration to transparently and justly perform the steps necessary in order to suspend, terminate, or close a department, which is, and should be, a very big deal.

PROVOST BEESON RESPONDS…

In sum: budget cuts are the problem, not the administration’s approach to communicating with faculty (and presumably students); the administration performed its bureaucratic obligations; and, should the programs be slated for termination, worry not, more bureaucratic processes will be similarly performed with the same care and attention to detail. 

Over the past year, the University has absorbed reductions in commonwealth support totaling $67 million and the administration’s budget proposal includes additional cuts that will bring the total to over $110 million.  These deep and disproportionate cuts have forced the University to examine areas of previous commitment and consider difficult choices…Graduate education was identified as one area in which the school could focus and reallocate resources to increase the impact of its programs.

 

Reallocation of resources was one of the topics under discussion throughout the spring meetings of the Dietrich school’s planning and budgeting committee (PBC) …multiple meetings of the school’s Graduate Council….the March 16 meeting of the Dietrich school PBC….[and] at its April 27 meeting the committee reviewed data that the deans of the school had developed and used to suspend admission to three programs. The PBC formally confirmed at that meeting that the deans had appropriately applied the agreed-upon criteria in moving forward to implement the reallocation strategy. Approval and posting of minutes from governance committee meetings always takes some time, but I understand the minutes of both of these meetings will be posted this week.

 

The decision to suspend admission to the three programs was communicated to the chairs involved in early April, shortly after completion of the planning process, to ensure that students contemplating offers of admission could make their decisions with full knowledge that the programs were under review.

At this point, admission to the graduate programs has only been suspended while the dean’s office engages in conversations with the chairs and other members of the faculty concerning the future of these programs. Any proposal to close programs that results from these discussions will undergo appropriate review in accordance with both the Guidelines for Review of Academic Planning Proposals and the Planning and Budgeting System.

Beginning next fall, students [at CU Boulder] can earn a Ph.D. in German studies in about half the time it might take to earn that degree elsewhere…in and out in four years, Professor Ann Schmiesing said.

Students will spend two years focused on classwork, one year doing research (perhaps in Germany) and the final year writing their dissertation. Candidates will be encouraged to take on internships during summers to prepare for careers inside and outside of academe. Students might be steered toward “less onerous” dissertation topics or pursue digital publication, professors say, but the writing will adhere to university guidelines on length and rigor. The difference is in a lighter teaching burden and one-on-one mentoring, allowing more focus on classroom work earlier on in the program and more guidance on research and the dissertation.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/02/proposed-phd-german-colorado-aims-halve-time-degree#ixzz1tpOxOs5k
Inside Higher Ed 

Questions:

• Is this another example of the Europeanization of American Humanities?  What are the risks and benefits of that?
• Who defines “university guidelines on length and rigor” such that they are applicable across (humanities) fields?
• Will any of the graduates be fit for academic employment subsequent to ‘less onerous’ dissertation topics?
• What is the market for non-academic jobs for holders of German PhDs?  
• What such markets are there for other humanities fields?

You can find these petitions at the following links:

www.change.org/petitions/dean-of-graduate-studies-the-university-of-pittsburgh-reinstate-the-department-of-classics-graduate-program

www.change.org/petitions/university-of-pittsburgh-dean-of-graduate-studies-reinstate-the-department-of-german-s-graduate-program

1. Appropriation Cuts: Pitt, and consequently the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, is funded in part by annual appropriations from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Governor Tom Corbett has fought every year of his gubernatorial term to reduce the amount of money given to Pitt by the commonwealth. in the year July 2010-June 2011, the appropriation was $168 million. In July 2011-June 2012, the appropriation is $136 million. Corbett has proposed an appropriation for July 2012-June 2013 of $95 million, a 43% reduction from two years before.
2. Appropriations and the Dietrich School: The Dietrich School is supported by money from the appropriation, endowments and gifts, and tuition. There are no publicly available records of how much of the appropriation directly funds the Dietrich School. However, it is public knowledge that the Dietrich School is disproportionately affected by changes in the appropriation, because in-state tuition discounts are offered to students of the Dietrich School and not to other professional schools in the University, such as the medical school. The appropriation is meant to offset in-state tuition discounts, among other things, and is allocated with that intention.
3. Appropriation and University Funding: The usable University budget, which excludes research grants associated with specific professors, is around $1.1 billion. The $136 million appropriation is around 17% of this budget.  The $73 million proposed cut to the appropriation next year represents a 5% decrease in the overall University budget, so it is to be expected that the Dietrich School will face a budget cut of more than 5%.

There is not current publicly available information on the actual or expected costs of any of the graduate programs being suspended.

The University Fact Book was used to obtain the numbers used in this report.

This factsheet displays information about the University budget and its impact on graduate programs in more detail and with more visual aids.

Chancellor Mark Nordenberg’s statement about the budget cuts

Memo from HPS and Classics

Read The Article.