The problem at WVU was not the fripperies for students (my kid’s dorm was bathroom-down-the-hall, share a room, and the building was from the 60s. Yes, there were a couple of new dorms with apartment style accommodations - they were also 75% more in cost).
Instead, the problem was the salaries for the bloated administration. Not faculty. Administration.
You can argue about the puppetry major till the cows come home; that was not even close to any weight on WVU’s indebtedness.
Meanwhile, WVU announced two new majors after gutting languages and math:
I expect there is demand for both new majors. Can’t blame them for responding to consumer demand.
One might inquire as to why there is such resistance to cutting administrators, but given that it rarely occurs, it seems there must be such resistance. Other colleges seem to follow the WVU path in cost cutting.
The environmental engineering major actually started before the announcement, and appears to be a modest expansion of what were already subarea options in civil engineering.
The esports business and entertainment major looks like a very niche area that is probably a lot more popular with 17-18 year old (particularly male) students than it is likely to be among employers. Even in the esports industry, wouldn’t an employer be just as willing to hire someone with a general business major? (computer game design versus computer science seems to be another analogous situation)
Oh, I’m not knocking the new majors at all (how ironic that one of them is deemed a niche major - can’t get more niche than puppetry )
I just think the addition of majors after the excising of old majors shows the fallacy of hinging the cost-cutting on reducing majors in the first place.
Environmental engineering is likely to be implemented as a reallocation of instructional resources in the civil and environmental engineering department toward the environmental topics (water resources, pollution prevention and cleanup, etc.) instead of the other topics (transportation, structures) that are dropped from the environmental engineering major. The student population would be those who would otherwise do civil engineering while choosing the environmental electives. So probably not a huge effect on the fiscal issues.
Regarding esports business and entertainment, they probably believe that it will attract more 17-18 year old students than puppetry. But then the optics are not great in the context of cutting several other majors.
Okay, that isn’t what I’d thought you’d meant—I thought you meant the (few) colleges that include grants for study abroad as part of their regular package.
And yes, that would certainly count! But I don’t see what’s “luxurious” about treating the educational fees for study abroad programs the same as the regular cost of education.
Right. It’s just about equity. Full-pay students get to use their tuition dollars to study abroad, so why should kids on financial aid be excluded from those opportunities? Students who require financial aid are not living lives of luxury, last I checked.
Full pay students may buy cars, or take spring break trips. College do not and should not subsidize those either in the name of equity. Study abroad represents an actual cash outlay by an American school to a foreign institution for tuition or to foreign landlords, groceries, and domestic or foreign airlines. Nope, public schools shouldnt be subsidizing that.
Public colleges are free to discount their own tuition, room and board to zero if they wish ( many have fixed costs anyway, so not that hard to do). But no, they shouldnt generally be spending public funds on trips abroad. There will always be a few undergrad scholars whose trips can be justified, but that isnt how it works now- it is pretty much a student entitlement.
Last I checked, the only kids doing study abroad were wealthy full pay or substantial financial aid recipients. Those donut hole families can’t afford to pay for it themselves.
Actually, it’s often a better deal for donut hole families since study abroad is often subsidized for them too; if donut hole&full pay students attend an oos public they pay instate costs for the semester abroad; if they use ISEP/B, it’s often cheaper than the US price.
Finally, you can’t compare a car to study abroad. Studying abroad or away is an educational expense like a calculator, a laptop or books, and unlike a car or a (non charity) Spring Break trip.
Even barebones universities (in Europe or Asia) consider study abroad an essential part of higher education.
Most study abroad trips I have seen have been extended vacations. Yes, there are always exceptions, but a whole lot are simply parties abroad. Many parents agree. It was great fun for their kids, but neither necessary nor academically rigorous.
Only in the strictest sense, and only if you only look at one side of the ledger. And as a result, this assertion leads me to believe that you don’t know the way these programs actually work.
I would like evidence of the first quoted sentence (or, if you don’t have evidence for it, some appropriate hedging of the claim). And the second sentence simply speaks to the rational nature of the policies you are criticizing, centered on the equity grounds that @Shelby_Balik pointed out.
And to bring this properly back to the topic of this thread, I will note that these costs—if, as pointed out by @ucbalumnus upthread, may not actually be a net negative, depending on the specifics of each situation—are pretty marginal to what we’re talking about here. WVU is cutting entire swaths of programs. The question is whether those are merited, not whether middle class kids should be denied the ability to use their financial aid awards for all aspects of their postsecondary educational experience. (Though I will say that that would be a good topic for another thread.)
As you pointed out, neither is central to the cuts at WVU, so I fear it is veering off topic. But since you speculated why public financial support for public colleges has declined, I submit that is part of the problem-we can debate endlessly as to whether a year in Provence is a luxury, but the public perception of schools sending hundreds or even thousands of kids to Europe is not good for those asking for more taxes.
How many of your kids went on study abroad, with which programs?
Because the “extended vacation” thing hasn’t been in operation in at least 25 years - and while the study abroad program tends to reflect the university’s academic rigor, it’s still very hard culturally&linguistically on participating students; at the universities typically discussed on CC the classes are academically demanding but the real difficulty remains functioning in a society that has entirely different parameters from yours, where everything has unexpected obstacles, where you’re constantly tripping over your own feet and have to adapt/fix/recover.
Note that nowadays the “year abroad” is not a model anymore except at elite universities or at critical language flagships. The public university model is either embedded study abroad (regular semester course with a component abroad, usually for 10 days to 2 weeks) or the semester abroad (especially for students who need fluency or specific content/experience for their major and/or career.)
The functioning independently benefit is true anywhere-the kid could have been sent to live alone in NYC and would face most of the same challenges.
I happily paid for both my kids to do study abroad vacations-they enjoyed them and got something out of them, just as they did from family trips or solo travel abroad. I wasn’t asking taxpayers to subsidize them. Pleasant to have but in no way essential to their degrees.
It was a serious question wrt the university because that is NOT the norm anymore. It’s also possible your kids took it as a “semester off” but it’s not what they were supposed to be doing.
We can agree to disagree. Regardless, the programs are not essential ( not all students are required to do them) and perpetuate the idea of excessive college expenditures. Private schools can do what they wish. Public schools are taxpayer accountable.
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