Rolling higher education into the shitbin thread

As someone whose 9-5 is spent bending over backwards to make sure a large contingent of students is on track with their degree progress and that nobody gets themselves into an academic bind they can't get out of, that is a legitimately crushing scenario to even contemplate. My sympathies, tables, to you and your colleagues and, ugh, those poor students.

thanks all. honestly one of my star students wrote an absolutely incandescent letter to the president and the board that is worth reading.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C7r1hEQPmoK/?igsh=MTJiMDIxd3p3ZXR3dA==

My dept chair posted a video of the offices and hallways and it was just so brutal, it made me cry

That letter is great - it should be nailed on the door of every administrator.

I'm so sorry table, that is so upsetting

I'm very sorry to hear that table! the numbers cited in that IG post are eye-watering

higher ed is in such bad shape right now, I'm p fearful for its future

there is an enrollment cliff but most of the problems are caused by mismanagement and profit-centered thinking at the hands of administrators. not surprising, but still infuriating.

damn sorry to hear, table, awful.

That's really disturbing. It does feel like whatever foundations higher education rests on are increasingly fragile. But having the rug pulled out from under the whole university community like that has to be really jarring and, yes, infuriating.

https://hechingerreport.org/colleges-are-now-closing-at-a-pace-of-one-a-week-what-happens-to-the-students

I had read some news of the closing, sorry to hear you're caught up in it, table.

that is so terrible, table, I'm sorry.

What’s wild about the Hechinger report article is that UArts nor PAFA are not mentioned— these are the two art schools that have closed in Philly in the past year— but there are three other mergers or shutterings in the Philly area that are mentioned, namely the Salus-Drexel merger and the College of Sciences- SJU merger, as well as the Cabrini closure. These institutions are all within an hour drive of each other, so all told, five schools will have shuttered in the past two years in one metro area.

I teach at a small regional comprehensive state school in WI that has had its own enrollment and $ issues of late. There have been a few private collages in the area that have closed and/or are clearly faltering, to the point where I have heard other faculty and admins expressing hope that we will be the benefactor of their losses in terms of students having fewer choices. Seems macabre but that is how much everyone is suffering.

I'm so sorry, table. And I read that Hechinger report yesterday with a chill.

Really sorry about this, table. Kind of horrifying that the people in charge would fail to do the bare minimum to help students transition and keep faculty up to date.

The school I taught at for many years (that RIFed me and my entire department) is being absorbed into another school. I don’t miss the stress of constant worry but I’m still actively sad about what was and why could have been. Brutal landscape for higher ed in general.

Why = what whoops

I also hit the paper ceiling at the school where I’m teaching where apparently I’m a Forever Adjunct bc I am capped at 2 classes but that’s not enough to live on so I have another job where I can make money and not grade papers in my free time.

I learned this weekend that Northwestern “bought” Mills College in California or something? And now it’s a completely different school with no arts program?

They're buying a college in NYC now too.

Anyway table this is horrible, abject mismanagement, sorry you have to go through it

Northeastern, not Northwestern. And guess who arranged the buyout of Manhattan Marymount to Northeastern? The president of the school where I worked. Her name is Kerry Walk, and I hope she suffers

Went to campus for the last time today to grab a few things. The program chair had to sign me in because none of our cards work anymore. He told me that his Dean had requested for him to use ChatGPT to make his communications more professional. (We’re a creative writing department, and she, too, is ostensibly a writer). He said his first thought when he got the news was “I am glad I don’t have to deal with this horrible person anymore.”

Also ran into two former students, both of whom started crying when they saw me. Had to give them hugs. Just brutal, guys.

Terrible news — I saw the announcement of the closure on Twitter. Totally fucked.

Students who transfer lose an average of 43 percent of the credits they’ve already earned and paid for, the Government Accountability Office found in the most recent comprehensive study of this problem.

That's ridiculous. What a dumb obstacle to being able to transfer.

that’s why a proper teach-out with onboarding to schools that will transfer credits is so important, and why UArts failed its students so miserably.

Awful. Table, my sympathies. (Two of my college classmates are also - were also - on staff there so I’ve been hearing a lot about this.)

I was sad to hear that University of the Arts closed. Two years ago the art school right behind my house, the San Francisco Art Institute, which like University of the Arts dates back to the 1870s, also closed abruptly. SFAI had a towering history with many famous artists who were graduates and/or educators. A beautiful and famous Diego Rivera mural is left behind. The reason given has been that such a small school with high costs and a small endowment isn’t going to work in today’s environment

I also learned from watching Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up that it was filmed at the Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland, by all accounts an amazing school that was over 100 years old, after it closed in 2019