West Virginia University: An example of bankrupt academia?

Bankrupt academia: The bankruptcy of intellectual thought in modern American academia is finally beginning to percolate down to the bankbook, at least in West Virginia. On August 11, 2023 the administration at West Virginia University released a report proposing the elimination of 32 majors while also eliminating 169 faculty positions.

The preliminary recommendations, released Friday afternoon, said 12 of those programs are undergraduate majors and 20 are graduate-level majors. Other programs were told to reduce their faculty size — 169 faculty jobs are on the line for cuts.

Programs marked for discontinuation included: master’s and doctorate in Mathematics; master’s and doctorate in Higher Education Administration; master’s of Public Administration; master’s of fine arts in Creative Writing; and a bachelor’s in Recreation, Parks and Tourism Resources. The Department of World Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, which includes Spanish, Russian and Chinese studies, was marked to be completely dissolved.

You can read the full report here. It is important to look closely at it, as it reveals some stark facts about how bankrupt academia remains. While the recommendations call for the elimination of majors in creative writing, mathematics, and languages, it included no cuts to the college’s blatantly bigoted identity-based Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, its LGBTQ+ Center, or its Center for Black Culture.

The recommendations did propose [pdf] that the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies be placed under the administrative oversight of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, but no cuts were proposed at this time. The report did note a decline in enrollment in the program, and that the department itself proposed a 63% reduction in its operating budget. We shall see if this happens.

The list of programs to be discontinued at the first link above suggests the administration did try to eliminate a lot of fluff, such as programs focused on teaching management and administration in education, public administration, and “environmental and community planning” as well as programs like “Collaborative Piano” and “Jazz Pedagogy”.

That it made little or no effort however to eliminate or reduce the size of the university’s bloated administration as well as the college’s Marxist race- and identity-based programs suggests that the academics running this university are still resisting change, and do not understand what really needs to be fixed. The university’s overhead could certainly be trimmed significantly, without impacting any classes at all. For example, does the college really need a “Purpose Center,” a “Project 168,” and a “Center for Community Engagement,” all of which appear focused on linking students with outside volunteer opportunities? Other administration programs that have nothing to do with educating students include WVU Extension and Center for Excellence in Disabilities. While the work here might be worthwhile, it appears that, at a minimum, the administrative costs of these programs could be streamlined by combining programs, without impacting the customers they service.

But that is not what WVU’s leaders are doing. Instead, they are reviewing the university’s actual class programs, and finding ways to trim them. Their blindness and misguided priorities are further underlined by their decision to eliminate traditional programs in higher education, such as creative writing, mathematics, and languages. If these programs are seeing a decline in voluntary enrollment, maybe the university should make them required. Just because students don’t wish to learn how to use math or write well doesn’t mean the university shouldn’t demand they do so.

As I say, academia remains bankrupt.

I wonder if West Virginia’s state legislature will have a say on this. The state allocates significant funds to the university, including in several add-on appropriations in its 2024 budget [pdf] totaling many millions. Maybe elected officials could challenge the university to spend its money more wisely, rather than giving it more to spend badly.