2y ago

This public university just announced massive layoffs. Is all higher ed at risk?

therealnews.com This public university just announced massive layoffs. Is all higher ed at risk?

The new WVU budget slashes nearly 10 percent of majors and 7 percent of all faculty—but students and staff aren't going down without a fight.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/1806644

Archived version: https://archive.ph/nFSSK
Archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20230823162005/https://therealnews.com/this-public-university-just-announced-massive-layoffs-is-all-higher-ed-at-risk

Global News @lemmy.zip

This public university just announced massive layoffs. Is all higher ed at risk?

therealnews.com /this-public-university-just-announced-massive-layoffs-is-all-higher-ed-at-risk

1 0

You're viewing a single thread.

73 comments

We are going through a demographic transition, a pinch in the hourglass. It will be temporary but painful, and the other side of the pinch might not be as big as it once was. Our population is aging.
It’s kind of crazy that our research apparatus is tied to how many students happen to be enrolling. World class universities is what makes the US economy so strong. From the tech to the biomedical industries, it’s not “the free market” that has boosted the economy, but being leaders in publicly available government funded research.
- Yup. R&D is a matter of national security, too.
- While I agree, the cuts need to happen and they need to be purely targeted at administration which exploded over the boom years.
  We had massive growth and very little of that revenue made it to either research or actual teaching.
  Fire the admin staff from education and healthcare, we need to make those sectors work again.
  
  It's the facilities costs that have truly exploded in the past couple of decades. Every university is in an arms race to build the biggest, most advanced campus possible. They've forgotten that their goal is to be a place of study and instead they're trying to have world-class architecture so they can woo students. Students would go there so long as the damn programs are well run and they have a good reputation.
  Just stop the gigantic capital projects and suddenly you've got plenty of capital. Hmm.
  
  Yeah, that's true throughout education, down to the local school level. Medicine too.
- The economics aren't really that tied. A lot of universities have research arms that are not tied to their undergraduate population. It might need a graduate student population to oppress, but undergrads are rather worthless.
  
  Undergrads are the revenue generating portion of the university
  
  Not really. Universities make a lot of money off research and the research helps more with prestige ratings.
  
  Grant money from researchers is a drop in the bucket. That money mostly goes to flesh out laboratories with fancy equipment and pay for research assistants.

73 comments