Universities drank the kool-ade and thought that if they spent and unbelievable amount of money on administration, student perks and sports teams, that would generate an exponential growth in enrollment. It did not.
The WSJ did a decent article about this a few weeks ago.
It was hard not to see this coming. Everyone has been talking about how the benefit of a Bachelor's degree is not worth the tuition cost. Covid drove that home when students were paying tens of thousand dollars just to watch videos at home.
I could go on and on about this but it just breaks my heart to see how bad universities screwed this up.
The anonymous insider report linked within this article demonstrates that the financial issues ailing WVU are very specific to WVU and that other universities in its class are doing fine by comparison.
And we're forcing the primary state university to gut its programs and/or risk complete shutdown over $45-million budget deficit, partially due to inadequate state funding.
Why? Because - tragically - West Virginians pride themselves on ignorance, consistently vote against their own longterm best interests, and loathe the idea of liberal higher education in all its forms.
(To be fair, the current WVU administration is to blame for letting this get out of hand rather than proactive budget cuts, but eduction should also be one of our literally-poor state's biggest investments.)
This cynical perspective has been brought to you by a lifetime WV resident and WVU Computer Science grad, consistently disappointed by my state's active rejection of progress.
> Why? Because - tragically - West Virginians pride themselves on ignorance, consistently vote against their own longterm best interests, and loathe the idea of liberal higher education in all its forms.
I'm tired of people saying that people vote against their own interests.
Is it so insane to believe that maybe they have different interests that don't make sense to you or me?
It's crazy unlikely given their sizes and endowments, but I am scared of Texas and Florida public universities pulling the same crap for the same reasons.
> In fact, on the same day WVU wrote to tell us our department is cancelled and we are fired, they ran a front-page article on the university website celebrating the NSF grant that Sergio Robles-Puente and I recently received, and lauding our innovative research and intensive student mentoring.
I have a few close friends in academia and while IMO they're clearly underappreciated by their institutions (even the lucky ones who have tenure), this level of cynical disrespect is shocking.
This reminds me of when MIT was putting student hacks, like the fire truck on the dome, on the front of their promotional material while prosecuting those same students for exploring unlocked areas of the campus.
This isn’t shocking. It’s the nature of layoffs. The folks making the cuts aren’t telling the the folks in the communications office, “hey, we are firing that person you’re doing a front page story on.”
Also, the department won’t be dissolved until the end of the academic year.
This is a sick path to be on. Keep the money, plug kids into some other university's classes remotely. To what end? A school full of nothing but overpaid administrators, and kids all taking remote classes at disparate cheapest possible offerings?
> A school full of nothing but overpaid administrators
Um, exactly?
The budget crisis is, in fact, easy to solve. Start by laying off administrators in order of highest salary (starting with the University President as he has clearly failed at his job) and continue down the path until you have 25% budget surplus.
Oh yes. I just commented on "market saturation" elsewhere - partly, this is very similar to what I wrote there. Initially, hiring some "professional managers" works well (and, relatedly, expanding sports programs, adding "amenities", etc.). For an individual institution, bringing in this type of "business-thinking" obviously generated results.
For example, with the amenities etc. - this was a type of marketing they could do! There's only one "Harvard", "Princeton", etc. ... and, really, for any school, mostly you're avoiding changing "market segment" (in terms of acceptance rate / more generally, the target customer... I mean, student, demographic), but, you can attract applications through various kinds of "differentiation". "Oh, we may not be <ivy-league school X>, but look at this Michelin-starred food court we just built!"
But, there are limits. "Exponential" is not forever - locally or globally (in time &/ space). It's nonsensical. Yet, MBAs, and so many others in the modern world, expect and seek "exponential". This is not unique to humans, arguably, but that's a massive other topic I'll avoid. Ultimately, when a handful of institutions start, they get results. Then, others are basically forced to respond ... or get forced out of the market. And, you're left with a bunch of wreckage - including institutions getting so sidetracked from their core missions, you wonder why the hell they're still labeled with "university".
It was a frequent enough irritant the last time I was in a more academic setting (as recently as several years ago). Everyone kept waiting for a class to be announced as meeting at the football stadium. Many parents, students, faculty, etc. were annoyed. But, not the wealthy donors, the top admins, etc.
Let it collapse under the weight of business school BS, it'll be ... cathartic. All the business school nonsense, that was such a boon... turning around and biting us in the ass. Haha, it's the story of homo sapiens.
I mean, that is kind of the end game of all of this, isn't it? Crank up the prices, rent seek, get your bag, destroy the underlying product in pursuit of personal enrichment.
Higher education seems to be lagging the vulture capitalism of the 80's/90's by a couple of decades, but boy it does seem like it's here.
This is only a premonition of the things to come. Our universities have been hell bent on destroying themselves for the past few decades. They stole as much as they could as the traditional gatekeepers to the upper-middle class, but even the most clueless are realizing the missing value proposition. College enrollment has been dropping from its peak in 2010.[1] As the amount of freshmen and state funding drops, the parasites will fire everyone except their fellow parasites until the hosts are consumed.
> All of the foreign language and literature programs at the university are to be discontinued; the president of the university publicly stated that foreign-language classes will be replaced with online apps or remote classes at other universities.
If a university is just offering online courses at other schools, it ought to be treated as if it doesn’t offer the subject at all.
I dunno, is it crucial to teach languages? I find (human) languages very difficult to learn, to the point of unpleasantness. But still, it seems frankly bizarre that a public university might not provide instruction in them. Not providing this kind of instruction puts a school in the vo-tech/community college category IMO. (Which are important places of learning but I believe the U there stands for University).
Of course it is crucial for any university to teach languages. For fields like history or archaeology of various regions of the world, a lot (if not most) of the reading that one has to do will be in languages other than English. Any North American university library will have at least some scholarship in its stacks in a language other than English.
Also, in spite of the belief that language degrees are useless, they are an important first step, if not a prerequisite, towards 1) graduate studies in a field that draws on that language, and 2) various on-the-ground careers in the respective country. Lots of journalists based in and specializing in some region, started off with a degree in the language of that country, for example.
EDIT: Others have commented that this is just that the # of students taking courses vs. the # of students in the major. The phrase "program enrollment" meant something different to me. This would make the 800k profit make sense.
Can someone help me clarify how they're getting to $800k in profit? When I look at their actual numbers, his comments don't make sense.
They somehow have 18000+ credit hours to their department in a year, but only 61 enrolled students in fall 2022 which, means an average student enrolled was taking 310 credits? Or ~150ish if the 2022 credit hours is for both fall & spring?
My guess is that these are $0 credits. Most universities allow you to meet your "foreign languages requirement" by showing your High School transcripts, and then you get those credits applied to your degree. $0 profit. The later part of the spreadsheet clearly shows how impossible this is - they did not make $6.7M with 61 students' tuition. Clearly the spreadsheet is just a dumb formula multiplying by the credits..
So either they're somehow the most expensive foreign language school in the world, with 1 instructor per 2 students that folks are paying $50k+/semester..
Or their research grants aren't being accounted for correctly? (I don't know how grants work, I am but a lowly swe)
Or they're a wildly expensive department that almost no one major's with, and their research grants don't cover their millions in losses to the university.
Enrollment is for programs, but course credits are tabulated by subject code (not program). It's possible that students at the university taking foreign languages as actual courses (and not just transferring high school credits) count towards the credit (and revenue) total.
You can see similar things in other programs (look at geography/geology) where'd you might expect a lot of non-major's to take a course in.
EDIT: Or most blatantly, look at math. Pulling in ~20 million dollars of revenue on ~120 program enrollments with an FTE:Enrolled ratio of 3. The credits are clearly from non-major'd students taking courses offered.
The argument they should be making is more straight forward: We should not allow a University to become so mismanaged that every degree must be profitable, but instead a positive ROI for all students. Second, languages are not an optional part of a University for the people of West Virginia - we must be connected to the world.
Speaking as a parent, the state of higher education is shocking.
Costs of $300,000 for a 4-year degree ($75K/year for tuition, fees, and housing) is not just possible, it's essentially the norm for many schools that aren't even top-tier. Even state schools will run about $200,000, all-in. God forbid you have more than one child.
Universities tout their need-based financial aid, but the cut off is often far below the median salary in high cost of living areas. At that point the aid is "Congratulations, you qualify for student loans!"
It's great that more lower-income families can get a full scholarship, but the middle class has been priced out of everything but state schools and community college.
In 2008 the “expensive universities” were $40-45k a year all in. Now they are $80k a year all in. Outside of computer science, high finance, and management consulting… who is paying enough to warrant a $320k degree? And even then it’s pushing it…
In my state UT is highly ranked nationally for many programs and estimated costs are $33k/yr to study engineering, or $130k total(source: https://admissions.utexas.edu/cost-aid/cost-tuition-rates/). That's for a great school in one of the most expensive cities in the state.
The largest component of that is $13k living expenses which you would spend anyway if not attending. If you want lower living costs you can attend a non-prestigious university in a smaller town like I did with lower tuition and noticeably lower living costs. Combine this with taking AP classes and CLEP tests in high school and using community college in the summer for the worthless "common core" college credits and the savings are much larger. You don't have to spend $200k!
"For example, Mining Engineering has experienced a decline in enrollment, yet this area is critical to the state and the region, and there is unmet occupational demand. Also experiencing similar challenges is the Petroleum and Natural Gas program"
Very interesting. The politicians of West Virginia want to prop up the oil and mining industries. Young people do not want careers that destroy the planet. So the solution is: eliminate World Languages?
> Beyond the irregular manner in which she was hired, the most unusual thing about Maryanne Reed as a Provost is that she does not hold a doctorate in her field (or any other). The Provost is responsible for overseeing graduate education, assessment of Faculty research, and the administration of tenure, which is normally based on research and limited to faculty with doctorates (Reed herself was a rare exception to this pattern as a professor of journalism). A Provost with no experience in any of these areas is highly unusual.
As far as I'm aware, a Provost, or any academic executive, at a four-year research university without a PhD is super duper shady.
Imagine a Distinguished Fellow at Microsoft or somewhere like that whose previous job was a rank consultant at Deloitte. It's like that, afaik.
While Maryanne Reed, who holds an MS in Journalism, spent a lot of time at WVU (30 years as an assistant professor, which is usually the highest teaching position you can get without a PhD), her progression is still very unusual in academia.
Outside that, it appears as if WVU is being robbed from the inside.
I'm not going to lie - while it sucks for the departments affected, I actually think universities cutting tiny departments is probably a good thing and more universities are probably going to follow suit.
This kind of hints at a deep growing conflict inside of higher-ed - is the primary beneficiary the students and undergraduate programs, or is it the academic community and graduate program?
Having niche programs is only debatably good for students! While it may feel fancy to have some as feathers in your cap, the reality is that most students would be better off going to a college that specializes in their field rather than getting a sub-par experience from a novelty program added to round out "offerings".
If there is a specialty program that better caters to a students desired major and is affordable, generally speaking, said student will go to that school. A student studying linguistics at WVU is likely studying at the best linguistics program that they can afford and received an acceptance.
EDIT: Others have commented that this is just that the # of students taking courses vs. the # of students in the major. The phrase "program enrollment" meant something different to me. This would make the 800k profit make sense.
They somehow have 18000+ credit hours to their department in a year, but only 61 enrolled students in fall 2022 which, means an average student enrolled was taking 310 credits? Or ~150ish if the 2022 credit hours is for both fall & spring?
What I think is happening, is that most universities allow you to meet your "foreign languages requirement" by showing your High School transcripts, and then you get those credits applied to your transcript. That means you actually make $0 from those credits. The later part of the spreadsheet clearly shows how impossible this is - they did not make $6.7M with 61 students' tuition. Clearly the tuition is just a dumb excel formula multiplying by the credits.
So either they're somehow the most expensive foreign language school in the world, with 1 instructor per 2 students...
Or they're a wildly expensive department that almost no one major's with, and their research grants don't cover their millions in losses to the university.
Yeah, this was my first thought reading through this. It literally makes no sense to close a department that, after operational and administrative costs, is net positive while you are facing a budget crisis.
Later on, the writer mentions an ideological split/decision on the chairperson's part. I wish they would delve into that more. Do the administrative heads feel that using outsourced labor will be more profitable?
The department, if I've found it correctly on the sheet, has very few students enrolled in it but logs tens of thousands of credit hours a year: this is presumably mostly students taking a foreign language course as part of general education requirements. I imagine that's where the bulk of the tuition income allocated to the department is coming from.
Presumably the idea is something like, if we axe the department, we dump 16 tenure-track and 32 total FTEs and something like 60 students lose their program: good trade. You just write off the linguistics and TESOL programs completely along with the handful of foreign language majors, and you figure that you can give out uhhhh... Duolingo credits to the students in other programs that cared about their foreign language/lit classes and keep them around.
Of course you're abandoning the pretense of really being a university and offering well-rounded education and broad opportunities and all that... but at least you can keep all the administrators.
Isn't pretty much any situation of layoffs/cutbacks demonstrations of mismanagement? Rarely is it a single issue that was unable to be predicted that causes things like this.
> operating profits of more than $800,000 in each of the last three years
while I'm sympathetic to their plight, the notion of "profit" for an individual department of a university is probably laughable to a real accountant (which I'm not).
College finances are indeed a disaster, though, and it's mostly their own fault:
probably lot of money went to stupid gym, sport teams, and fancy buildings for cover of a brochure, while all is needed for these folks and their students to perform is a classroom with a blackboard, some desk, laptop, internet connection, and a place to hangout. That is all needed for 90% of education.
I completely sympathize with the author and his colleagues. However, I would respectfully say given the state of the university, please do not contemplate staying back.
It seems most of the authors’ colleagues have external funding sources which they can take with them.
Make a clean break. The relationship right now is broken. I wouldn’t try to mend it. It’ll just cause more stress as time goes on.
Professor Katz states that one of the reasons for the cut is ideological, though he does not elaborate. Does anyone have any idea of what he's talking about?
Tenure prevents you from being fired individually but does not protect you if your whole department is axed. That may be why the cuts are structured the way they are (entire departments) rather than culling specific faculty in departments that are over staffed relative to enrollment.
[+] [-] SkipperCat|2 years ago|reply
The WSJ did a decent article about this a few weeks ago.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-university-tuition-increa...
It was hard not to see this coming. Everyone has been talking about how the benefit of a Bachelor's degree is not worth the tuition cost. Covid drove that home when students were paying tens of thousand dollars just to watch videos at home.
I could go on and on about this but it just breaks my heart to see how bad universities screwed this up.
[+] [-] nunez|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] polski-g|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BLanen|2 years ago|reply
So why is your comment relevant?
[+] [-] driggs|2 years ago|reply
https://governor.wv.gov/News/press-releases/2023/Pages/Gov.-...
And we're forcing the primary state university to gut its programs and/or risk complete shutdown over $45-million budget deficit, partially due to inadequate state funding.
Why? Because - tragically - West Virginians pride themselves on ignorance, consistently vote against their own longterm best interests, and loathe the idea of liberal higher education in all its forms.
(To be fair, the current WVU administration is to blame for letting this get out of hand rather than proactive budget cuts, but eduction should also be one of our literally-poor state's biggest investments.)
This cynical perspective has been brought to you by a lifetime WV resident and WVU Computer Science grad, consistently disappointed by my state's active rejection of progress.
[+] [-] onlyrealcuzzo|2 years ago|reply
I'm tired of people saying that people vote against their own interests.
Is it so insane to believe that maybe they have different interests that don't make sense to you or me?
[+] [-] nunez|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ycdavidsmith|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] footy|2 years ago|reply
I have a few close friends in academia and while IMO they're clearly underappreciated by their institutions (even the lucky ones who have tenure), this level of cynical disrespect is shocking.
[+] [-] frob|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clintonb|2 years ago|reply
Also, the department won’t be dissolved until the end of the academic year.
[+] [-] foota|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] silisili|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsder|2 years ago|reply
Um, exactly?
The budget crisis is, in fact, easy to solve. Start by laying off administrators in order of highest salary (starting with the University President as he has clearly failed at his job) and continue down the path until you have 25% budget surplus.
[+] [-] tiffanyg|2 years ago|reply
For example, with the amenities etc. - this was a type of marketing they could do! There's only one "Harvard", "Princeton", etc. ... and, really, for any school, mostly you're avoiding changing "market segment" (in terms of acceptance rate / more generally, the target customer... I mean, student, demographic), but, you can attract applications through various kinds of "differentiation". "Oh, we may not be <ivy-league school X>, but look at this Michelin-starred food court we just built!"
But, there are limits. "Exponential" is not forever - locally or globally (in time &/ space). It's nonsensical. Yet, MBAs, and so many others in the modern world, expect and seek "exponential". This is not unique to humans, arguably, but that's a massive other topic I'll avoid. Ultimately, when a handful of institutions start, they get results. Then, others are basically forced to respond ... or get forced out of the market. And, you're left with a bunch of wreckage - including institutions getting so sidetracked from their core missions, you wonder why the hell they're still labeled with "university".
It was a frequent enough irritant the last time I was in a more academic setting (as recently as several years ago). Everyone kept waiting for a class to be announced as meeting at the football stadium. Many parents, students, faculty, etc. were annoyed. But, not the wealthy donors, the top admins, etc.
Let it collapse under the weight of business school BS, it'll be ... cathartic. All the business school nonsense, that was such a boon... turning around and biting us in the ass. Haha, it's the story of homo sapiens.
[+] [-] rjbwork|2 years ago|reply
Higher education seems to be lagging the vulture capitalism of the 80's/90's by a couple of decades, but boy it does seem like it's here.
[+] [-] obviouslynotme|2 years ago|reply
1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enroll...
[+] [-] bee_rider|2 years ago|reply
If a university is just offering online courses at other schools, it ought to be treated as if it doesn’t offer the subject at all.
I dunno, is it crucial to teach languages? I find (human) languages very difficult to learn, to the point of unpleasantness. But still, it seems frankly bizarre that a public university might not provide instruction in them. Not providing this kind of instruction puts a school in the vo-tech/community college category IMO. (Which are important places of learning but I believe the U there stands for University).
[+] [-] OfSanguineFire|2 years ago|reply
Also, in spite of the belief that language degrees are useless, they are an important first step, if not a prerequisite, towards 1) graduate studies in a field that draws on that language, and 2) various on-the-ground careers in the respective country. Lots of journalists based in and specializing in some region, started off with a degree in the language of that country, for example.
[+] [-] codemac|2 years ago|reply
Can someone help me clarify how they're getting to $800k in profit? When I look at their actual numbers, his comments don't make sense.
https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/bf3ef02f-e90a-4e43-a316-d295...
They somehow have 18000+ credit hours to their department in a year, but only 61 enrolled students in fall 2022 which, means an average student enrolled was taking 310 credits? Or ~150ish if the 2022 credit hours is for both fall & spring?
My guess is that these are $0 credits. Most universities allow you to meet your "foreign languages requirement" by showing your High School transcripts, and then you get those credits applied to your degree. $0 profit. The later part of the spreadsheet clearly shows how impossible this is - they did not make $6.7M with 61 students' tuition. Clearly the spreadsheet is just a dumb formula multiplying by the credits..
So either they're somehow the most expensive foreign language school in the world, with 1 instructor per 2 students that folks are paying $50k+/semester..
Or their research grants aren't being accounted for correctly? (I don't know how grants work, I am but a lowly swe)
Or they're a wildly expensive department that almost no one major's with, and their research grants don't cover their millions in losses to the university.
[+] [-] icegreentea2|2 years ago|reply
You can see similar things in other programs (look at geography/geology) where'd you might expect a lot of non-major's to take a course in.
EDIT: Or most blatantly, look at math. Pulling in ~20 million dollars of revenue on ~120 program enrollments with an FTE:Enrolled ratio of 3. The credits are clearly from non-major'd students taking courses offered.
[+] [-] codemac|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agar|2 years ago|reply
Costs of $300,000 for a 4-year degree ($75K/year for tuition, fees, and housing) is not just possible, it's essentially the norm for many schools that aren't even top-tier. Even state schools will run about $200,000, all-in. God forbid you have more than one child.
Universities tout their need-based financial aid, but the cut off is often far below the median salary in high cost of living areas. At that point the aid is "Congratulations, you qualify for student loans!"
It's great that more lower-income families can get a full scholarship, but the middle class has been priced out of everything but state schools and community college.
[+] [-] ecshafer|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TexanFeller|2 years ago|reply
The largest component of that is $13k living expenses which you would spend anyway if not attending. If you want lower living costs you can attend a non-prestigious university in a smaller town like I did with lower tuition and noticeably lower living costs. Combine this with taking AP classes and CLEP tests in high school and using community college in the summer for the worthless "common core" college credits and the savings are much larger. You don't have to spend $200k!
[+] [-] jimbob45|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ethbr1|2 years ago|reply
More context: https://wvutoday.wvu.edu/stories/2023/08/11/wvu-announces-pr... and https://provost.wvu.edu/academic-transformation/academic-pro...
[+] [-] sgustard|2 years ago|reply
Very interesting. The politicians of West Virginia want to prop up the oil and mining industries. Young people do not want careers that destroy the planet. So the solution is: eliminate World Languages?
[+] [-] nunez|2 years ago|reply
> Beyond the irregular manner in which she was hired, the most unusual thing about Maryanne Reed as a Provost is that she does not hold a doctorate in her field (or any other). The Provost is responsible for overseeing graduate education, assessment of Faculty research, and the administration of tenure, which is normally based on research and limited to faculty with doctorates (Reed herself was a rare exception to this pattern as a professor of journalism). A Provost with no experience in any of these areas is highly unusual.
As far as I'm aware, a Provost, or any academic executive, at a four-year research university without a PhD is super duper shady.
Imagine a Distinguished Fellow at Microsoft or somewhere like that whose previous job was a rank consultant at Deloitte. It's like that, afaik.
While Maryanne Reed, who holds an MS in Journalism, spent a lot of time at WVU (30 years as an assistant professor, which is usually the highest teaching position you can get without a PhD), her progression is still very unusual in academia.
Outside that, it appears as if WVU is being robbed from the inside.
I feel bad for the students.
[0] https://archive.ph/uhQi1
[+] [-] legitster|2 years ago|reply
This kind of hints at a deep growing conflict inside of higher-ed - is the primary beneficiary the students and undergraduate programs, or is it the academic community and graduate program?
Having niche programs is only debatably good for students! While it may feel fancy to have some as feathers in your cap, the reality is that most students would be better off going to a college that specializes in their field rather than getting a sub-par experience from a novelty program added to round out "offerings".
[+] [-] suzumer|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] parl_match|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codemac|2 years ago|reply
When I look at their actual numbers, his comments don't make sense: https://provost.wvu.edu/files/d/bf3ef02f-e90a-4e43-a316-d295...
They somehow have 18000+ credit hours to their department in a year, but only 61 enrolled students in fall 2022 which, means an average student enrolled was taking 310 credits? Or ~150ish if the 2022 credit hours is for both fall & spring?
What I think is happening, is that most universities allow you to meet your "foreign languages requirement" by showing your High School transcripts, and then you get those credits applied to your transcript. That means you actually make $0 from those credits. The later part of the spreadsheet clearly shows how impossible this is - they did not make $6.7M with 61 students' tuition. Clearly the tuition is just a dumb excel formula multiplying by the credits.
So either they're somehow the most expensive foreign language school in the world, with 1 instructor per 2 students...
Or they're a wildly expensive department that almost no one major's with, and their research grants don't cover their millions in losses to the university.
[+] [-] deaddodo|2 years ago|reply
Later on, the writer mentions an ideological split/decision on the chairperson's part. I wish they would delve into that more. Do the administrative heads feel that using outsourced labor will be more profitable?
[+] [-] zerocrates|2 years ago|reply
Presumably the idea is something like, if we axe the department, we dump 16 tenure-track and 32 total FTEs and something like 60 students lose their program: good trade. You just write off the linguistics and TESOL programs completely along with the handful of foreign language majors, and you figure that you can give out uhhhh... Duolingo credits to the students in other programs that cared about their foreign language/lit classes and keep them around.
Of course you're abandoning the pretense of really being a university and offering well-rounded education and broad opportunities and all that... but at least you can keep all the administrators.
[+] [-] legitster|2 years ago|reply
Tiny programs with not a lot of student interest did not make the cut.
[+] [-] dylan604|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlbertCory|2 years ago|reply
while I'm sympathetic to their plight, the notion of "profit" for an individual department of a university is probably laughable to a real accountant (which I'm not).
College finances are indeed a disaster, though, and it's mostly their own fault:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37090403
[+] [-] computerliker|2 years ago|reply
Just in case.
[+] [-] twolf910616|2 years ago|reply
https://archive.ph/gGqvX
[+] [-] rehitman|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orochimaaru|2 years ago|reply
It seems most of the authors’ colleagues have external funding sources which they can take with them.
Make a clean break. The relationship right now is broken. I wouldn’t try to mend it. It’ll just cause more stress as time goes on.
[+] [-] f23dsafdsa|2 years ago|reply
It's classic vertical versus horizontal scaling, just with people's life work.
[+] [-] sombragris|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LeanderK|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pge|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomohawk|2 years ago|reply