U. of Southern Maine Cuts Affect Philosophy
The University of Maine has announced that it will be eliminating 50 faculty positions and 100 staff positions and restructuring its academic departments so as to make up for a $16 million deficit. Inside Higher Ed reports: “The English, philosophy and history departments would be combined into a single humanities department, Provost Joseph W. McDonnell said in an email to faculty Monday. The new humanities department would have just 22.5 professors, compared to the 29 in the three departments being merged.” The rest of the story is here.
This story ( http://bangordailynews.com/2014/10/06/education/university-of-southern-maine-to-cut-50-faculty-positions-two-academic-programs/ ) has the chilling line: “closely aligning the work of the faculty with the revenue required to run the university.” — IOW, this is sheer austerity politics: assume tuition is the only possible revenue source (thereby covering over previous cuts in public funds), and assume SCHs and / or majors per department is the only way to measure “productivity.”
At first, I thought this headline was about a new philosophical sub-discipline: `affect philosophy’.