College of St. Rose Cuts Philosophy BA
The College of St. Rose, a Catholic liberal arts college in Albany, NY, is eliminating 27 programs, including philosophy, and 23 faculty positions, according to an article at Inside Higher Ed. IHE reports: “Many faculty members are speaking out against the cuts, saying that the plan was made without sufficient faculty input and questioning the elimination of the jobs of tenured faculty members.”
The College announced the cuts here.
What a pleasant reminder of the Capitalist-driven genocide of our kind.
Several of the axed programs had literally zero enrolled students. You can’t lay this solely at the feet of capitalism.
“Programs with zero students” is a red herring. Tenured faculty who teach over-subscribed classes were laid off. There were many non-major students who are taught by these professors in multiple courses. The programs that were cut are core to any decent liberal arts university (in particular, philosophy and sociology).
The College is manipulating numbers. It is true that of the 28 programs cut, 12 had zero enrolled students. However, some of those programs were certificate programs, and at Saint Rose students aren’t allowed to declare their certificate until the semester in which they complete its requirements. Thus, a number of these programs had students enrolled in them; they just weren’t counted. Several of the other “no enrollment” programs were also placed on hiatus by faculty members three or four years ago, meaning that cutting them hasn’t saved the College any money. What it has done is provide another “0” number to bring down the average of students purportedly affected by the cuts. The College places this number at 4 students per cut program, which is misleading. Sociology, for example, had 30 majors. Professors were also cut from departments with a healthy number of majors: 126 in History/Poli Sci and 81 in English. English employs a sizable number of adjuncts to cover its gen ed offerings. So why cut full-time profs from that department?
The College’s next plan is to gut gen ed requirements, which will retroactively justify cuts to liberal arts majors. Meanwhile, they will continue to invest in “high demand” programs like graphic design and music industry. This is, indeed, neoliberalism at work.