Something over a third of the national budget goes to the military. Say 35%. Another 35% to interest on the debt.

Social Security, Medicare, education, and everything else are supposed to bite chunks out of each other over what’s left.

Why isn’t the big picture even part of the discussion? Why?

(I don’t mean on this blog. I mean in kitchens across the country.)

On the FTE-spouting colleagues over in Hoodumpler Hall: The war is over when the academics start talking in the tongues of acronymia and other forms of administrivia. Such as “….on the other hand, if we DO do this, maybe we can get a little more ESF money from the UWEC.” The acronym is the trojan horse of the adminisphere, or the neutron bomb. I think Historiann is right when she predicts this former scholar is on the way to the admin-bin. Does anybody remember the “Reagan Pod” episode on Saturday Night Live, c. 1980/1981? Is that on YouTube yet?

We’ve changed our degree requirements so that students are no longer required to complete 36 credits of a 120-credit degree in senior seminar or equivalent (i.e. honours thesis) work. They take 18 credits at the senior level or three seminar-equivalents.

This has allowed us to reduce the size of senior seminars to something manageable (I taught my first-ever seminar with fewer than twenty students this past year!). The kicker is that’s pushed the enrolment elsewhere so that my sophomore-level survey hit 135 before we closed enrolment there. And while we don’t have a lot of adjunct faculty (yet!), students also bleed off into the distance-ed courses which isn’t desirable as a major part of their program.

With regards to the psychologist that Susan mentions, I’ve heard that attitude before coming from colleagues in other disciplines who don’t understand why we can’t convert more of our courses to huge lecture surveys. These often are the same colleagues who have the gall to complain about how bad their students are at writing when they actually start fielding large amounts of prose at the senior or graduate levels.

On the other hand, when I look at the numbers (and I do get into the data for the entire institution since I have a login for our IR datamart), I see that we beat these “high-performing” departments hands-down in overall enrolments to course offerings, in FTEs/faculty members and so on. So I’m not too impressed by their posturing and bullying about how they do so much more for the university. Only if you interpret the numbers in their preferred fashion!

According to hir logic, then, it’s possible to teach an infinitely humongous class with unlimited numbers of students, and that’s just as effective as teaching 20 or 30 students in a class. Wowie.

(Something tells me your colleague will have a smooth transition to administration!)

Matt, I take your point about administrators–I’m sure Roxie & Moose might, too. I think you make a great point about the citizenry in general, and their responsibility for our current predicament.

Frankly, at a state school, however, I have a hard time blaming administration (completely). At the end of the day, if citizens don’t want to pay taxes, then you have to have to give up services, like college for everyone, roads, bridges, a social safety-net, etc. And not that many people seem willing to pay those kinds of taxes.

Neither is the state government willing to let us raise standards and kick out slackers to make room for students with better prospects. High standards, High enrollment, or High Retention (pick two).

Best of luck grading Historiann.