As bad as things are with WSU administration
- Thread starter random soul
- Start date
No, we aren't.
They need to start with laying off all DIE administrative staff, women's/latino/black/etc studies faculty, sociology faculty, and all the other nonsensical and wasteful useless majors.
Male college enrollment is down 20 percent. Women's enrollment will follow.
Administrative staffing at universities needs to go back to, say, 1990s levels.
Good luck with Schulzie, who has bloated the administration. I can't even start. And remember, I worked in WSU administration for many years. When I look at the current org chart, I want to puke.
I'm loathe to take hatchets to faculty and degree programs until the administrative element is addressed, particularly the extra layers of upper-middle management attached to the school that may not need to be there. Some cuts may end up happening, but eliminating Math and Language departments are NOT ideal. Social sciences and liberal arts degrees do have value, and honestly lots of them don't require as much in resources and equipment as say, engineering, which nobody sane would ever attack. Gen Z is a smaller group of kids though, so there's going to be some shrink, especially given how bad affordability has gotten.
WSU's enrollment has already dropped from 21,022 in 2018 to 17,827 in 2022, which is nearly the same percentage drop as UWV, but over a much shorter period of time, and before the loss of power five status. Hate to break it to you , considering that UWV has a virtual strangle hold on higher ed in WV, which we don't in WA, we are in a much worse position long term than UVA.
Agree to go after administrative staff first, starting with DIE staff. What a waste of money. Go after all other admin staff after that...then worthless degrees that are part of social "sciences."
There was a good examination of the growth of WSU staff a few years ago in the Spokesman Review. They showed how the administrative staff grew at a MUCH greater rate than the student enrollment did. The only thing I recall as justification for the huge growth in staff was the establishment and startup of the Floyd Medical School.
My guess is the rest of the growth was just kingdom building.....
I think this kingdom building has been happening at the public school levels too (kindergarten through high school). Bloated admin staffs that have grown at levels far above growth of teachers and students (in percentage terms). We all allow it as taxpayers, and we know our representatives don't do a good job of keeping a cap on this bloat.
I’m not sure if there’s an easy way to search this, but it would be interesting to look at the numbers. Where you’re going to see the bloat at WSU is in people whose title starts with “assistant” or “associate.”
If you add a “vice” (vice president, vice provost, vice chancellor), odds are good you’re going to see them add at least one associate VP or assistant VC. Beneath them, there will be directors and assistant directors. Beneath those will be the people actually doing work. A lot of those will be classified staff in salary scales that are now getting eliminated because they’re increasingly below minimum wage (true story - you can look that one up. A lot of entire classifications will likely get raises in 2024 because they’ll have to move up salary scales as lower ones are eliminated. And if you raise the salary scale for one classification, pretty soon you have to adjust all of the other classifications too.)
Meanwhile, a lot of those VPs and VCs are now so separated from the work that - if they understand the functions beneath them at all - they don’t really have a good feel for what’s happening. They create priorities and issue instructions that are marginally relevant based on a poor understanding of fragmentary information filtered through multiple layers until all real meaning is taken away. In short, the leadership doesn’t have a clue what’s really happening. And for that, they get low to mid 6 figure salaries.
Here’s another example of a problem: several years ago, a branch campus chancellor wanted a #2 person to fill in when he was away (and to do his dirty work). He didn’t like his vice chancellors and didn’t want to give them that much authority, so he created a new “chief of staff” position with a vague job description. I have enough issue with creating positions that have little responsibility, but it gets worse. Shortly after he created that position…the same one was established on all of the other campuses. Not because they truly needed it, but because someone else had it, so they should too.
Hmmm... I wonder if anything happened in 2019, 2020, 2021 happened that might have affected enrollment. It sure is a mystery...
I wouldn’t entirely strip away the liberal arts, but if cuts have to be made, that’s where I look first. I really don’t see the need to offer degree programs in them - and certainly not advanced degrees. It’s true that they’re generally cheaper than other programs, but they also bring less returns. I protect the true STEM programs (not that STEAM bullshit) - the ones that bring in students and research money. Engineering, physics, chemistry (and, at WSU, a lot of the ag sciences). Math is a critical part of those, so the UG math programs stay. We can talk about investment in the advanced degrees. English needs some protection because kids today can’t write coherently, certainly not past 140 characters. If history is taught correctly (it rarely is) it’s great for critical thinking skills, but again…how much do we want to put into doctorates?
Sociology, drama, music, and PE programs (“recreation studies” not athletic training) are degrees with very little value. I’d look at eliminating those degree programs - just keeping courses for “personal enrichment.” There would be serious pushback from the left, but it would go away pretty quickly. They won’t be able to leave their bartending jobs long enough to make a real fuss.
The decline predates Covid…although the pandemic was certainly a huge factor.
Google is littered with info on admin bloat. Not sure if the numbers you want are there, but probably enough information to make a solid argument.
The decline was minimal before covid, and only because WSU wanted to cap its enrollment at ~22k for the Pullman campus. We are talking about only the Pullman campus, right?
I'm thinking the engineering programs, agriculture, medicine, pharmacy, veterinary studies, all the hard sciences, history, philosophy, maths, Western literature, English, pre-law, music, criminal justice, business entrepreneurship, economics, mostly those. I likely missed a few.
The social "sciences" including women's studies, Latino studies, black studies, should all be axed. Psychology as well. It's mostly bs and worthless and either anti-male or anti-US.
The way you manage this is to better fund the STEM programs and provide more financial assistance for them and com majors get to pay their own way.
I will say the one thing gen z/ millennials are doing that has value is that they place less importance of simply "having a piece of paper", which was basically the biggest gatekeeping mechanism for any and all white collar jobs when I was in my 20's and 30's.
Doesn’t really matter if we’re talking Pullman, WSU, or higher Ed in general. Numbers have been getting soft since 2015 or 16. Started coming down by 18, and fell off the cliff with Covid.
Pretty soon you’ll start seeing word that there are signs of recovery, but it’s going to be comparisons to 5-7 years ago, not pre-Covid. And it’s probably not sustainable.
And that’s why enrollment is softening. The college age kids just aren’t going to school.
It might bump numbers if Gen X parents would kick the freeloaders out of the basement. But our parents left us home alone all day so we feel bad about making junior feel like we don’t want him around. Even when he’s 30.
No doubt. I understand that the enrollment numbers for many colleges has been on a downward trajectory. Some of that is due to demographics (Gen Z numbers), but also much due to the questionable value of a college education vs alternatives.
The cost of a college degree has outpaced inflation significantly. In the meantime you can go drive for UPS and make $170K. College ain’t the no brainer it used to be if you could afford it.
I think its a good thing, and trade salaries are reflective of the value that they bring to society.
The irony is that youtube is FLOODED with Millennial/Gen Y/ Gen Z who went to college and then found out that they actually like to do manual labor because they find it more rewarding so they ditch the corporate life and start cabinetmaking, or farming, or whatever.
I like much of what you are saying. I'd push back on eliminating music as that had been so instrumental (pun intended) to civilization.
Yeah, but then you have to carry heavy stuff in a truck with no AC. Once you work up to the point that you’re allowed to drive.
Ugh, this hurts because its true. Lucky my kid is an asshole and we're happy to part ways, but I understand the sentiment.
They're so desperate for people and growing so fast that most spend 2 years doing the hump work, not the 5+ years waiting for someone to retire like in the past.
Don't see a problem keeping everything. College should allow you to explore the mind, learn, and formulate your own opinions.
Right. But taxpayers pay most of the costs, and if the content is garbage and anti-male or anti-US and worthless, then that is where I would draw the line.
People can learn anything they want on YouTube.
All so you can come here and have someone you don’t know tell you to shove your opinions up your ass and light fire to them.
I think it's fair to be critical of things, and to learn both perspectives.
Projections are that this downward tend is going to continue, imagine that!
WSU Enrollment Declines Expected to Continue for Another 2 Years
PULLMAN - Enrollment declines at Washington State University are expected to continue for another two years.
and as a potential student you aren't very wise to postpone your life and future because of, well you know. Life goes on .... pandemic or not. Conversely, the 2022 entering class at the UW was the largest ever. Hate to break it to you BCG, the problem is real, and due to the past week probably will get worse.
UW’s 2022 entering class is largest and most diverse
The University of Washington’s newest freshman class is the largest and most diverse in the school’s 161-year history.
www.washington.edu
If this is what your customers want and are paying for, you keep them. Whether or not you or I agree is irrelevant. We aren’t writing their checks.
If "their" means the professors, then yes, we as taxpayers are writing their checks. Maybe you mean someone else though.
Very true. But the largest enrollments continue to head toward elementary education and engineering. Engineering tends to weed out over 4 years though.
And WSU in particular has not been good at putting resources where students want them. They’ve dumped money into viticulture & enology…for about 60 students.
Supposedly they’ve been analyzing where to put resources. My fear is that there’s too much speculation about the future being allowed, and they’re going to let vocal faculty force dollars into dead end, low enrollment programs.
