Courtesy of The Chronicle of Higher Education; Istock.
Dear Commons Community,
David C.K. Curry, a professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Potsdam, has a featured article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, in which ” he reviews how colleges including his own are retrenching faculty and “gutting” the liberal arts. Here is an excerpt:
“The State University of New York at Potsdam, where I teach, recently fired seven tenured faculty members, at least one of whom had worked there for more than 35 years. The precise number of contract nonrenewals on top of this is a closely guarded secret. Eighteen programs have been discontinued, and more have been so depleted as not to have any full-time faculty members at all. This, it was recently announced, is just the first round of cuts.
Without warning, the soon-to-be-retrenched were summoned to a mandatory meeting and told they would be let go in a year. A “realignment” plan announced in February 2022 was the writing on the wall. In my own department, philosophy, the realignment plan seemed to confirm what we had suspected: that we were victims of a multiyear effort to kill off our program, first revealed by the refusal to replace two of our department’s four full-time faculty colleagues when they retired, in 2018 and 2020.”
He goes to comment how what happened at Potsdam is playing itself out in other colleges and universities.
“This is a tale that is already old from the retelling. The steep cuts at West Virginia University brought the story into national focus, but similar “realignments,” “transformations,” and “restructurings” have been unfolding for the last three years. At Emporia State University, in Kansas, 30 faculty members were laid off in September 2022 because of “extreme financial pressure.” SUNY-Fredonia and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro have recently announced planned program and personnel cuts that follow the template to a tee. Marquette, Valparaiso, Wright State — the list is constantly growing.”
This is a sad and difficult time for the liberal arts and for much of higher education. Curry’s piece is important reading.
Tony
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