Alaska's Engineering Colleges Prepare To Slash Programs, Lay Off Faculty (ieee.org) 125
In response to Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy's dramatic budget cuts to the state's only public institution of higher education, the University of Alaska's engineering colleges in Fairbanks and Anchorage are preparing to cut faculty members and slash a number of programs. "Dozens of engineering faculty, researchers, and staff could see their positions eliminated, and even tenured faculty members could lose their jobs. Students may not be able to finish their degrees in the programs or locations in which they started," reports IEEE Spectrum. "Many engineering students have already lost merit-based scholarships promised to them via the Alaska Performance Scholarship program." From the report: On 28 June, Gov. Dunleavy vetoed US $130 million in state funding for the University of Alaska system for the fiscal year that began on 1 July -- a step he said was necessary to contend with the state's $1.6 billion budget deficit, inflicted in large part by sluggish oil prices. Those cuts came on top of a $5 million reduction proposed by Alaska's legislature. Overall, state funding for the University of Alaska has been reduced by $136 million [PDF], or 41 percent, for the fiscal year that began 1 July. That translates to a 17 percent reduction to the University of Alaska's total operating budget. Citing reputational damage caused by these cuts, the University of Alaska's Board of Regents expects tuition, grant funding, and charitable donations to also drop, adding to a total loss of more than $200 million [PDF] in funding for the current fiscal year.
The University of Alaska is now widely expected to declare financial exigency [PDF], an emergency status that would allow administrators to take extreme measures to reduce costs by closing campuses, slashing salaries and programs, or laying off tenured faculty. However, closing the university's flagship Fairbanks campus would still not be enough to cover the shortfall. In response to budget cuts in previous years, the university has already suspended or discontinued more than 50 degree programs and certificates, including its MS in Engineering Management program.
The University of Alaska is now widely expected to declare financial exigency [PDF], an emergency status that would allow administrators to take extreme measures to reduce costs by closing campuses, slashing salaries and programs, or laying off tenured faculty. However, closing the university's flagship Fairbanks campus would still not be enough to cover the shortfall. In response to budget cuts in previous years, the university has already suspended or discontinued more than 50 degree programs and certificates, including its MS in Engineering Management program.
Whaaaat?? (Score:1, Funny)
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So the democratic solution is to go deeper in debt? Or raise taxes? Or prioritize education over health care?
What are you proposing they do. Your snarky contribution does not solve anything.
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Ya, raise taxes like any other state that never had to depend upon and inexhaustible supply of high priced oil. I suspect that Alaska politicians are all hoping that the prices go back up so that they can continue in their dream world of having good state services with zero taxes.
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So the democratic solution is to go deeper in debt? Or raise taxes?
Oh, you mean dip into those BILLIONS of dollars of oil company exceptions which let them avoid over half of otherwise normal business taxes?
Hell yes.
DEMOCRATS ALSO LIKE TO SPEND, NOT PAY FOR IT (Score:2)
1) Under Obama there was more debt than under all other previous administrations combined.
2) Only congress can spend tax money.
Don't get me wrong. I am not giving republicans a free pass. But saying the problem is entirely the fault of the republicans is demonstrably false.
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We've had a trend, continuing with the current president, that the deficit increases over time. Even with presidents who campaign on promises to reduce or eliminate the debt, trade deficit, budget, etc. Much of the problem is that presidents just don't have as much power to affect change as they imply they will have during campaign season. The current economy is highly influenced by actions taken a decade ago as well, so the most accurate campaign promise is that the debt will be reduced but that the voters
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1) Under Obama there was more debt than under all other previous administrations combined.
Under Reagan it was 3 times more. Under G.W. it was 2x more. Do you practice stupid?
2) Only congress can spend tax money.
False. Or did you notice how tRump is spending War Money on his wall?
Don't get me wrong. I am not giving republicans a free pass. But saying the problem is entirely the fault of the republicans is demonstrably false.
Yes you are giving the people who took the debt from 930B to 12.8T a free pass.
Obama took it from 12.8T to 19.3T.
do the math,you lie
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Of course not, RW snowflakes are demanding a payday NOW in tax cuts and fuck the people who do the work
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Immediately reminded me of:
Bluto: Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
Otter: Germans?
Boon: Forget it. He's rolling...
There's a common meme going around that anything that is not a strongly right wing version of laissez faire economics is socialism. Of course, once you brand someone as a socialist then suddenly it's not racist to tell them to go back to their crime ridden home country (which is wherever Brooklyn is).
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As I was saying before some rapists got offended...
Just another case of rapeublican rape.
Raping people's rights, raping institutions, raping women and children...
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Maybe stop paying residents for doing nothing (Score:2, Insightful)
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And that's exactly what a majority of people living in Alaska are trying to do. However, Dunleavy is also the governor who got elected by promising everyone a $3,000 PFD and appears to be determined to stick to that, education (and a whole massive range of other services) be damned.
Most Alaskans are will to either forego a PFD entirely and/or adopt an income or sales tax to cover the cost of the services, but Dunleavy's vetoes can't be overridden without a 3/4 majority (of which only about 38 --a mix of bo
Re:Maybe stop paying residents for doing nothing (Score:4, Informative)
You must not be an Alaskan resident, because you're speaking of the PFD without a single shred of an idea of what it really is. I'll give you a starting point: the PFD doesn't come from, involve, or take away from the budget UA's money comes from nor does it come from the state's coffers.
Re:Maybe stop paying residents for doing nothing (Score:5, Informative)
Different AC, will be a bit clearer: In Alaska, you do not own all rights to land you own by default, the state does.
In return, there is a fund, supported by exploitation of those rights (oil rights, most obviously, but others too) which is meant to support Alaska. This "Permanent Fund" is used in lieu of taxes (at the state level, most municipalities have a tax or two at their level).
In the good times, we started paying out some of that as a 'Dividend' - so we're getting paid for not having specific land rights, basically. Not a horribly unfair arrangement when you think it through.
And here's me... (Score:2)
... with no mod points
Heaven forbid they pay taxes (Score:2, Insightful)
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High taxes create an exodus from blue states to red states where they try to implement the same thing that caused them to leave again.
They publish numbers about the movement of populations.
Didn't know that, did ya?
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Well...not really. At least not engineering.
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They don't need all that learnin' up there. What good is engineering in a harsh climate anyways? How is that going to help you wrassle a bear, or get the Palin kids off your lawn?
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I keep hearing people say this online but I did not see any of this when I went to school. I went to the university of colorado at boulder and studied chemical engineering and we definitely did not have things like trigger warnings, micro aggression etc stuff. We had about 80 hours of week of work in our classes (class time + study time + homework time) so there was not any time to do other stuff at the university but that is what life is like for most engineers. Even in the soft classes we had to take thou
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I went back to school for a third time and graduated just 8 years ago. Nothing like this on my campus either. I still go through campus twice a day, and there is no obvious evidence of this from day-to-day. It really seems like a RWNJ talking point to stir up the base more than anything.
That said, I can't see how a "trigger warning" is a bad thing. "Hey, the discussion today is going to be about rape. If you've been raped, we don't want this to be a surprise to you." Isn't that just basic human decency? Wha
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If you are just giving people a heads up on a possibly sensitive topic that is just basic decency and I have no problem with it. I remember people doing that long before the term trigger warning even existed. Many of the things discussed in my bioethics class where certainly sensitive topics. Of course that is also the point of a bioethics class. If you are going to be doing biological engineering it is important to think about the ethics in the field before you do something.
Re: Heaven forbid they pay taxes (Score:2, Insightful)
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No income tax? No property tax? States like this should receive $0 federal funding. This is outrageous.
Alaska has property tax.
Anyway, your point does not follow. Why should a state be taxed for nothing just because they do not need other specific types of tax revenue?
Do you believe Washington, that deep-blue state ought to receive no federal funding? No medicaid, no medicare, no provisions for roads, education, loans, social security, no coast guard, no customs, on and on it goes?
Of course not. That would be absurd. But if it's a red state, well, they are just a bunch of white trash deplorables right? No bi
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Is the Washington state slashing higher education funding because they have a monoculture economy?
Yes. [seattlemag.com]
News outlets won't chicken little about blue states, but will on red states. It's election season. yay.
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It wasn't the SIZE of the taxes... (Score:3)
It's a bit like the capital gains tax, in that it is inherently unstable - large one year, small the next. Trouble is, legislators always want to spend every penny available, and the only way expenses come back down is... cuts.
Pity about the impact on education, not really sure how it had such a massive retro-active impact on yours though.
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If UAA could only teach (Score:3, Insightful)
When a University is unable to keep its teaching accreditation then we should shut down that University. As a resident of Alaska, we’re unable to justify three separate Universities for a state that has only 700,000 people.
Re:If UAA could only teach (Score:4, Informative)
When a University is unable to keep its teaching accreditation then we should shut down that University. As a resident of Alaska, we’re unable to justify three separate Universities for a state that has only 700,000 people.
What if you call it one university with three widely separated campus complexes? Would that make it acceptable to you?
The fact is Alaska is a huge state. Fairbanks and Juneau are 1000 miles apart, with Anchorage roughly in the middle. Alaska has just three significant centers of population, so this locates one campus in each. That seems like a very intelligent way of arranging this. The public college attendance in Alaska per capita is about average for the country (a bit lower) so it hardly seems excessive. Even little Fairbanks is a metropolitan area of 100,000 people, its 8000 student campus hardly seems excessive for the population, nor pathetically small as an institution.
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Must suck to live in a third world country.
My hometown has roughly 300k inhabitants, we have ten universities.
One is workd wide reputated: KiT Karlsruher Institute of Technology.
And: for most of the world, studying here is: free.
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Conspiracy theory (Score:2)
Could it be that powerful forces want to ensure that the following study is never subjected to peer review, and a final report issued: Collapse of World Trade Center 7 [uaf.edu]?
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No.
Nice (Score:2)
Well played, sir.
Tenured profs and adminstratorsu losing jobs good (Score:1)
Good to see a large state run university system facing layoffs of previously untouchable tenured professors and administrators.
The bloat increase in those high paying college staff jobs funded by all to easy to get student loans is the reason why college is too expensive and growing faster than inflation for 25 years.
Would like to see the same in a larger state - Calif, Florida, NY, NJ, Texas, ...
How about all the coaches and administrators? (Score:2)
They're firing engineering professors, but what about the football coaches and all the VPs in charge of fundraising and counting paper clips? It wouldn't hurt to shed a few of them.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't understand the plan.
If we're going to bring all the factory jobs back to make America great again, we need a work force that will compete with Chinese/Vietnamese/Congolese wages. That starts with not wasting money on education. Educated people want better jobs and more pay. That's not going to Make America Great Again!
Oh yeah, uneducated people tend to be easily manipulated into voting for the GOP (govt of Putin), which is another benefit of cutting education funding.
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The Trump campaigns internal polling was certainly not public.
Your reading comprehension sucks. Russia influenced the election. Mueller indicted over a dozen Russians in tampering with our elections and would prove it in court if Russia would extradite the individuals (but they obviously won't).
So you don't believe the FBI, CIA, the NSA but you do believe Putin. You completely misrepresent that private polling was public. Are you Trump?
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Always the same. You can't ever actually defend Trump so whataboutism.
I might start to worry about this ... (Score:2)
... if they lay off every "diversity officer" first. And anything involving sports.
If they don't, then they can't be hurting all that much.
Seems like a mere political stunt (Score:2)
The mayor through a hissy fit. Instead of looking for waste, she decided that cuts would come out of police and fire department budgets first. She even went so far as to cut the rape victims testing unit. Her more pet initiatives for Bike paths
Tbh (Score:2)
...this is the sort of thing we need to see in the federal government that borrows 1/3 of its budget annually just to pay the bills.
This isn't a partisan point, I'd fully support a flat proportionalization across all programs of the federal budget each year to match the tax income from the previous period, with no favorites (except debt service, which is obligatory).
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> It would drive down the cost of education if educators were forced to charge what people could pay rather than what government could steal.
If that were true, private schools would cost less. It's not true, such is the lesson.
Stop Lying (Score:1)
Stop lying. Private schools are less expensive at every level. However, you don't see the enormous cost of public subsidies for lazy rivers and other such horseshit. Add in some nice subsidies like the state not having to pay workman's comp and whatnot for employees.
The reality is that there's plenty of graft^H^H^H^H^Hfat to cut in public universities, and at UAA in particular. Oh god, we only have $7000 per student in state funding, $6400 in tuition, $1400 in fees and $8K for a dorm room. Shit, for only $
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While that's certainly a coherent philosophical position, it leads to a future where businesses, burdened with finding skilled workers, move high value jobs overseas.
And to be truly consistent, you have to apply that to all the way down the the line to elementary school education. Why should people with no kids pay to education other peoples' kids? Because in the long run they'll be burdened with ignorant neighbors, coworkers and employees. But in the short term, it would be pretty sweet.
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Yup, what America had in the past that made it the world leader wasn't a military that could bully everyone, it was that we had good educated and skilled workers. US universities (if not K-12) were the envy of most of the world, which is why we always had a good number of foreign students paying full price to help offset state tuition. Now that education is considered something only for elitists, the US is also (coincidentally?) losing its edge.
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And yet, society does better when people from all classes get a good education, and it makes for a wealthier society. If there's any rising tide that lifts all ships, then it's education for all rather than tax cuts for all.
100K for BA in loans can work there (Score:2)
100K for BA in loans can work there