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United States Education

US Colleges Slash Majors in Effort To Cut Costs (cbsnews.com) 110

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
St. Cloud State University announced plans to eliminate its music department and cut 42 degree programs and 50 minors, as part of a broader trend of U.S. colleges slashing offerings amid financial pressures. The Minnesota school's decision, driven by a $32 million budget shortfall over two years, reflects challenges facing higher education institutions nationwide. Similar program cuts have been announced at universities across the country, including in North Carolina, Arkansas, and New York. Some smaller institutions have closed entirely, unable to weather the financial storm, reports CBS News.

Federal COVID relief funds have dried up, operational costs are rising, and fewer high school graduates are pursuing college degrees. St. Cloud State's enrollment plummeted from 18,300 students in fall 2020 to about 10,000 in fall 2023, mirroring national trends. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reports a decline in four-year college enrollment, despite a slight rebound in community college numbers.
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US Colleges Slash Majors in Effort To Cut Costs More

US Colleges Slash Majors in Effort To Cut Costs

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  • Slash Majors :-) (Score:4, Funny)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Monday August 12, 2024 @04:10PM (#64699888)

    Possible Jeopardy answers:

    (a) Who are high ranking people at /.
    (b) Who are people studying /.
    (c) Who are people studying Guns N' Roses

  • I'm sure the football team will survive (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CyberSnyder ( 8122 ) on Monday August 12, 2024 @04:13PM (#64699894)

    Actually, I don't know if they even have a football team. But the football team always seems to survive the budget cuts.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Rinnon ( 1474161 )
      What a sad state of affairs for education when the one item that never makes it to the chopping block is the sports team.
      • At a lot of schools, the football and basketball teams are money makers. That is why in many states the football coach at the university is the highest paid public employee. That is sad indeed.

        • Only the marquee Division 1 programs actually make money (i.e. the Alabama football programs of the world). The vast majority of college athletics programs cost more than they bring in. Part of the problem is there are legions of wannabe schools who think they can build profitable program if they just spend a bunch of money.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by taustin ( 171655 )

            And even if they don't directly make a profit, they're a wonder fundraising tool among alumni. Factor that in, and more of them are profitable than you believe.

            • Colleges are essentially securitizing their student loans out to other people. Colleges should be required to keep 25% of student loans on their books and take losses with each delayed payment;

              Universities have since 2010 doing what the mortgage industry did before 2008, issuing/facilitating a loan to a person and then letting someone else lend the money and take all of the risk.

              Universities need to also get some negative effects if their former students cannot pay off a loan, miss a payment, or make othe

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by ixuzus ( 2418046 )

                - Why are people getting college loans for more than 4 years? Why aren't they limited to 4 years in a lifetime? Should taxpayers take on the liability for all of those getting 2nd, 3rd, 4th graduate degrees because the earlier degrees just didn't work out from an employment perspective?

                Seriously? To train a basic doctor you've got 4 years of undergraduate degree and four years of medical school before you even get to your residency, dentistry I think is five plus a couple more for any specialty like orthodontics,

          • I'd add that often thru the magic of accounting is how even the tier 1 schools make money. The athletic dept is usually a separately run entity and receives all the money from tv rights tickets etc. But often the costs are externalized back to the university, like building the stadium, and then the stadium gets rented back to the athletic dept for a song.

      • What a sad state of affairs for education when the one item that never makes it to the chopping block is the sports team.

        Sports teams have been cancelled.

        https://eu.cjonline.com/story/... [cjonline.com] And the big list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        Here's the big problem - I suspect you are very concerned about women and their scholarships to attend college. Me too. Title 9 demands that there must be equality in numbers. So if say, the football team is cancelled, women will lose scholarships. All this costs money.

        And a side note regarding the funding for these teams - it isn't just female teams, but more people are worried

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by eegeerg ( 673636 )

          I wanted to rec' but no mod points. The list of defunct teams is just sad. We lost BU and Northeastern in what seems like a heartbeat. At least we have the Beanpot. :)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by GlennC ( 96879 )

      St. Cloud State does not have a football team. They don't have very many intercollegiate teams, and it looks like their biggest program is hockey.

      But you couldn't take the time to find out and just puked out the first bile that came to you.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by woojo ( 3944585 )
      SCSU axed the football program a few years ago. I'm sure they'd riot if they got rid of Hockey though.

      • SCSU axed the football program a few years ago. I'm sure they'd riot if they got rid of Hockey though.

        Speaking of Ice Hockey, the owner of the Buffalo Sabres gave a huge gift to a Pennsylvania University (PSU) to build a Rink, and field a Division one team.

        The usual antagonists actually demanded that the money be used for purposed they deemed appropriate.

        What degree of entitlement is that? Hint - the Gender studies or philosophy programs don't have a whole lot to do with Ice Hockey. Donors give money for specific things, and it is their money until the check is cashed.And the hockey program was a m

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by eegeerg ( 673636 )

          Good post. Profitable sports programs absolutely do fund money-losing sports to the benefit of women (and men). This is a good thing.

          the owner of the Buffalo Sabres gave a huge gift to a Pennsylvania University (PSU)

          "Pennsylvania University" will not stand. Mr. Pegula has a current estimated worth of $7 Billion (2021) and donated $0.1 Billion in 2010 to fund the new arena. Very generous by billionaire standards. Too bad he made his billions from fracking.

    • Actually, I don't know if they even have a football team. But the football team always seems to survive the budget cuts.

      If the football program is successful enough at the D1 level, not only is it self sustaining, the profits from men's sports are used to subsidize women's sports that bring in zilch. And in the power conferences, most have rules that sports can't be funded out of the general budget, but must come from donors and tickets and extras. And in these cases, the sports cost the school absolutely nothing and bring in a profit. The Big Ten brought in over a billion dollars with their latest TV deal. The SEC brought i

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by taustin ( 171655 )

      Men's sports generally turns a healthy profit for the school. Often, an obscene profit, especially if the school is big enough their games are shown on TV. Ugly reality, but reality, nonetheless.

    • But believe it or not smaller sports, especially anything women's sports, get slashed during these budget cuts. Think the kind of sports that are just there because people play them and not because you have entire stadiums watching them like basketball and football.

      • Any women's sports cuts are legally mandated to have equal men's sports cuts. Unsurprising you don't know that however.

    • Because football teams ALWAYS make money for the school....duh?

      Cancel the football teams, and generally you've cancelled all the funding for title 9 teams.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hodr ( 219920 )

      I'm not a big sports guy, but it was my understanding that a lot of the sports, and football in particular, are money makers for the schools. Even if your team is not very good, the high earning teams will actually pay you to play ("guarantee games").

      And of course if you have a high ranking sports team that will bring in a lot of alumni funding, which even if it isn't spread around evenly will still pay for common use facilities and admin staff.

    • Football teams bring in money and visibility.

  • It's funding cuts and graft (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday August 12, 2024 @04:19PM (#64699928)
    You'll note that the states seeing this tend to be red states (St Cloud is blue state wide but thanks to gerrymandering it's Red in the Senate).

    This is classic "small enough to drown in a bath tub" politics. e.g. you get in charge using tricks (voter suppression & gerrymandering & huge amounts of corporate cash) then you undermine public services from within.

    In Arizona the governor did two really horrible things on the way out the door. First he put a crony in charge of the local University and that crony used his position of power to spend $100m+ on an online diploma mill he had financial ties to.

    And then there's "school vouchers". It's a program designed to destroy public schools (and your property values with it!). 95% of the money went to rich parents who were already sending their kids to private schools (because of course it did). Meanwhile the program cost 10 times what they said it would and it's tore a hole in the entire state's budget.

    It's what's called "Smash & Grab" politics, and it's your schools and property values that are getting smashed.

    • Re:It's funding cuts and graft (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Monday August 12, 2024 @04:39PM (#64700004)

      Are they having this problem in Florida? Texas? Tennessee? Doesn't seem like it. Go take your false narratives elsewhere.

      • Are they having this problem in Florida? Texas? Tennessee? Doesn't seem like it. Go take your false narratives elsewhere.

        This is a small school problem, not a Red or Blue problem. For both state and private schools, size matters. We're moving into an era where only the bigger state schools and hyper-expensive private schools like the Ivy League will offer certain majors. This isn't necessarily a bad thing.

      • FL/TXTN voucher ;programs are much, *much* smaller subsidies. What Arizona did is the full on Project 2025. Not a small subsidy but literally all the money that would have gone to that student. It's removing them from the system.

        It's causing the public schools to collapse, and with it everyone's property values. The full effects haven't quite hit yet, but you can see it in some of the outlier cities. e.g. values are still OK in the capital city, but they're dropping elsewhere. And the blight is spreadin

        • It's causing the public schools to collapse, and with it everyone's property values

          Yay! Cheaper housing for everyone! Right? Isn't that what you usually want? It's crazy how you twist things to the benefit of your political team, maybe you could try some honesty and consistency.

          The reason is simple, young parents won't move where the schools suck, and they can't afford to send their kids to pricey boarding schools that cost 3x or more the cost of public (even with all the money that would have gone to that student it's not enough).

          Try comparing apples to apples; from https://finance.yahoo.com/news... [yahoo.com]:

          The average amount that a public elementary or secondary school, including charter schools, in the United States spends per student is $15,205 in 2021, according to Public School Review. The national average for annual private school tuition in 2021 is approximately $11,645, according to Private School Review.

          Backpack funding would be great; there is far more choice in these private schools, and they're less expensive overall.

          • Meanwhile the people who support voucher programs would be very upset if they found out that supporting them caused their schools to collapse resulting in lower property values.

            When I point out the property value issues it's to communicate to the sort of mean-spirited jerk who only cares about themselves.

            They're not going to respond to anything but what's it it for them and the answer to that question is their property values don't collapse.

            And there's absolutely nothing to do with choice with t

      • Finding a counter example which doesn't actually invalidate a trend is not a false narrative. If the world is divided into red vs blue, and all examples of one thing is red, then identifying a red thing which was excluded doesn't change the conclusion that it's a red problem, it just means that not all red has that problem.

    • Actually I don't think you "can note" that it tends to be either a red state or blue state thing. And, your assertions in this case are way off base about this being a red district vs blue district thing. Here's the St. Cloud Times [sctimes.com] article that discusses what is happening in this specific scenario.

      According to the article "The university’s enrollment consistently declined from roughly 18,000 students in 2010 to roughly 10,000 students in 2024." Additionally from the article: "SCSU underperformed
      • that's the problem. There are several like Minnesota and they can at times (... with the help of some traitors on the blue side) override a governor veto.

        Some of the red states have minimized the damage with smaller subsidies rather than the Project 2025 plan AZ did, and AZ is such a disaster it's forced states to reconsider their plan to implement Project 2025.

        But Gerrymandering does a *lot* of damage.

    • Wait, after 20 years of complaining that property costs are too high now you're complaining about property values maybe dropping? WTF is wrong with you, really?

    • MN has a DFL majority in their house, senate, and the governor.

  • Sure (Score:2, Insightful)

    by The Cat ( 19816 )

    When administrators cut fine arts programs, it simply proves they have no idea how education works.

    I was both a music major and an English major at various points in my higher education. Three out of every four classes I took in university were core subjects that every student had to take in order to graduate with an accredited degree, regardless of their major.

    Among the subjects I studied while earning my degree were: physics, chemistry, astronomy, predicate calculus, archaeology and geography along with a

    • I think the problem is that university departments were allowed to grow too big and salaries were only possible with the huge international student enrolment. In a normal situation, the university should just selectively layoff individuals and shrink courses and staff/faculty headcount until the budget works again. Unfortunately post secondary institutions are very political environments and it's very hard to get rid of people. My hunch is that they decided to cut whole departments and just get rid of every

    • Re:Sure (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Rinnon ( 1474161 ) on Monday August 12, 2024 @04:31PM (#64699986)

      When administrators cut fine arts programs, it simply proves they have no idea how education works.

      Maybe. Or maybe they do understand and make the cuts all the same because of the financial realities of running an educational institution in a capitalist world. I sat on the Board of Governors for my alma mater some years back, and the people in charge were genuine in their belief in education, but they made decisions like they were running a business, because they had no other choice. If your customers aren't signing up for a service, and it's costing you money to run it to a point that isn't sustainable, you'll axe it even if it was a service that was good for the community. It's a terrible thing, but unless a society is willing to prioritize education such that these kinds of programs can continue to be funded, even at a loss, then this is the sort of outcome that can only be expected.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Was my degree worth it? I have more than a million words in print and readers in sixteen countries. I am one of perhaps a couple thousand people on this continent who can sit down with nothing but a pencil and a piece of paper and write a story total strangers in foreign countries are willing to pay to read. That makes me rarer than a good major league baseball pitcher or a good fighter pilot.

      ...

      Between us, my parents and I hold four university degrees. All are related to writing, English or journalism.

      That's a lot of padding in a one sentence CV. Maybe you should pick up some editing skills.

    • Re:Sure (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Sique ( 173459 ) on Monday August 12, 2024 @04:48PM (#64700030) Homepage

      There is no faster way to learn math than to study music.

      Math major here. I doubt that. I was never a musician, I can't dance, I don't play an instrument. I don't listen to music. I got a fair share of theoretical music education, but that's more because I am interested in it from a historical point of view. My son, who is a fairly o.k. amateur musician, is not very good at math. My daughter is at least as tone deaf than I am, but she once got a prize in a yearly math competition, albeit her interests lie elsewhere.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Yep, same here. CS type with an engineering PhD, but I have an 80% math base education and additional skills in logic, modern algebra and some more. Music may help with what is basically _counting_, but it does not help with what is actually mathematics. An Abacus likely helps more with that counting. I doubt Music has ever helped anybody to understand what a proof is, how to find one or why it is important. Or how to structure theory. Or how to model anything.

        What music skills are good at is generate arro

    • They understand that just like court side seats, home ownership, reality TV grade vacation spots.... it has been decided by the powers that be a college education should be for the rich. I should add some conspiracy theory to this....there is no middle class and that medium income of what now? 70k? Is complete bull.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Higher education only for the rich is what you commonly find in the 3rd world. Apparently heading that way seems to be desirable to some people.

    • I went to college in the 90's, and I have the same attitude. My degree is in engineering, but without the classes in art and architecture history, design, and a few others I would have never had the successes I have experienced. My curriculum was also about 85% structured and scheduled as a 5-year degree.

      Grads today are in a different situation though. Schools try to keep more classes within the school, reduce electives, and push kits out with a 4-year schedule that is nearly impossible to make work... in t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        I went to college in the 90's, and I have the same attitude. My degree is in engineering, but without the classes in art and architecture history, design, and a few others I would have never had the successes I have experienced.

        That really depends very much on the type of engineering and specialization. In some areas it is direly needed, in others it is a complete waste of time and may even be massively counter-productive. For example, I have seen electrical connectors that are normally not in view of anybody and that looked elegant, but were barely functional. That is an abject failure of engineering education. Apparently form vs. function never got taught, but form got a major part in the curriculum of that designer. I have seen

    • You write a good copypasta

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      One sample does not a pattern make. If you were actually good at math, you would know that. That said, there are too much worthless majors, and that is usually not because of the subject, but because of how they are taught and who is allowed in, talent-wise. When education becomes commercialized, there is always a trend to require less and make things easier and easier, resulting in, say, Philosophy majors that cannot event do propositional logic and similar atrocities. Not that this is any better in the ST

    • Lots of boating going on there to say you couldn't pass a decent calculus class. Good luck getting paid like a MLB pitcher or a regular old airline captain.

    • That's a great story Cat! But sorry, my tastes have changed, I don't read that kinda fiction anymore.

  • Is it really about education? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bunyip ( 17018 ) on Monday August 12, 2024 @04:44PM (#64700016)

    About the only thing outpacing higher education costs is healthcare costs. I've been awarded a few degrees, I've worked with several universities as an outsider to sponsor research, and I've spent years on an advisory board. May I suggest a few problems that need to be fixed?
    - Tenured professors that teach maybe one or two classes a year
    - Layers of administration that don't teach or really add to the value
    - Buillshit jobs in administration. My pet peeve is the graduate school troll who has to measure the headings in every thesis to make sure they're exactly centered

    Anyone care to add to the list?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rinnon ( 1474161 )
      Sure, I'll add to your list.

      - Tenured professors that teach maybe one or two classes a year

      - Unrealistic or nonsensical publishing goals that prioritize quantity over quality and generally contribute to the above issue.

      - Excessive redundancy in program offerings across institutions that serve the same catchment area.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by labnet ( 457441 )

      Good points. In Australia at least, the administration layer has grown like a cancer.

    • - Tenured professors that teach maybe one or two classes a year

      I'm a STEM staffer at a public university. In my opinion, tenure itself really needs to go away.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Sure:

      - Profit-orientation.

      Cannot work in the education field, and same for healthcare.

    • How about the heads of publicly funded and supposedly non-profit universities being paid more than the president of the United States?

    • This is what is nice about the former community college I work for (not legally able to be called that since we offer a few batchelors degrees now). No research, etc. so no publish or perish. Other than our Gen Ed classes (which guarantee admission to a state uni but maybe not the college/program of choice when you finish your AA degree) all of our degree tracks are targeted at getting a graduate a job - from the vocational classes (auto, a/c, welding etc) to IT stuff to the various healthcare jobs (radio

  • ... where the casino manager asks the Andy Garcia "Where did all that money go?"

    Seriously, we've been witnessing a tripling of college tuition in the past three decades. Everyone knows kids aren't graduating in 4 years anymore, colleges charge more, and more and more people have flocked to colleges (although it's taking a turn I believe). Where's all the money going? And why are the arts always the first to take the shaft when it comes to funding cuts, be it government or schools? How about you let

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by schwit1 ( 797399 )

      It doesn't help that the loans are signed by gullible 18 year old's who have zero financial experience.
      It doesn't help that many of the degrees have no long term income after graduation
      It doesn't help that the taxpayer backs the loans. Costs always go up when the government foots the bill up front.

      This only gets fixed when loans are solely between schools and students.

  • How to get a bigger budget (Score:3)

    by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Monday August 12, 2024 @04:56PM (#64700052) Homepage

    1. Complain loudly about lack of funding.
    2. Cut really popular programs or classes. (Don't cut the unimportant stuff, nobody notices that.)
    3. Watch the backlash lead to more funding.

  • I've been in the Public University Sphere for 20y (Score:5, Informative)

    by eepok ( 545733 ) on Monday August 12, 2024 @04:59PM (#64700060) Homepage

    ... and most people severely estimate the cost of simply operating an R1 university campus.

    It's a city. My campus has over 45,000-70,000 people on it on any given day. There are hundreds of buildings and thousands of acres. We have infants in the child center, undergraduates, PhD students, union and non-union workers, faculty, non-faculty researchers, and non-researcher faculty. Water and water treatment facilities, electricity generation, vehicle parking, bicycle parking, buses, medical offices, and mental health offices. Food banks, cultural centers, theaters, and athletic fields. Over 16,000 people live on the campus.

    And people always want more. They want more classrooms, labs, open space, and infill. They want us to admit more students, but they don't want us to build more buildings to house them, feed them, and teach them. Students demand more and more social services (ESPECIALLY mental health support), but don't think student fees should be increased to pay for the medical professionals.

    And the cost of human labor continues to go up because the cost of housing continues to go up. If you rent near a major university campus, you know that the landlords (corporate or not) KNOW they have a captured population and the rent WILL go up 5-10%/year. When the rent goes up, people demand more wages. When the wages go up and you're not allowed to increase tuition or suddenly find a surprise grant fund, you have to decrease expenses.

    And those grant funds are key. My university system takes ~50% of all competitive grants coming to the university to help support the campus directly. I'll say that again... if you're a scientist that won a $4,000,000 grant to discover better ways to polish electrons, you get to budget $2,000,000 of that grant. The rest goes to the campus for "support" as a separate revenue source so that the cost of the university isn't completely put on the backs of student debt.

    It's big and complex. Too complex for CBS News to reliably reduce to "Universities are cutting majors".

    • My university system takes ~50% of all competitive grants coming to the university to help support the campus directly. I'll say that again... if you're a scientist that won a $4,000,000 grant to discover better ways to polish electrons, you get to budget $2,000,000 of that grant. The rest goes to the campus for "support" as a separate revenue source so that the cost of the university isn't completely put on the backs of student debt.

      Well, to nitpick a bit... you didn't actually write (or get) a $4M grant to study electron polishing. You wrote a grant requesting $2M in funds for your research, then as part of that grant submission you added a $2M entry that specifically states it covers your university's overhead requirement. It's not hidden at all.

      Overhead includes the cost of paying university support staff (in your department, your school, and for the university as a whole), the janitors, the people who repair broken toilets, probabl

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )

      ... and most people severely estimate the cost of simply operating an R1 university campus. It's a city. My campus has over 45,000-70,000 people on it on any given day. There are hundreds of buildings and thousands of acres. We have infants in the child center, undergraduates, PhD students, union and non-union workers, faculty, non-faculty researchers, and non-researcher faculty. Water and water treatment facilities, electricity generation, vehicle parking, bicycle parking, buses, medical offices, and mental health offices. Food banks, cultural centers, theaters, and athletic fields. Over 16,000 people live on the campus. And people always want more. They want more classrooms, labs, open space, and infill. They want us to admit more students, but they don't want us to build more buildings to house them, feed them, and teach them. Students demand more and more social services (ESPECIALLY mental health support), but don't think student fees should be increased to pay for the medical professionals.

      You haven't said anything (except child center - WTF is up with that? What did people do before their workplace offered child care?) has existed for eons. Nothing new.

      And the cost of human labor continues to go up because the cost of housing continues to go up. If you rent near a major university campus, you know that the landlords (corporate or not) KNOW they have a captured population and the rent WILL go up 5-10%/year. When the rent goes up, people demand more wages. When the wages go up and you're not allowed to increase tuition or suddenly find a surprise grant fund, you have to decrease expenses.

      True, but you seem to be missing the difference [visualcapitalist.com] between the rise in college tuition and inflation rate, which is nicely visualized in the page I referenced.

      And those grant funds are key. My university system takes ~50% of all competitive grants coming to the university to help support the campus directly. I'll say that again... if you're a scientist that won a $4,000,000 grant to discover better ways to polish electrons, you get to budget $2,000,000 of that grant. The rest goes to the campus for "support" as a separate revenue source so that the cost of the university isn't completely put on the backs of student debt.

      That's a bit disingenuous. The indirect cost is separate from the cost of the grant, an is treated completely differently than the grant, which makes sense. That "support" covers the c

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Complexity kills efficiency, effectiveness and generally warps things. It is the very wrong way to do this. Of course, complexity can be good for profits if there are sufficiently perverted incentives, like a bureaucracy that first and foremost desires to grow and absorb everything. As all bureaucracies do.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by khchung ( 462899 )

      ... and most people severely estimate the cost of simply operating an R1 university campus.

      You are wrong. People do not need to estimate, people only need to look at universities with similar rankings in other countries to realize that US colleges are wasting too much money.

    • I think that's the whole problem. Universities should be in the business of education and not playing SimCity for real. Water, electricity generation, mental health, food banks, theaters... is not the business of a University. Universities that way will end up having more administrative staff than faculty. Soon you will have a bunch of CXO's drawing million dollar wages and running what should have been a University. That's a perfect recipe for disaster.

    • I have a wild, out-of-the-box solution... suicide booths!

      "Thank you for using Stop-and-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008"

  • I came across the study in this link a couple years ago (https://freopp.org/is-college-worth-it-a-comprehensive-return-on-investment-analysis-1b2ad17f84c8)...seems like they did a good job on it. Basically shows value of different degrees and various colleges - very comprehensive. One note: it was an economic rating of the degrees and not an indication of whether they added value to a student or to the community outside of the economic results. For SCSU it seems English has a negative return on investment -

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by flyingfsck ( 986395 )
      They are eliminating gender studies also. Now the poor liberal students will never be able to tell what a woman is.

  • This is a great chance to purge the universities of ethnic studies and gender studies majors. Their graduates can't get jobs and the degrees are useless. Probably, though, the universities will take this opportunity to cut engineering and science majors, since fewer people have been enrolling in them lately. A truly woke society doesn't require any engineers.

  • Isn't that were we've seen excessive bloat in recent years?
  • Something tells me that whatever savings can be achieved here will never see the light of day.

    Unless you're on staff at the college ...

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