This is going to be a hellaciously busy week. I made it so by taking a day off work Saturday, so now I'm facing 50 papers to grade, a committee meeting to chair, reports from said committee to write up, an assessment presentation to prepare and present, and then Thursday I leave for a weekend workshop.
And if I wasn't so busy, I'd blog about how SUNY-Albany (motto: "The World within Reach") has just told all of its professors of French, Italian, German, and Latin to retire or look for work elsewhere, because said university is eliminating those programs, leaving Spanish as the only language taught at this 18,000-student, Ph.D.-granting university. I'm sure I'd rant and rave, and perhaps have at least one intelligent observation in there.
But it's past 8 a.m., meaning that I'm late leaving for work and the beginning of my Very Busy Week. So I'll just link to the story as reported in Inside Higher Ed, and leave the comments to others.
8 comments:
For those of us here (U. Albany) the move is no surprise; I had guessed a priori that we'd lose 3 depts rather than 5, but am not surprised by the choices.
And yes, it's horrendous; but it's also likely a smart and tough choice (to cut whole programs rather than to try to slice across the board). It's a very odd and unsettling place to be right now; I'm going up for tenure this year, early, in large part because if the reality is going to be that there's no money for tenure, I want to find out *now*. My guess is that as a science prof bringing in more than I cost via grant overhead, I'm possibly OK... we'll see.
I've chatted to both the president and (especially) the provost, as well as the Dean of A&S, about the budget; it's a tough spot given the two facts of (i) reduced state funding and (ii) no ability to raise tuition. I'm guessing that I would have made similar choices. Certainly I might rant a little, but I suspect that the end result is probably one of the best of a bad set of options.
and this is why I decided I didn't want to go into academia: "I took a weekend day off, so now have a hellacious workload." uggghhh.
From SUNY-Albany's math Ph.D. program page:
Completion of a Research Tool: The student must display a reading knowledge of French, German, Russian, or another foreign language appropriate to the area of specialization and approved by the department. This requirement is to be satisfied by departmental examination and shall be completed before the oral qualifying examination.
This is pretty common for math degree programs. I guess the math department will be hiring French, German, or Russian adjuncts?
Interesting point, Curtis. And what's to stop them from dissolving *all* departments, then offering to hire everyone back as adjuncts?
Accreditation, mostly.
Excellent point, Curtis! I've actually quoted you in a faculty discussion here.
An alternative:
http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2010/10/04/teaching-of-foreign-languages-to-be-replaced-by-%E2%80%98talking-very-slowly%E2%80%99-lessons/
Maybe SUNY-Albany will outsource teaching these subjects to China, via a distance learning setup.
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