Portrait of an insufferable dork
This is where American universities are at right now. Enrollment is down, tuition is up, and we’re all wondering where we went wrong…and I think WVU is a great bad example. They hired a bad president.
Then, in December, 2020, the university’s president, Elwood Gordon Gee, announced the start of an “academic transformation.” Gee, who is seventy-nine, has a wry smile and a penchant for bow ties. (He reportedly owns more than two thousand of them.) He served as W.V.U.’s president from 1981 to 1985, then had similarly short stints at the University of Colorado, Brown University, and Vanderbilt University, and two at Ohio State University. His two-year tenure at Brown was controversial—he left abruptly, amid criticism that he had ignored the school’s faculty in some of his decision-making—but he has always been a successful fund-raiser. He returned to W.V.U. in 2014. Gee has long argued that land-grant universities, which were created in 1862 by an act of Congress, are meant to “prioritize their activities based on the needs of the communities they were designed to serve,” as he puts it in the book “Land-Grant Universities for the Future.”
“These are perilous times in higher education,” Gee said, that December. “Across the country, there is a loss of public trust, and the perceived value of higher education has diminished.” Enrollment at W.V.U. had dropped more than ten per cent from eight years before. “We must focus on market-driven majors, create areas of excellence, and be highly relevant to our students and their families,” he said.
The revolving-door leadership is a widespread problem. We’ve had a number of chancellors at my university, most of them forgettable, and I didn’t really know any of them — they were outsiders hired to do fundraising, and little more, and never made any impression (our new chancellor was promoted from the faculty ranks, so we can at least hope for a genuine commitment to this university).
I am not impressed by his bow tie collection. An affectation is not a personality.
What really raises my hackles, though, is that phrase, market-driven
. Fuck you very much, you don’t understand education at all, go buy yourself another goddamned bow tie.
What’s telling, though, is how he chose to adapt the university to the “market”. He’s cutting programs, of course.
This past August, W.V.U. announced plans to cut thirty-two programs and lay off a hundred and sixty-nine faculty members. Among the undergraduate majors set to be purged or restructured were music performance, environmental and community planning, art history, German, Russian, Chinese, French, and Spanish. Masters programs in acting, landscape architecture, energy environments, linguistics, and creative writing would go, too. The plans made national headlines, with much of the coverage focussing on what the changes suggested about the state of the humanities. But it wasn’t only humanities courses that were being jettisoned. Also on the way out were doctoral programs in management, higher education, occupational- and environmental-health sciences, and math. (The university was quick to note that fewer than five hundred students would lose their intended program of study.)
That’s a list that made me groan at every step. Music? Killing music? Foreign languages on the chopping block? No creative writing? This is insane. I’ve noticed that people who talk about market-driven
tend to devalue creativity and diversity, but this is a great disemboweling of the purpose of a university.
And then…MATH? They’re gutting their math program! At a state university!
They’ve back-pedaled a little bit, but not on math.
The administration was receptive to some entreaties—the plan to drop the M.F.A. in creative writing was quickly abandoned, for instance, as was the proposed elimination of majors in Spanish and Chinese. The math faculty prepared an official appeal, arguing that the graduate programs could be preserved but restructured, with an emphasis on math’s connection to other sciences. The university was unmoved. In September, the school’s board of governors voted on the final recommendations: the master’s and Ph.D. programs in math would be discontinued, and sixteen of the department’s forty-eight faculty positions would be eliminated. The undergraduate curriculum would be revised, both to emphasize applied math and also to be more “efficient.”
There’s another danger word: applied
. When some people think of math, after a brief, horrified shudder, they usually think that what we ought to be doing is teaching people how to balance their checkbook or how to do their taxes. That isn’t math. That’s accounting and filling out forms.
Relatively few people study pure mathematics — I’m one of those ignorant people who stopped at calculus. But I can appreciate the beauty of the subject at least, it’s just that I got distracted by other disciplines. Also, I’m definitely not one of those applied
biologists, and I’ve spent a lifetime getting asked “why would anyone study that?” so I can empathize.
If you insist on being pragmatic and only teaching what you think students need to know to do a job, though, consider how impractical it is to reduce math to a service discipline. Very few people will want to work there. The article’s author interviewed a mathematician working at WVU, Ela Özçağlar.
In October, I went to see Ela at her office there. When I arrived, she was speaking with a third-year Ph.D. student from Turkey. On a board above her desk, she and the student had pinned a list of schools that the student was considering as transfer options. Standing in the doorway, he told me that he was hoping to specialize in geometry and algebra. Students at W.V.U. whose programs are being cut are permitted to finish their degrees, but he didn’t see value in staying. “All the pure mathematicians are planning to leave here in two years,” he said. “The math faculty will just be a teaching college.” A few days before, the university had contacted teachers who were being let go. Ela and Olgur, to their surprise, were not on the list. The unlucky group included four teaching faculty and two tenure-track faculty. Ten other faculty members, most of them senior, had volunteered to leave on their own.
Of course they volunteered to leave! They were being told that they couldn’t do the kind of work that stimulates them and makes it worth living in West Virginia. Somebody doesn’t understand the professor mindset. I found myself getting trapped in a rut of service courses, the undergraduate required courses that I could teach in my sleep, and volunteered/insisted that I get to teach some more advanced courses, despite the fact that they were going to require more work. Sure, I could sleepwalk through the basic stuff for a few more years, but I wanted a challenge that would help me learn more. I completely understand how being denied that opportunity to stretch oneself would lead to faculty leaving.
The author talked to another math faculty member, John Goldwasser, who chewed out the college president. Goldwasser seems to have expected President Bow-Tie to actually care about the university.
A few days before we met, Goldwasser sent a letter to Gee, castigating him for bowing to public opinion, and suggesting that, with a more concerted effort, he and his allies might have persuaded the state legislature to fund the university more generously. “If you had failed,” Goldwasser wrote, “you could have resigned in protest. That might have made it possible for your successor to reap the benefits of your efforts. If not, at least you would be remembered as a hero who battled to save the university.” At the heart of Goldwasser’s criticism, he told me, was the belief that a public university should help to create and shape values, not just reflect the things the majority of people already care about. “Did you know that guns will be legal on W.V.U.’s campus starting next July?” he asked me, referring to Senate Bill 10, which will allow West Virginians to carry concealed firearms on the campuses of state colleges and universities. “So, if I were still here, a student could bring a gun to calculus. The legislature cares about that.”
Goldwasser won’t be here: he’s one of the senior faculty who volunteered to go. The mathematician who asked that I not use their name intimated that perhaps Goldwasser’s decision was made altruistically, to save some of the younger faculty members’ jobs. I asked Goldwasser about this, and he smiled slowly, nodding, leaning into the silence between us. “My decision was selfish,” he said, finally. “I wouldn’t want to work in the kind of department that’s going to be left.”
That’s understandable. Not at all understandable to a certain kind of college administrator, apparently.
I did, and I can confirm that far too few people do.
Hey!!!
We exist. We matter. California is not dead yet.
Actually enrollment in the massive California university system is still going up even as the population drops slightly.
The University of California system admitted a historic number of in-state students this year, as well as first-year students of color.
The same is true of other West coast states.
Here is the information for Oregon.
I always treat anyone wearing a bowtie with suspicion, unless it’s James Bond in a tuxedo.
What are the odds that no sport programs will be cut and that some coaches will be getting raises from that shrinking pool of money.
Well, don’t wonder too long about where “we”, meaning everyone, went wrong.
While enrollments are down in a lot of places and up in some places, tuition and costs have risen far faster than the rate of inflation and are too high.
The result of this is students taking out huge amounts of student loans and graduating with hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans that they can never get rid of because they can’t lose them in bankruptcy.
It’s not unusual for people to die still owing on their student loans.
It wasn’t always this way and it doesn’t have to be this way.
When I went to University in the 1970s, I graduated debt free and completely broke. Student loans existed but not to the extent they do now.
This was not unusual,
My first year tuition was something like $600.
This was because the state heavily subsidized the tuition for everyone in state.
It’s also not done any more. Last time I checked one year’s in state tuition was…$12,000 a year.
The name Gordon Gee rang a bell. When I saw that he did a stint as president at Ohio State, I remembered why.
In the midst of a scandal involving the football coach, Jim Tressel, he was asked if he’d fire the coach, and Gee said, “I just hope he doesn’t fire me.”
Ha ha ha. You wanted personality?
So, no. No sports programs will be cut, as this president doesn’t seem to mind being subservient to the football coach. Priorities, right?
When universities are in trouble, it’s always best to bring in…the Imelda Marcos of bow-ties?
“We must focus on market-driven majors, create areas of excellence, and be highly relevant to our students and their families,” he said.
The first and second of those two goals flatly contradict each other (to the extent that the second means anything, that is); and the third is almost unconstitutionally vague.
Sounds like the oligarchs’ ongoing plan to create workers with limited cognitive abilities.
Les Nesssman?
Remember, America can still compete, despite being incapable of communicating with other nations or being able to innovate in engineering, sciences and nuclear fields. We’ll just conquer nations that can.
And who needs public health? God loves dead babies! Happy Pandemic Day and many, many more!
However, I’m also reminded of market-driven education. Specifically, in medicine. It’s now beyond living memory, however it’s well recorded at the break of our previous century, there were many, many, many private medical schools that had closed or were closing. All, really big on heroic medicine, humoral theory, rejecting germ theory and evidence based medicine. Between forward thinking peers pressuring via accreditation processes and a ton of market force pressure, those institutions closed, physicians rejecting that fanciful germ theory and wanting that silly evidence pressured physicians rejecting those theories pressured out of practice.
Somehow, we oddly not only survived, but began to thrive. Vaccines were being developed in many physician offices – literally, against bacterial diseases and there was some silly theory being argued about regarding some invisible virus thingies. Then, the influenza pandemic struck.
So severe was the impact that those evidence rejecting physicians were pressed back into service and well, those highfalutin number crunchers showed that their results were worse than giving patients no care at all and more importantly, patients started to realize it as well. Towns closed their borders, with armed men obstructing highways into town. Yeah, it all actually happened. Those quacks were quickly sent back into obscurity, with much thankfulness for their going away – well, those that survived (remember, they rejected germ theory, so went unmasked). Mask usage became ubiquitous, well, save for in San Francisco, where a resistance group had formed and that showed in the death rate.
The remaining private evidence rejecting medical schools closed, Johns Hopkins became a household name, despite being located in a location conventional wisdom said would be doomed to fail. After a false start due to one respected Japanese researcher (origin doesn’t really matter, he fouled up and tangled research for a few years) proving that the influenza outbreak was due to h. influenzae, a failure to replicate revealed that error and subsequent, it was found that the causative agent was ultrafilterable, so was a particle that couldn’t be observed with the technologies of the time. More evidence for the existence of the virus. Medicine had to wait until the electron microscope was invented to actually visualize a virus.
But, evidence based medicine was initially market-based, as people had this silly little idea that surviving was better than dying, either of disease or quackery.
Now, the pendulum swings the other way, gotta keep Richie Rich happy by keeping the masses ignorant and that’ll hit Richie’s bottom line exceptionally hard, both by losing MBA holders, researchers and well, marketable prospective employees. H1B’s will soar even more, with much unrest, in the heaviest armed nation on earth and well, the pendulum will be forced to swing back early again. As Richie doesn’t wanna join Louis and Marie getting a fine shave from the National Razor.
Oh, there’s also a parallel attack ongoing in antisocial media. Did you know that there are no such things as nuclear weapons or reactors? There was always a tiny minority that insisted on that crap, but that’s growing. Looks largely foreign bot driven, but embraced by many MAGA types.
Complete with “Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t nuked, they used conventional bombs like the MOAB”. Needing a time machine for that to work, as the MOAB was only invented in 2003. And 11 tons of TNT is precisely equal to 18 kilotons, which is going to be hugely entertaining to the IRS examining corporate books…
As for WVU, I suggest electrification of his favorite bowtie. A solid bilateral carotid arteriospasm should suffice. Backup plan, perhaps an electrified urinal in the executive suite.
Or the security androids in the basement. Sorry, my laserbeaked sharks are in usage.
@10, wzrd1:
“Did you know that there are no such things as nuclear weapons or reactors? There was always a tiny minority that insisted on that crap, but that’s growing. ”
Yes, I thought I noticed that too, in the comments from some news sites. Only once in twenty years, now it seems to be more frequent (don’t have exact numbers of course).
Buuuut… such people may have shining careers ahead of them! Radiation “never existed” yet there’s TONS of nuc sites needing decommissioning and cleanup. They would be the ideal cannon fodder, never needing any kind of protection, working til they topple over.
I wonder if it will come to that? At this point I am losing my capacity for surprise.
For more context,Gee created a financial crisis by claiming when he was hired at a struggling university that he would create massive growth and went on a spending spree to support supposed growing student population. He’s a clown.
outis @ 11, well, one way to winnow the wheat from the chaff. And possibly a goal for some to destabilize things.
But, I’d not call it a shining career, even if they would receive glowing reviews on their fine work.
I’m sure that they won’t believe in chlorine trifluoride either, which is used to remove uranium residue. And a far, far better oxidizer than mere piddling oxygen. That stuff will burn ashes, sand and even water.
Capitalism -> optimal go to market -> run by MBAs -> universities become sportsball franchises
There is, in fact, one thing worse than hearing a university president say that they need to be more “market-driven”, and that’s any politician who says they want to “run the government like a business”.
Enrollment is down, tuition is up, and we’re all wondering where we went wrong…
“We” who? It’s pretty damned obvious what went wrong: reich-wing bigots and scammers have been demonizing, discrediting and defunding public education at all levels, at least since Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka; taxes have been cut for the rich so they wouldn’t have to pay for any sort of education system; colleges get less public money to they have to beg rich pond-scum and kiss their asses for more donations; the rich “benefactors” get to dictate what those colleges do with the money they donated; and what they dictate is in their own class- and self-interest, not the public interest; and when academics say they don’t have enough resources to do what they originally signed on to do, the administration declare it a “crisis” and bring in twits like this Gee guy, whose only skill is begging for money and telling other people to tighten their belts and make do, and who “solve” the problem they most likely voted to create by…laying off people by the dozen, if not by the hundreds.
This is nothing new, and nothing to “wonder” about — just the academic version of the same old supply-side “austerity” bullshit.
@10, wzrd1: “Did you know that there are no such things as nuclear weapons or reactors?”
I heard that for the first time the other day. What even is the point of that conspiracy theory? Some kind of reaction to the Oppenheimer movie? At least with moon landing deniers or flat Earthers, I think I see their (albeit insane) rationales…
Nemo @ 17, can’t be a reaction to the Oppenheimer movie, as that nonsense has been going on for decades.
I’m sure some part is Nazi based “Jewish physics”, as Hitler called it, but in some part, simply denial of a real threat and ongoing problem. Just another side of a flat earther mindset, denial of that which is real, in favor of “I’m one of the few who know“.
And picked on mercilessly with “Birds aren’t real”, along with all manner of other mindless conspiracy theory nonsense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birds_Aren't_Real
I’d buy one of their bumper stickers, but then I’d need to get a bumper to put it on. I’d probably look pretty silly hobbling around lugging a bumper around…
wzrd1: Just yell at some clouds from time to time and no one will question you.
BIRDS AREN’T REAL!
Not after that unreal mess one dropped on my shoulder. I asked it how it’d feel if I did that to it and it actually answered.
Impressed.
Had to concede the point.
I study pure math, and I think there aren’t enough people doing it. I’m not optimistic about my future career given the state of the market.
So.the bowtie idiot and his ilk still believe in the neoliberal mantra of the market.
“An affectation is not a personality.” Heh heh heh.
Some organizations have character, others hire characters.
I know very little of Gee’s first tenure, but the defining act of his second stint as president of OSU was selling everything that wasn’t nailed down. His reputation as an impressive fundraiser? Built on deals like trading 50 years’ parking revenue (and accountability to the community) for like 15 years’ revenue from Australian investment bankers. The fate of WVU’s math program is awful, but unsurprising.
“They hired a bad president.”
Well, at least the didn’t hire the worst possible president.
(Too tenuous a limning?)
Never fear, the worst is yet to come. I’ve great faith in the incompetence of those who hired him.
Unfortunately, many college presidents are hired for their ability to bring money in. If you can’t do that, you won’t survive (whether at a small liberal arts college or a large university). I’ve attended and worked at both.
As for bow ties, don’t put us all in the same basket. I have liked bow ties since I wore one in my junior high graduation (seriously).
I have a pretty good collection (but only dozens), though I rarely wear them any more. (I work at a hospital now, and I mostly worked in rural public school systems before. I wore them as a middle school teacher and as a school superintendent, my last job in education).
In rural CA, I try to dress like the working class population as much as possible.
Funny.. I am in a dead end job, well, maybe to some level because of myself, but also because I was conned into paying out $20k in “loans” to a predatory college that promised to, “Help you get a good job in technology, without having to take all those extra, unnecessary, classes that other colleges pad their course work with.”, and it amounted to a diploma mill for people that already had tech jobs, but couldn’t advance because they didn’t have a “college degree”, which their existing jobs required for them to qualify for less shitty positions. Note – it didn’t help me, or anyone else “get into such jobs”, since we had the magic degree, but no actual tech job, and/or experience, so we would have to start out in the worst position in the company anyway, if we could even find one.
Now… Major universities seem to think that what has gotten institutions like Devry labelled as “predatory”, is “good business”, and how all universities should run? Talk about devaluing everything they do, including their supposed “degrees”…
applied mathematics is a completely different thing than what he’s saying it is.
When I was working at the Morgantown, WV, newspaper, I returned to school part time. I received what I believe was the last doctorate in philosophy WVU awarded, owing to lack of interest. That was in 1999. I mention this because the college had somehow persuaded a first-class philosopher, Ted Drange, to join the faculty in 1966. Drange became a philosophy professor emeritus shortly after my thesis was approved. They kept him around as an ornament despite no longer having a functioning department of philosophy. I don’t know what he was paid, but since he no longer taught or lectured, it was too much.
The crown jewel of the school was, of course, the football coach, whose daughter was married to a retired NFL quarterback. That family was royalty, not just on campus, but in Morgantown. The quarterback, whom I am not naming for obvious reasons, was a notorious bully who physically assaulted reporters and photographers from the newspaper who asked to interview him.
The newspaper was also to blame. It was owned by the town’s rich family, which had no interest in actual news. It existed solely to write nice things about WVU’s sports programs. Some newsworthy events that might offend the coaches and players were immediately spiked and never saw the light of day.
I agree with PZ but I do have some experience with programmers who also had applied math degrees and they were amazing in their ability to turn complex processes into math problems by turning voluminous inputs into equations, feeding the equations into a solver, interpreting the solver’s solutions and displaying the solution in a user-friendly format.
That might sound vague so here is a real-world example from my experience on a software development team at a major aerospace company. And if Bill Seymour is reading this, I was not a programmer, I was one of the guys who talked with the users to learn, in detail, what they wanted the software to do, and then worked with the programmers to document the requirements.
An example of what the applied math folks could do was the ‘retiming’ of an airline schedule with the goal of being able to fly a 7-day schedule with fewer planes. So, if it took 14 planes to fly a schedule, the math folks were able, using the schedule and a long list of ground rules (e.g. how much time on the ground a plane needed to spend before it could fly again, what were called ‘turn times’) to move arrivals and departures around so that the schedule could be operated with 13 or 12 planes.
Consider the financial benefit to an airline of being able to operate with fewer planes.
I was never in the ballpark of being able to understand the math behind this (and many other) feats of magic but I could see the results and understand that applied mathematicians can do impressive things.
joelgrant @ 32, with one added advantage of those two spare aircraft being, if one of the flying fleet ended up grounded, such as ground equipment impacting the aircraft and airframe inspection is now required, one of the spares could get plugged into the route and one losing potentially only one flight, rather than multiple flights that aircraft would’ve covered during the inspection.
And that same software potentially even minimizing deadheading that aircraft back into service afterward.
Colleges also do ask for ridiculous things and are rigid about them. To get my BSN I was forced to take a Public Speaking course. Now, I have given public speeches many times and was a professional singer for years. This college wouldn’t let you do an online version, I had to go to class in person. In my class there was a 17 year old high school senior getting a jump-start. When we played a get-to-know-someone-and give-them-a-speech this kid literally said to me “Well, I like to watch movies in my friend’s basement and get high mostly. I want to be a rockstar. I think I am going to take guitar lessons this summer. And I want to get married, but only when I find my true love.”
I mean, I’m competing for a grade with this clown?
And I’m paying for this class? There’s something wrong alright.
sjerseygrle @ 34, I’d not consider that competition. More like beating up an infant and calling it a victory.
And one of the few classes that I’d likely sleep through and still ace. But then, I’ve given classes in technical matters and even math remedial classes on the civilian side and to military as well, plus I’ve addressed an entire battalion of 1200+ men without amplification. And my objection to paying for that sleep, erm, class would be appropriately aired via my methods of addressing any practice addresses. Suffice it to say, I doubt that the professor and I would become friends.
Although, it could be an invaluable course for some new nurses, who have difficulty addressing family members. But then, it’d be targeted for those in need, rather than cookie cutter education disguising a money grab.
Oh, was that my outside voice? My bad.
As for Gee, upon further consideration, he’d find himself the recipient of an executive elevator. A very special, custom Wonkavator… Building needed roof work anyway – honest. ;)
re: wzrd1 @33. All true. Big picture, it boils down to holding revenue steady while reducing expenses. Every business would like to do that.
Another trick the applied mathematicians were able to pull off was automating the process of balancing a schedule.
A balanced schedule is one where (again, they worked with 7 day schedules) for each type of plane (e.g. a 737- 600 is one aircraft type, a 737-800 is another) for each airport there are exactly as many departures as arrivals.
Imagine taking a schedule with 50 distinct airports and 10,000 departures and arrivals, running a report that tells you the schedule is out of balance, and how it is out of balance and manually figuring out the problem and implementing a fix. For even the best analysts a tricky out-of-balance schedule may take two or three days to figure out.
I spent at least 200 hours with analysts and applied mathematicians figuring out the principles of the problem until, finally, the analysts could input a schedule, select some parameters, “push a button” and the schedule would come back in a balanced state. After looking it over the analyst could then accept the changes and output a new, balanced schedule. Once this functionality was implemented and the analysts learned to use it, one of the more tedious aspects of the job disappeared.
I have great respect for applied mathematicians.
I notice Gee doesn’t mention getting rid of any sports activities. I guess that’s one of those “market-driven majors” they’ll never even seriously consider cutting (for men anyway).
I can’t believe anyone could think to eliminate Chinese and German while saying their decisions are market-driven. Not with a straight face at least. I mean, I know jack about markets but I know China is where a ton of our printing and computer parts are sourced plus a lot of other stuff as well. And Germany is the powerhouse of the EU. Ignoring those tells me you can’t even FIND the markets.
lanir @ 38, ah, but you forget, there is only one market, the UFSA.
Only the United Fascist States of America counts, where isolation mixes with conquest and the entire world must speak English or else.
The hilarious part is, those who proclaim most of that have tons and tons of foreign products in their homes, albeit with “American brands”. You know, clueless as to their own hypocrisy. Most of whom fail to comprehend that Mexico is in North America, when they’ll argue about the origin of some items like their Mexican assembled television, arguing it was made in North America, not South…
lanir: Those aren’t “market-driven” majors because “the markets” — as in, rich people and corporations — don’t want to pay for those skills.
Nope, they’d rather pay workers on H1B visas. Lower pay, no benefits.
@ 21. 183231bcb : “I study pure math, and I think there aren’t enough people doing it. I’m not optimistic about my future career given the state of the market.”
Wait not enough? Doesn’t that mean less competition for you? More you appraoching a monopoly!? Win? (Capitalist verison thereof..)
Only if there’s a market for it. As only magically applied economic mathematics, which only are allowed to prove nonsensical economic theories has a market, real mathematicians are just screwed.