Megan Woolard’s Post

The question that should be asked after reading this is, how can we retain or enroll students in these programs? Liberal Arts programs have been at a downward trend with enrollment. How can we justify paying faculty salary to teach a program when we are not meeting the enrollment cutoff. I go back to my first statement, how can we retain and enroll students in these programs. How can we make liberal arts programs more conpetitive as to encourag enrollment and retention?

The humanities have a marketing problem and need to hire a PR professional. This is such a shame. I am glad I am at an institution that is leaning back into the liberal arts. The liberal arts can address the concerns around AI and the difference between human and machine intelligence. The question of what it means to be human is not new. ➡ But, in order to address these concerns in a relevant and impactful way, the humanities has to be willing to lead with a new tactic. I always say lead with the question in a relatable context (like why do the extreme opinions rise to the top on social media) and once they are hooked, lead them the Aristotle and Socrates. Also, the humanities need to address biases in our body of literature and offer new insights. 📌 People are hungry for the humanities. But the humanities have a major marketing problem.

I'll confess that a lot of my work with HUX is driven by an ulterior motive: my desire and drive to help showcase to the world exactly why humanities education is not only important for folks in prison, but essential for everyone else as well. Many experts, educators, policy makers, and philanthropists have extolled the virtues of providing incarcerated learners with a liberal arts or humanities-based education. But why should those benefits be targeted to those learner populations who have ostensibly greater deficits to overcome? I would argue that we should look in the opposite direction—if humanities-based education is proven to be valuable to confined and system-impacted students, then imagine how efficacious it becomes when we return to valuing it as an integral component to non-confined secondary, post-secondary, and post-graduate studies . . .

my thoughts on why cutting bloat from the humanities is not only a good thing, but a future best practice. --- in 2016, i was presenting at the international conference on writing analytics. it was a paper on ethics. the point was this: when we combine the writing analytics field with the writing in the disciplines field, our combined research puts us out of jobs. we dont need students in English 101 classes. in those classes, we invent reasons to write so we can teach writing. in other classes, they're already writing. the best/future practice will be an ai trained on writing for biology used in a biology course. let the professor assess the knowledge, let the #ai assess the sentences. let the english department do what they love, teach writing and literature, but not at the entry level. few tenured faculty teach those at all anyways; they're taught by grad students and cheap labor (adjuncts/lecturers) teaching 3 - 6 courses across multiple universities to make ends meet. this model would greatly impact english departments bc they'd no longer be teaching the courses that feed their dept all those tuition dollars. the #NCTE recommends 19 students to an English 101 class. Why? So the professor has time to give good, actionable feedback bc writing assessment takes FOREVER. not anymore. #writing #highereducation #studentlearning #humanities

A view of the current state of affairs in higher education, through a particular lens. The writer may well have captured a generally accurate, if not complete, picture of the dynamics.  On the one hand, there are certain pragmatic realities that institutions must contend with. The financial pressures on many colleges are acute, there is no doubt about that. In making difficult decisions and choices that need to be made, there are many variables to consider, including but perhaps not limited to overall enrollment, enrollment by major, outcomes relative to career paths, workforce needs, changing student demographics, marketing possibilities, to name just a few.  However, there are also legitimate questions that should be asked, at any institution these days, relative to fiscal discipline, priority setting and decision making on spending and resource allocations. Not all priorities are created equal, not all resource allocations make sense, for mission and educational reasons, and not all financial challenges are beyond control (indeed, some of them are self-inflicted).  It also needs to be acknowledged that shared governance, as it has been understood and known over decades in higher education, is clearly facing challenges. While the ideals it aspires to achieve are laudable, serious and legitimate questions loom, relative to its efficiency and effectiveness in institutional decision making. Can it keep up with the brisk pace of today's environment? Should it try to? Does it foster growth and innovation, or facilitate inertia and resistance to change? What is the proper role of faculty, and staff, in institutional planning and decision making, in today's environment? Are the decisions and initiatives that emerge from a broader consultative process actually better and more timely, or not? Where are the proper boundaries relative to other stakeholders in the process, including leaders and trustees? Are they being honored? Should they be recast? If not this model, then what, and how would it work in this culture? I don't pretend to have the answers to these questions, and I doubt many do, at this point (although there will be no shortage of opinions). All of that said, the liberal arts, an endangered and undervalued enterprise, should have a place of prominence in the higher education of tomorrow.  More could and should be done to promote the value of the liberal arts, whether they exist in any given place by major, minor, a set of elective courses in a common core or all of the above. The research is there, relative to the eventual career paths and outcomes for liberal arts majors, as well as those who major in other disciplines but have a liberal arts core experience, and to the value-added contribution made to reading, writing, critical thinking and inquiry, citizenship and more.  "Higher" education should be more than a transactional process. Broadly educated citizens matter to the future of the country, on many levels.

GOT RIGHT-SIZING? Institutions of #highereducation must achieve as much effectiveness as possible in order to be able to provide education at affordable levels. Casagrande Consulting, LLC helps ensures maximum effectiveness in compensation for administrators, faculty and staff. Check out what Gary Daynes has to say in his recent article on right-sizing administrators.

In light of the recent ratification of a CSU-Wide tentative agreement, I wanted to reshare my recent Op-Ed, shedding light on the pressing issue of faculty underpayment within the CSU system. It's time we prioritize fair compensation to ensure educators can afford to live in the communities they serve and focus on delivering quality education. https://lnkd.in/dGwKz-tz #OverworkedandUnderpaid  #PublicVoices The OpEd Project

What is happening at WIU is not an outlier but part of larger pattern that will only get worse for higher ed: "Western Illinois University plans to cut 57 faculty positions — 40 of which are tenured or tenure track — and 32 staff positions as part of an effort to become more fiscally sustainableWestern Illinois University plans to cut 57 faculty positions — 40 of which are tenured or tenure track — and 32 staff positions as part of an effort to become more fiscally sustainable" "he university has faced steep enrollment drops in recent years. Between 2017 and 2022, fall headcount fell 19% to 7,643 students. And that figure is down by 39.3% from 2010 levels, per federal data.With enrollment dropping and costs increasing, Western Illinois has wrestled with mounting budget deficits. In fiscal 2023, its deficit rose to $12.5 million from $4.1 million the year before" https://lnkd.in/eR3AcA6A #highered #academia #budgets #enrollmentcliff

IMPACT: A Penn State University trustee has responded to Spotlight PA's recent reporting about problems within Penn State Health's transplant program and the dismissal of a top surgeon, linking to the investigation and writing: "The problems exposed by concerned doctors, faculty, and medical staff appear to be caused by systemic senior administrative failures that have put patient lives at risk." He added, "This situation must be immediately and publicly addressed by the Board and every effort made to ensure it is corrected." More here: https://lnkd.in/evHAn3SF Original investigation here: https://lnkd.in/etMPZpJs

An entirely predictable display of preemptive submission. In Nebraska, an attempt by a regent of the NU system to ban CRT failed. A bill in the legislature to ban DEI at public universities didn't make it out of committee. One regent's objection to 1% of the budget being used for DEI did not prevent them from passing that budget. No actual avenue to force the closure of the office but campus-level leadership moves ahead with it anyway. The spin is the part that really gets me. Pretending like eliminating a centralized unit to coordinate DEI (already underfunded and understaffed for the work they are charged with) so that "decentralized efforts" can happen (supposedly being even more effective!) after budget cuts that included position elimination basically every year I worked there is simply not connected to reality. "We are showing we really care about DEI by eliminating DEI." Quite the non-performative! I'm sure we would prove just how much we love our athletics teams by eliminating all those offices too. If we really cared about it, why isn't it everyone's responsibility? We also know that when DEI is "everyone's responsibility" it usually ends up being no one's responsibility, in actuality. At least in states where these eliminations come as a mandate from the legislature, there can be some sense that the institution cares even if their hand is forced. But to have the leader of the campus decide that we just don't need that office anymore sends quite the message to minoritized students, faculty, and staff less than a week before the semester begins.