From the Chronicle of Higher Ed:

"Oregon State University plans to eliminate its Italian program and scale back its offerings in other foreign languages and in English, the Associated Press reported.

In response to a projected $250,000 budget deficit in the department of foreign languages and literatures, the university has decided to cut its two first-year courses in Italian for the fall semester, and phase out all Italian-language offerings by the fall of 2009.

The university will also scale back its introductory Spanish offerings from 12 courses to seven, increase class sizes across the department, and eliminate about 20 class sections per term. The cuts may also affect the English department, which plans to chop four entry-level classes in the fall."

Now, how many sports will be scaled back there?

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Originally posted by juanruiz:
Now, how many sports will be scaled back there?

They may have to do that when students can no longer read the football programs.

Seriously, has the school provided a reason for the deficits? I can see a future where this may happen at my wife's school, and they don't even field a football team. The growing problem is that specialty accrediting bodies are demanding more hours in core curricula, forcing students to trim their liberal arts classes. An accounting student who must take six hours in accountancy not required of last year's graduating class may thus take six fewer hours in Spanish.

In the more than 30 years of my career in higher education, I have witnessed the death of the traditional university. Most have become corporatized, setting up priorities of generating revenue streams through students, faculty and administrators. Athletics are the only sector not expected to make money...which is good, because they don't. A university education today is job training. The old idea of teaching students how to think is gone. And students believe that their tuition, which has sky rocketed in the last decade, is paying for a degree, so they all come with a sense of entitlement. Actually, I am really looking forward to retirement...that's why I'd like to see a 20,000 Dow in the next few years. With the advent of online education, professors will eventually be a thing of the past anyway.

I remember going to drop something off for my wife one day during her first semester at her new school after we moved. The head of her department saw me in the hallway and motioned to me to be quiet. She then led me to my wife's office, and we peeked in for just a second. There were two students in the chairs in front of her desk, two standing behind those chairs, and two or three sitting on the floor. The head of her department then motioned me back down the hallway. She smiled and said, "That is what we have been missing here."

For the sake of our students, I hope we don't lose it. There is no way an adjunct or "online" professor could have that sort of impact.

Yet she feels frustrations similar to yours, often complaining of the "sense of entitlement." I cannot recall ever having questioned a grade in my entire school career, yet she spends hours documenting her grading because students challenge grades all the time. The parents, perhaps under tremendous financial pressure to keep scholarships, are often right "in there" challenging along with the students. She never changes the grades (letting them know that if they review, the grade might come down ) but it is a constant hassle.

What happened to students who show up for every class on time and complete their assigned work? These are the good habits that, if learned, will make students successful and encourage good references regardless of their chosen major and ultimate profession. And these skills cannot be learned in an online curriculum.

Hope your stocks bust loose, JR.

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What happened to students who show up for every class on time and complete their assigned work?

Hope your stocks bust loose, JR.

They haven't been a round for 2 decades. Thanks, so do I.