Today in College Lunacy
"How are you going to be liberal arts [college] without women’s and gender studies?”
Today’s college meltdown story, courtesy of the Chronicle of Higher Education, comes from Sonoma State University in northern California, whose 35 percent decline in enrollment since 2015 has forced severe budget cuts, including its entire athletics program. While the Chronicle focuses on the athletics part of the story, the real news is that Sonoma State will shutter 23 academic majors and masters’ programs, including bachelor’s degrees in earth and environmental sciences, geology and physics, along with master’s degrees in English, Spanish and history, and . . . women’s and gender studies.” In all, 46 tenured and adjunct faculty will be laid off.
This is too much for Prof. Tim Wandling, chair of the English department. He asked:“How are you going to be liberal arts without philosophy, without theater, dance, art history, women’s and gender studies?” Oh my god! No more women’s and gender studies majors at Sonoma State!
The English department website says of Prof. Wandling:
His scholarly interests include Romantic and Victorian literature, Singer Songwriters, Frankfurt School critical theory, socialist feminism, utopian and social protest literature of all sorts, and the New Women literature of the late 19th c. He has presented or published papers on Lord Byron, Thomas Hardy, J.S. Mill, and the teaching of Social Protest literature. In 2019, he presented the paper “‘Fierce Loves’ and Romantic Ironies: Joni Mitchell and Lord Byron” at the International Conference on Romanticism in Manchester England. . . He offers graduate and undergraduate courses on 19th century writers in the context of class, gender and/or aestheticism. He has recently been developing courses focused on the interesting way in which 19th C. writers have come out of the closet in the late 20th and 21st century reception (Literature: Now and Then).
The only problem with Sonoma State’s cuts is that they clearly don’t go far enough. And in any case, this merely looks like eliminating redundancies. Who needs a women’s and gender studies department when you have Prof. Wandling doing the same job?
The good news is that this is likely just the first round of deep cuts at all of California’s state universities. System-wide the Cal State universities face a budget shortfall of as much as $800 million, largely because of California’s overall budget, which is under strain again as usual. (Note, blue state campus liberals: red state legislatures like Texas and Florida are increasing their spending for state universities. Campus leftists never seem to understand that when blue states run into budget trouble, state universities are at the top of the list for cuts.)
Cal State Trustee Jack McGrory comments: “We’re facing these incredibly massive cuts. . . We’re talking layoffs. Everybody’s got to face up to that.”
I’ve got some suggestions. . .
Hah! Sonoma State is for those Calfornians who aren't willing to go all the way to Humboldt State.
I'm surprised that janitorial staff, kitchen staff, and maintenance staff aren't the first cuts to be made--that's usually the way this goes, the folks at the bottom of the pay-scale get axed first and the legions of administrators (deans, associate deans, assistant deans, department heads, associate department heads, assistant department heads) never seem to disappear and, in fact, metastasize even as academic departments (history--who needs that?!) shrink. That kind of top-heavy makes Dolly Parton look anorexic. . . .