West Virginia University is recommending slashing its language department and dozens of other programs amid a $45 million budget shortfall.
On the same day that dejected students pleaded with the board of West Virginia’s flagship university not to eliminate its entire foreign languages department and dozens of other programs, Gov. Jim Justice said he was feeling hopeful about the future of education in the state.
“We’ve had tough times — there will be more tough times — but absolutely we are rising from the ashes,” Justice said Aug. 22, while signing a bill allocating $45 million for another state school, Marshall University, to open a new cybersecurity center 200 miles from West Virginia University.
Lawmakers approved the Marshall project, heralded as the nation’s “new East Coast hub” for cybersecurity, in a hastily called special session last month but rejected calls to send WVU funds to address its budget deficit, currently about $45 million.
Does the faculty and administration at Marshall have more closely aligned ideology and politics with the legislators than WVU does? Because this looks an awful fucking lot like picking favorites.
It smells like it, but the WV legislature has a tendency to pick WVU as its favorite. I'm not sure that this is exactly balancing the score, but it came as a surprise for me at least.
I have several friends who are profs at Columbia, Oregon, SF State, Chicago, and Virginia.
Of those, the four in liberal arts are absolutely miserable, and their programs are under constant attack; the remaining one teaches data science, and he recently got yelled at for not spending enough money. His department is being spun out of compsci and turned into its own dept and is flush with cash and has plans to hire 60 more professors.
Shit, I gotta run to a meeting; will come back to this comment later, to add what public school profs are being told about their departments.