This last month I’ve been keeping an eye on a couple of things happening in higher ed. One is at West Virginia University, whose administration recently decided to gut its liberal arts departments. One of the proposed casualties is its MFA program in creative writing, where a couple of people I know teach. In a larger sense it also feels like a harbinger for higher ed in general, and particularly flagship state schools like WVU, as well as the ones I mostly attended and where I’ve mostly taught.
The ostensible reason for WVU’s cuts is a budget shortfall caused by declining enrollment and state funding. But, of course, the solutions proposed by a costly, bloated, and constantly growing administration1 aren’t to stop constructing flashy new buildings or to lay off excess admins, but rather to slash programs and fire dozens of faculty.
This NY Mag article about the WVU situation is worth a read for many reasons, one of which is that it points to a common issue at state universities. Like the corporations they’ve essentially become, they pursue short-term growth at all costs, spending millions on new facilities and consulting firms and new administrative departments, all in the name of burnishing the brand. Maybe that’s inevitable, and sometimes it works. But if it’s doesn’t, as seems to have happened at WVU, and that growth never materializes—because the costs of the product increase without any improvement in quality or outcomes—a budget crisis ensues. And of course the people paying the price are never the administrators who caused it or the dodgy consulting firms they overpay.
This thread by a WVU faculty member includes a lot of good resources, including this post written by faculty—who chose to remain anonymous because their administration inserted clearly unconstitutional language into their contracts banning criticism of the administration.
The Pac-2
The other recent development is closer to home. This last month has been a wild one in the Pacific 12 Conference, which until a few weeks ago was the athletic home of both my alma maters as well as the university where I work.
As of this writing, the Pac-12 has lost ten of its twelve members, leaving only Oregon State and Washington State. In some ways, it’s been a long time coming: the conference has been in decline for a decade, thanks primarily to Larry Scott, who—speaking of incompetent administrators—was paid $5M a year to single-handedly destroy a historically successful institution. The two biggest sports brands among its members, USC and UCLA, announced their departure last year. Six others left suddenly last month, scuttling a proposed TV rights deal that could have saved the conference. The other two remaining holdouts, Stanford and Cal—two teams located on the Pacific Coast—joined the Atlantic Coast Conference a couple of days ago, more or less ensuring the demise of the Pac-12.
I’d guess most people who’d read this don’t care about sports conferences. As a former wannabe sportswriter, a middling high school athlete, and a lifelong sports fan, I’m an outlier among academics, especially in the humanities. But anyone who works in academia probably should pay attention, because the impact of sports—and especially media rights deals—on universities themselves is enormous. The most likely outcome for Oregon State at the moment seems to be that we’ll join the Mountain West, which means losing roughly $20M in annual TV money overnight. That’s not to mention the potential downstream effects on ticket sales and donations, as well as the prestige hit involved in falling out of the Power Five.
What does that mean for the university? I don’t know; that’s way above my pay grade. But losing that much money can’t be good. On one hand, the news comes at “the worst possible time,” considering the recent $161M stadium expansion, which was shown off to the media as the Pac-12 crumbled. On the other, OSU athletics have been successful lately and the football team is nationally ranked, so they should appeal more to potential conference partners than they would’ve if this happened five years ago.
For now I’m holding out hope that somehow OSU & Wazzu will revive the conference with new members, which is reportedly their preferred option. Maybe they can even bring back the Pac-10 moniker of my college days. If not, I guess I’ll have to get excited for that new rivalry with Boise State.
The Whale
I finally finished Moby Dick, which I wound up loving. It took me a while to realize that it’s really two books in one: a novella about a deranged and ill-fated voyage to kill a big white whale, and a book-length essay on whales in general, the whaling industry, the history and anatomy of both, and so on. That often frustrating weirdness turned out to be my favorite thing about it. If it were written now, it would never get published.
Criteria
Lately I’ve been watching a lot of movies from the Criterion Collection. This has been giving me flashbacks of a book I loved by two friends of mine, who wrote about doing the same while they were roommates.
While I’ve seen a lot of the classic documentaries, the same doesn’t apply to fictional films. When I watch documentaries I’m always watching like a professor, thinking about the ethics of representation or the positionality of the filmmaker or whatever, but I mostly just watch movies for enjoyment. A few highlights thus far: Breaking the Waves, Stalker, Bicycle Thieves, basically all of the French New Wave, and In the Mood for Love, which is a whole vibe.
Stax singles
I have not yet been to the Stax museum, but since I’ve been in Memphis I’ve been listening to their singles collections, which are great in general, and keep educating me about where all those samples from rap songs of my youth came from.
The notion of administrative bloat has been weaponized by the people trying to dismantle public education and replace it with the Bible or AI or what not, but it’s still a real problem. It seems like most universities would rather have robots teaching every class or get rid of textbooks altogether than stop hiring administrators, the least of whom often make more than tenured faculty do.