Joanne Jacobs reports that San Francisco State is proposing to tighten its budget by closing the University's School of Engineering, while keeping all the wacko special study programs, such as "The Institute on Sexuality, Social Inequality and Health". The full story is here at SF Gate:
What gives? Does Corrigan think that if he puts the screws to students who spend their days and nights studying, he won't have to endure protests that would surely follow if he proposed cutting courses in majors in which the students already know everything, and hence have the leisure time to engage in political protest?Question: How does a university that does things like this retain accreditation? Posted by Kevin Murphy at April 13, 2004 01:51 PM | TrackBack
Or, as other academicians have suggested, is this proposal Corrigan's ham- handed way of suggesting the dumbest cut imaginable in order to scare some funding out of Sacramento?
If so, Corrigan is only hurting his own institution. Word is that Team Arnold sent out the message to California college administrators that institutions willing to cut waste in these tight times would be rewarded. Corrigan's gambit sends the opposite message -- that some schools are willing to cut academic meat, while sparing junk-food scholarship.
Corrigan's idea for saving $2.5 million -- in the face of a $14 million gap -- and shortchanging 700 engineering students led me to the S.F. State Web site to take a look at some of the university's other programs -- the ones Corrigan apparently doesn't want to eliminate.
Hmmmm. Raza Studies. Recreational and Leisure Studies. Women Studies.
My fave: The Institute on Sexuality, Social Inequality and Health.