dforde wrote:Could any of us afford to send our kids to BGSU if we lost our jobs? Probably not. The economy is probably the worst it's been in 70 years. Our financial support form the state is going down and this is nobody's fault. People are not spending money and the state is not generating sales tax etc. It's a very tough enrollment climate right now and it's no anybody's fault except the fact that thousands of people are losing their jobs. Dr. Cartwright is a good person and is doing the very best she can in an incredibly difficult situation.
How is this the worst economy in 70 years???? I have yet to see one soup line and even those who are "poor" still are able to have a cell phone and cable. I bet if you stop taking more money out of my pocket I would spend more but no one seems to think that is going to work so I think we all should just sit back and watch our dear elected leaders spend our way out of this.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
-Edmund Burke
"I bet if you stop taking more money out of my pocket I would spend more"
Would that include eliminating government funding for government universities? Let's not forget what the "S" stands for in BGSU.
But I don't want to have an ideological argument, I really don't!
It's just that my best guess is the kinds of cuts we are looking at over the next few years at BGSU will fundamentally alter the very nature of the university we all love (David J. Jackson, MA, BGSU, 1993).
Globetrotter wrote:What is going on with enrollment? Why is it going down?
In addition to the previously mentioned economy and difficulty getting loans, the populaiton of available US college age students starts to decline after next year's graduating class.
[/quot
I don't think it's any secret re: declining birth rates...as a member of the Regional Advancement Strategy cabinet in NE Ohio...I took on a project last year that ultimately, with the cooperation of the admissions office, contacted approximately 300 sophs and juniors, giving them specific financial aid info about BG. Hopefully, some of these students will follow through and seek admission to BGSU. Even more so, I'd hope that they'd ultimately select BG to attend...but the info Prof. Jackson forwarded is NOT very positive...hopefully, the financial aid aspects which I'd mentioned to these students will remain available to them.
Education our Challenge, Excellence our goal. (look it up)
BG has been "letting go/forcing out" highly trained/highly qualified individuals all year, attempting to get younger cheaper talent. You dilute your talent pool, and you will tend to have a drop off in the demand for your product.
I wish BG would drop most of their graduate studies and focus on being a better undergraduate university. Do a few things well and more people with notice and want to be a part of it. When that happens you get to pick what students you want in, and their raising the profile of alumnus. It won't happen but it is food for thought.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, teach PE.
daspollak wrote:I wish BG would drop most of their graduate studies and focus on being a better undergraduate university. Do a few things well and more people with notice and want to be a part of it. When that happens you get to pick what students you want in, and their raising the profile of alumnus. It won't happen but it is food for thought.
Removing graduate programs would make it harder for BG to focus on being a better undergrad university. In many programs (biology/chemistry/physics/psychology) you will lose faculty and have trouble recruiting faculty without graduate students. In turn you will lose government research money and that means losing money to run the departments. Graduate students are dirt cheap (especially at schools like BG, when I was an undergrad PhD students in Biology were paid 12K a year and that required teaching at least 1 class a semester). Graduate students do the research for faculty to get the research grants. On top of that, Graduate students teach the burden of classes (labs, study groups) that would drive up costs to have faculty teach. All the Intro English, history, and philosophy classes would barely exist without the work of graduate students.
It will be a long haul, and a messy one. Worse than the early 90s.
I've heard bad things about the provost from several people now, specifically I've been hearing about the push to drive out higher priced faculty. I've only heard from one source that there are rumblings about a faculty union again, but that comes up during every pinch.
People will lose jobs, and the city of BG is going to get stressed out. Worse, because of the way these things rebound, it will be three to five years before we see things fully rebound.
As it applies to athletics, I'm pondering what teams could be cut, and how deep things could go before we lose a capital sport like Hockey.
NWLB
********************************* http://www.CruiseAficionados.com - A Community for Cruise Fans. (Try the mobile app "Cruise Aficionados)
I'm not sure if the athletic department could make any (or many) cuts in sports teams. I believe their is a minimum number of teams that must be maintained to qualify for D1. I thought it was around 13/14 teams.
Edit to add; Found this "Division I member institutions have to sponsor at least seven sports for men and seven for women (or six for men and eight for women) with two team sports for each gender"- so technically we could drop a men's sport and still be OK.
I'm sure Gov. Strickland is one of the many Ohio politicians receiving OSU tix. So expect little to none of the state support to be cut from them. It will be pulled from all the other state colleges.
Hockey will always be the boat anchor of the BG athletic department. It has some very die hard fans here though that will make it very tough for the university to ever think about dropping it.
