It puzzles me that the faculty is willing to slow-walk to their own pink slips. They ought to be going on strike, or doing something, anything, other than calmly observing the murder of SSU. The vocational vision cannot work, across the street from SRJC's cheap, high quality vocational program.
The interview is outrageous. Instead of repudiating Cutrer, he says to "honor" her. Enrollment and retention are crashing simultaneously. That's a repudiation of what he honors. No one wants his vision. If the faculty don't stand up for education and Academic programming, no one else will.
It freaks me out that all the programs cut from SSU because they prefer a vocational focus -- Art History, Theater, Dance, Athletics, Philosophy -- are alive and well at the ACTUAL vocational school next door? It's not about vocational opportunities. It's about killing the liberal arts.
People forget that the reason for the cuts was a $24M budget gap. The legislature showed up with $90M in new revenue, and all the cuts remained. The budget gap was never the reason. It was all a lie. Spagna is now the next installment in the lie.
No wonder the search details were so secret. The sole job qualification was "demonstrated obedience to the Chancellor's Office." #FireMildredGarcia #ReplaceTheCSUBoardOfTrustees
Unless the new President repudiates and repairs what the old President did, it won't matter. SSU needs to be more vocational? SRJC has Art, Art History, Theater, and Dance. This was never about vocations. This was about destroying SSU. And that program is still being executed. #FireMildredGarcia
Good news, the problem with the Admissions Office has been solved. Now, let's get to the REAL problem: Making sure that there is something to be admitted to. Reinstate Philosophy, Geology, Art History, Theater, Dance, Language, WGS, Athletics, Physics, Economics, etc.
Money rates SSU one of America's Best Colleges. If SSU's administration commits to a program of academic and administrative excellence, including hiring the best people, not the most needy people, because the mission matters, rather than competing with its vocational neighbor SRJC, it might be true.
$90M. But still no way to restore Philosophy, Theater, Dance, or Art History, or to even discuss it. They want to turn SSU into a vocational school. But even junior colleges with vocational programs, like SRJC, have Theater and Art programs. Nothing makes sense.
Legislators: The law requires that you reinstate Division 2 Athletics at SSU. Will you commit to doing so?
Cutrer: No.
The defiance expressed in this meeting is the voice of Mildred Garcia speaking through her meat-shield, Emily Cutrer. Change will have to start at the top. #DissolveCSUTrustees
Assembly member Chris Rogers discusses the implementation plan.
Senate President Mike McGuire discusses $9M in discretionary funds that can be used to restore programs.
Assembly member Chris Cabaldon describes the extraordinary budget commitment from the legislature:
Almost ready to begin.
Live from the SSU legislative hearings. Someone thinks we don’t care. We care. It’s Standing Room Only.
We'll be there today. I hope the legislators are as angry as we are. CSU lied, they said the cuts were due to the budget, but then when the legislators restored the budget, they made the cuts anyway. This is public corruption. It is lies. It is misappropriation of funds. CSU Board of Trustees.
Cutrer's disastrous leadership: "The school will have to rebuild its entire athletic department from scratch, including hiring a new athletic director, coaches, administrative support staff and recruiting enough athletes to field at least 10 teams, to be eligible for full NCAA membership."
"Whatever fraction of the $9 million in discretionary funds ends up being spent to undo Cutrer’s sweeping reductions, it’s likely to disappoint...faculty and hundreds of students who’ve been organizing and protesting since January to restore programs and bring back downsized professors."
Cutrer's disastrous leadership led to this tragedy: "Although the deal includes $8 million over three years for Seawolves athletics, none of the teams is expected to return to the playing field next year. Most of the athletes transferred, and many of the coaches took other jobs."
It was all a lie. The budget wasn't the reason for the cuts, it was an excuse. Once the budget was restored, with even more, many of the same cuts will remain. Cutrer must be held accountable for lying to the campus community for six months.
You can tell how bad things have gotten when CSU Board of Trustees and the State of Ohio's assault on higher education are this tightly aligned. If the Board won't get rid of Garcia, then the board itself has got to go, by act of the legislature.
Press Democrat asked all the right questions, but they mostly got non-answers, until the end, when Mills explained that the liberal arts deliver the most important job skills. But nobody will ever explain how killing the liberal arts gives you more of the job skills that the liberal arts give. #SSU
This article contains factual errors and misdiagnoses the core problem, which is not the GE pattern. But it gets some things very right, especially the importance of making the liberal arts accessible to new populations, rather than further isolating the liberal arts in elite schools.
This toxic proposal is to toss California's Master Plan for Higher Education, which made us the envy of the world, and replace it with who knows what, for who knows what reason, or who knows how it would be administered. Instead, ask how we can better realize the goals of the Master Plan.
More assaults on CA higher education. The right move would be to invest in higher education and make CA higher education the envy of the country, and a reason why people move to California. The economic impact would be extraordinary. No reason to tear it down.
Useless article suggests that it is "unrealistic" to expect Philosophy and athletics as SSU, that massive cuts are inevitable. But there is nothing inevitable about the enrollment decline. It had a cause. The cause can be undone. The PD lacks the vision to see such a simple thing.
This article assumes that if you go to college you'll get the kind of education that has historically proved very valuable. But if they go to SSU, where Philosophy isn't even offered, and the experience is increasingly tailored to vocational training, it might not be true any more.
#SSU is not the only one disastrously and thoughtlessly deploying AI in education. "...We need to convince the people in charge of our schools — especially our elementary schools — that the zealous embrace of [artificial intelligence] is not the way forward."
The best you could say for Chancellor Garcia is that she is willing to shoot one of the CSU campuses in order to get money for the others. That makes her a hostage-taking terrorist -- at best. She must be removed.
