Letter to the Editor

Submitted by Richard Mikula, a mathematics professor at Lock Haven University:

I sit here reading my email after giving a statistics exam. Upon checking my emails, the first one in the inbox was an update from our senior administration at Lock Haven, Mansfield and Bloomsburg about the five college deans, associate deans, and assistants to associate deans that will serve at the New University. It seems like each campus will either have the dean or an associate dean for each of the five colleges in the New U, and some campuses will have assistants to associates in some of the colleges.

Clarion, Edinboro, and California University of PA, and the three NE universities, Bloomsburg, Lock Haven, and Mansfield as a dire need, or the system will go broke! Meanwhile, retrenchment letters were served only to LHU and Mansfield faculty this year (excuse me, notice of “intent to retrench”), with 23 at Lock Haven being served, and three at Mansfield being served. Out of the 14 PASSHE universities, only LH and Mansfield get these letters.

Seem suspicious? If the need to reduce faculty numbers to save money across the system is so important, then why are we not seeing more PASSHE schools issuing letters this year? The reason they are doing this now, is after integration, the seniority lists for each department in the 3 integrating schools (Bloomsburg, Mansfield and Lock Haven) combine to form one new seniority list for the new department. For instance, in my department (math), the list from Bloomsburg with its faculty members, the list from Mansfield with its faculty members, and the list from LHU with its faculty members, combines to form one new list. Here at LHU, out of seven members, I am the 3rd from the bottom in years of service. Whereas in the new list, I would be somewhere in the middle of the group of 36 members. They use this list to lay people off, going from the bottom up. So, they served LHU and MU with “letters of intent to retrench” so that under the old seniority list, they can purge LHU and MU before integration, and they do not want Bloomsburg to face any retrenchments. By the way, does it seem suspicious that the Interim President of LHU and MU is Bloomsburg’s President? Now, there is a side letter to our collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that prevents anyone being laid-off this year, and so no other schools saw a point to issuing a letter this year. This side letter is a result of an act by Gov. Wolf to use government stimulus money/pandemic relief funds so that no one is laid-off before the end of the next academic year, saving them some grief in the middle of this pandemic. So, by serving the letters of “intent to retrench” this year at LHU and MU, they are insuring only LHU and MU take the cuts.

For full disclosure, my wife and I each got such a letter last month. This gives us the distinction of being the only couple to both be served with this honor. We are in our 15th year at LHU; we actually met here when we both were hired in 2007. If it is that important to downsize, or “right-size,” as the administration keeps telling us, then why do we need to go from three deans, a provost and a president, to at least five deans or associate deans, or assistant to associate deans at LHU. And I am sure that is not the end of it. When asked these questions, administration always has some slippery answer about how these administration positions are needed, or they evade the question all together like politicians. Meanwhile, we must “right-size” our faculty.

I am a professor of mathematics. When I came to LHU, there were 12 tenured or tenure-track faculty in the math department, and at least one temporary faculty member. At that time LHU had two college, not three, and so there were two deans, a provost and a president here. Currently there are seven of us in the math department, one serving at Clearfield, and LHU has roughly 60% of the students it had at its peak enrollment 10 years ago, and roughly 54% of its math faculty. Administration keeps saying we need to right-size our faculty complement to get to a faculty-to-student ratio from 2011. They indent to “retrench” or lay-off three people in my department based on seniority in years of service. I am third from the bottom, and so I am number three.

Meanwhile, that leaves four faculty left in the math dept. There will be more deans than math faculty. Keep in mind every student takes at least one math class, and many majors must take at least two. With some additional restrictions on the math department’s faculty that I don’t want to go into here, LHU will only have three math faculty who can teach the general education classes (100-level classes), serving nearly 3000 students at LHU. For simplicity of the calculation, assume each student at LHU has to take four math credit hours in his or her time here at LHU (to account for the variable requirements between the majors), over a course of eight semesters.

Then that would give an average class size for the math department’s general education classes of about 40. With four faculty (removing the restrictions the math dept. has over staffing 100-level classes), that would produce an average class size of 30 in general education classes. Now, with five faculty teaching only general education classes, that would give an average of 24. Currently, we utilize at least five faculty in math to service our general education courses each semester. Tell me how this is right-sizing? I think the department was already right-sized, since the newest faculty member in the math department at LHU was hired in 2008. If you expect it to make sense, then you will be let down. Now another sneaky move they are making is putting all math programs into moratorium, so they can use the CBA Article 29 on ways to retrench to get rid of three math faculty, only to bring those programs back after integration. Sounds shady, because it is.

At the same time, they keep giving lip service to student retention. Ironically, it took more than ½ of this semester to hire a tutor in tutorial services for general education math classes. That seemed to happen only after I brought to their attention that there were no math tutors at my “meeting with the Bobs” (an “Office Space” ref, from the movie by Mike Judge – if you never saw that movie, it is a must-see), that is my meeting with the provost, dean and HR to inform me of my impending lay-off. If retention is truly important, staff tutorial services, and insure that general education courses in core areas are not understaffed, resulting in ridiculous class sizes that overwork faculty, and have students slip through the cracks. If you expect their decisions to make sense, you will be as frustrated as I.

Granted, I am sure there are some places where we have more faculty than we may need. I am not going to pretend that that isn’t somewhat true. However, when you cut faculty from primarily service departments, like math, English, history, sciences, you are hurting students who must take general education classes, perhaps in areas they struggle. Understaffing math classes and composition classes, only overworks its faculty by having large class sizes. If you put 40-50 students in an English composition class, the instructor will likely give fewer assignments, or simply do a poorer job on grading the assignments, by giving fewer comments, and suggestions that would help a student write better in the future. Similar issues exist with math classes that are overenrolled.

We already suffer from innumeracy in this country. We will only make it worse with these cost-cutting right-sizing measures. It is paving the way for a future like that in Isaac Asimov’s short story “The Feeling of Power” (a must read).

There was a time when I had 60-70 students in my intro to statistics classes here at LHU. This was at the time the Chancellor thinks is our golden age, setting the conditions for this faculty-to-student ratio 19.2:1 benchmark we all must hit. At that time, I was 10 years younger, and then it was draining to grade all the quizzes and exams for those big sections. Now I have roughly 40 in those sections. It is still a lot to grade, but not as difficult as with 60-70 in a section. Now you might say, well don’t schools like Penn State have large lecture hall classes? Yes, for some classes, but they also have what are called recitations, where students meet one day a week with a much smaller group, a faculty member or teaching assistant (a grad student usually) to discuss homework solutions, do examples, take quizzes, etc. Also, in the big sections there are typically three or so teaching assistants to help with grading, office hours, etc. Also, at such schools, it is not uncommon for faculty to teach at most two or three classes a semester.

A major issue with higher education is its cost. Many students go into incredible debt to obtain a 4-year degree. Unfortunately, because of their courses of study, many find themselves riddled with debt, and poor employment opportunities after graduation. If you major in a popular major (I don’t want to name names) you are part of a large group that floods the market upon graduation. In a world where there are fewer white-collar jobs than decades ago, you may find yourself doing a job that a high school graduate would have performed in previous decades. Chancellor Greenstein claims that lowering the cost of higher education needs to be a high priority, and on this issue I agree, but he also said many times that LHU needs to offer what the students flock to, the majors with the largest numbers of students, what he called “the big 6.” These are also the ones who often produce students who end up employed in jobs that someone with a HS diploma would have done a few decades ago. If he thinks that is a path to the middle class, I would have to disagree. When you owe $100,000 in student loan debt, and are making say $30,000 a year, you sound poor to me.

Ah, Integration of PASSHE Universities seems like another go-nowhere scheme to pad some peoples resumes. The Chancellor needed this to happen to pad his own resume, like our previous provost did with her general education revisions, and creation of three-college University. By the way, she is now at PASSHE as the Greenstein’s assistance for this integration plan. They all need a new line on their resumes, as they looking for the next, bigger, and better gig. Usually leaving messes in their wake. Meanwhile, faculty and staff know all too well the messes left behind.