I neglected to mention in my Georgia queer theory post that the House Republicans spearheading the campaign to fire professors and ban certain classes are using the economy as one reason behind their efforts.
Upset House Republicans are mounting a campaign to purge Georgia's higher education system of professors with an expertise in racy sexuality topics as the state grapples with a $2.2 billion shortfall.
Something similar, but arguably more dire, is happening at Florida Atlantic University where the school is may be using the recession as an excuse to dissolve the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department and its MA program.
An email from the department reads:
We question the validity of the FAU administration's rational for proposing this unjust suspension. When the total money allocated to "Education" in FAU's last published budget (2006-2007) is $239, 949, 841.00 and the Women's Studies Center and M.A. program (at an operating cost of $60,000) only account for a total .00025% of that budget, we must question whether or not "budget cuts" are an adequate explanation of the administrations decision. Both the President's salary and Athletics departments' budget have increased over the past year. From our perspective, the university has chosen its priorities; These priorities represent an inexcusable attack on all women in and out of the academy. At a university where the average salary of a male professor is $16,000.00 higher than the average salary of a female professor, how else are we to interpret the proposed suspension of the Women's Studies Center and M.A. program than as an attack on women?
It doesn't surprise me one bit that women's and queer studies would be the first to be targeted in university cutbacks - after all, they're disciplines that have long been marginalized in academia.
So I'm wondering if folks are seeing this at their schools - anyone out there in Women's Studies (or other areas of study) want to weigh in?
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Sadly, this doesn't surprise me in the least. Even before the "official crisis" the university I just graduated from wanted to combine the Women's and Gender Studies, the Applied Indigenous Studies, and the Ethnic Studies program and save money by using the same classes, etc. Since they're obviously all the same thing anyways.
Diversity classes seem to be among the first on the chopping block.
I've actually seen art programs cut first. Theatre was recently dissolved at a local university without any discussion with students or faculty and staff.
I haven't seen the economy's effect on Women Studies/Queer/Racial studies programs yet but we're already feeling it in arts education.
Interestingly, at my university, they're currently raising money for a new visual arts building.
The School of the Arts at my university is also feeling the hit of budget cuts. I'm in the Drama Dept., and we've had a building project halted in the middle of construction (others on campus are proceeding), production budgets severely cut down, and graduate student slots eliminated.
While this is a slightly different issue than anti-women sentiments creeping into administrative decisions, I think it is related due to the way certain fields of study are largely prioritized over others. Many people feel that the arts are superfluous (just like Women's Studies & Gender Studies). It's a reflection of the values of many in our society and it troubles me deeply.
I think Women's Studies programs are extremely valuable. I think they are instrumental in motivating people to make positive changes in the world. I also think the arts are vital to humanity. I think many people would be surprised by how much they would dislike a world with no art.
do you have any actual evidence that there's a massive hit on women's and queer studies?
i'm at arizona state, and the university just announced yesterday that they're getting rid of our aviation, sports business, and applied arts and sciences programs. other programs (from urban planning to engineering to nursing) are being moved and recombined, and next year's freshman class enrollment will be capped for the first time. my alma mater, the university of arizona, is cutting programs, but not women's or queer studies. our state legislature has massively cut our funding, and there are no private universities in this state, so i'm more concerned about making sure that arizona students can go to college AT ALL than keeping some relatively unpopular programs open.
i think you're looking to find some sexism/homophobia where it may not exist here.
Um, who said anything about a "massive hit"? I'm asking a question to those people who are in these depts.
I think you're looking to find an argument where it may not exist.
Your post title opens up the speculation for a national trend.
Right, speculation. Question asking. I don't quite see what "evidence" I need to provide for that.
Wait, so you're looking for "actual evidence" (i.e. statistics?) of a national phenomenon, yet you turn around and offer as "evidence" of your own view...an anecdote based on personal experience of one school?
I think the 'speculation' is tangibly based and could point to a future trend in republicans using this as a scapegoat to take away women and queer studies. Theyre using our economy as a cover. Our economy probably wont get better anytime soon, so if republicans continued to scare-monger and push this claim, who knows whether or not our academia and politicians will be pushed over by it. Republicans are notorious for being stubborn about stupid ideas and sticking by it no matter how negative the effect. The demographic that they pander to is misogynistic, traditional and ignorant. Its not good that theyve started sniffing around gender the studies area. Close minds, white men and intellectualism dont mix.
no, that wasn't my intent at all.
i talked about my experience to explain why, at this point, i wasn't really alarmed about sexism in university program cuts. (i'm deeply concerned about classism, for the reasons i posted above....many people in my state will lose the chance to go to college at all.) i asked for evidence, because i wanted to know if there's numbers that suggest that i *do* need to be concerned about sexism.
i prefer to operate as though there *isn't* a nasty ulterior motive to people's/institutions' actions until evidence (which i was asking for) suggests otherwise. that's probably naive, but i'm going with it.
Serious question, and slightly off-topic, so sorry if anyone's bothered by this:
Degrees in women's studies don't help people get jobs (and frankly, neither do degrees in philosophy, english lit, religious studies, etc). So while there may be sexism in cutting women's studies first, shouldn't programs like women's studies (and philosophy, etc) that don't teach skills for getting jobs* be the first to go?
I'd much rather see a university keep nursing, engineering, teaching, sciences, and such than most any of the standard liberal arts degrees if they had to cut back. In a perfect world, sure, there'd be room for everything; sadly, we don't live in a perfect world.
*(Yes, those types of majors arguably teach nebulous skills like critical thinking and reading, but so do other majors that teach other more practical job skills, and anyone who's majored in something like religious studies or whatnot knows how easy it is to avoid critical thinking and reading if one so desires.)
"Degrees in women's studies don't help people get jobs (and frankly, neither do degrees in philosophy, english lit, religious studies, etc). So while there may be sexism in cutting women's studies first, shouldn't programs like women's studies (and philosophy, etc) that don't teach skills for getting jobs* be the first to go?"
It seems problematic to simply say "those won't get you a job." Also, your bias against religious studies is showing. Religious studies doesn't automatically mean people won't think critically about their subject matter. But I forgot, all people of religious faith or interested in religious studies are bigoted dimbats.
I didn't say that "people of religious faith or interested in religious studies are bigoted dimbats." (But thanks for putting words in my mouth.) What I said was that "something like religious studies or whatnot" did not necessarily teach you anything useful (critical thinking skills) in the job market.
Obviously, you interpreted what I said to mean that I thought that people who are interested in religion are incapable of critical thinking, rather than what I meant, which was that people who major in religious studies - just like people who major in women's studies, philosophy, etc - can avoid learning critical thinking and reading skills. That is: learning critical thinking and reading skills is something that MIGHT happen in those departments, but it's not their primary focus.
And that's quite true - you can major in women's studies, philosophy, religious studies, history, anthropology, literature, or any number of traditional liberal arts areas and avoid any sort of real work at all while still getting high grades. That's not to say that EVERYONE who majors in these areas learns nothing, takes nothing from them, or picks up no useful skills. But since you can learn critical thinking and reading skills in biology or education just as easily as you can in philosophy, the argument that traditional liberal arts majors are good because they teach critical thinking and reading skills fails, in my opinion.
(It's also worth pointing out that, of course, we've all met people in every profession who probably do their profession a disservice. No degree program necessarily confers critical thinking or reading skills, much less professional skill or common sense. I am speaking in generalities here, with all the problems that accompany doing so.)
Anyway: my point, basically, in that parenthetical was to move the debate on past the "they teach critical thinking and reading" point, and on to something more productive. (You know, more productive than making up a straw man argument to knock down, rather than answering my question.../sigh)
Onward, to the real discussion:
I think that your first point is correct, that saying "you won't get a job in that" alone is problematic. But it's true: most people who get degrees in traditional liberal arts areas end up working in business, marketing, management, etc - and they'd likely be better served by just having gotten a degree in those areas in the first place. And so, in the current economic climate, shouldn't we be encouraging people to major in more skills-based areas, where they're more likely to find jobs when they get out of school? And what better way to encourage people to major in these areas than by getting rid of most of the traditional liberal arts programs so that people are forced to major in business, nursing, engineering, math, science, education, etc?
(Related but interesting questions: Obama's talked a bit about increasing the number of women in the sciences. How many women major in women's studies? Would we be better as a society if they all majored in science, instead? Is cutting women's studies programs first - however obviously sexist it might be - perhaps a good thing since it will compel women who might have majored in that to major in something else where women might be underrepresented?)
If the only options were business, engineering, etc., I would not have gone to college at all, because I am not interested in studying those things. Then I'd really have been screwed, since all my jobs have required a college degree.
I got all my post-college jobs with a BA in English and History. I am a grant writer for a nonprofit, and you can bet my ass I learned critical thinking and writing skills that a business or math major probably would not have learned. Most of the job postings/networking meetings, etc. specifically asked for applicants with English or other writing-heavy liberal arts degrees. I write all day long at my job, and my bosses have known that someone with a liberal arts degree is more likely than not well-prepared to do so.
And give me a fucking break about people with liberal arts degrees not doing any real work. Writing 12+ pages a week (usually far more) and reading upwards of 150-200 pages a night for each of my classes WAS real work. I had to take science and math electives, and they were real, just as challenging work, too, but writing and reading critically was not the emphasis of the coursework to the degree it was in my history and literature classes.
And as far as grades were concerned, at my college, the valedictorian was almost always a physics or math major, because it is possible to get 100% on an assignment in those subjects, whereas the History and English profs very, very rarely gave As on papers. (And no, I'm not saying the math and physics programs were easy; they were far, far from a cakewalk).
And if you want to kill off liberal arts departments, should Harvard's undergrad programs be slashed? Yale's? Both of those schools, and many other great colleges, are liberal arts schools. If all those smart people want liberal arts degrees, does that make them lazy kids who want to avoid critical thinking? Should all those people now go to community college?
And why don't I play devil's advocate here? If all those liberal arts majors end up succeeding in business without business degrees, that doesn't say a whole lot about the utility of a business degree, does it? Why don't marketing majors actually learn to hone their intellects in an academic discipline in college instead of getting a degree in a subject they don't really need? They might learn better writing (and yes, critical thinking) skills in courses that actually teach that kind of thing than in courses that teach how to sell Coca-Cola.
Do you think that reasoning is fair?
And no, I don't actually think business school is fluffy or useless! I'm just turning the tables and saying that pointing fingers at women's studies (or other liberal arts programs) as useless in the job market is a flawed argument.
Ack! Wrong place! Sorry for posting this twice.
All right, I'm posting odd places...That was in the right place, as a response to Snarfer...sorry for posting this again farther down the thread.
Long reply short: I made it clear that not everyone in those programs slacked off. But surely, surely you knew more than one person who majored in a traditional liberal arts major and who did, effectively, no work at all. I didn't say that such majors COULDN'T teach critical thinking, but simply that if someone wanted to get a degree in those majors without learning those skills, it wasn't difficult to do.
And anecdotally, anyway, anyone I know who got a liberal arts degree and subsequently went into a different field has started behind those who got a more specialized degree. They might catch up over time - in fact, they generally have, as experience is far more important than education in the long run - but it's a lot easier to get your first job in marketing with a marketing degree.
No, I do not know a single person with a liberal arts degree who did no work at all. Literally not one. Again, it is IMPOSSIBLE to get out of heavy reading and writing assignments when you have to write graded essays all the time. Hundreds (and I do mean hundreds) of pages do not magically write themselves into a degree.
For what it's worth, I do know people with business/marketing degrees who brag about how little work they did in college. Hell, I know people with MBAs from Ivy League schools who have told me that business school is mostly networking get-togethers and only secondarily about coursework. And hey, if someone's happy just getting a credential, that's fine. But if one actually wants an educated mind, it's not.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I suspect you went to a school that primarily offered majors in science and/or business. I have a friend who went to a health sciences school, and she (for a time) and many of her classmates persisted in believing ONLY science majors did 'real' or difficult work. These people had no idea what a liberal arts degree entailed; they assumed that because the sparse liberal arts offerings at their college were poorly run (due to lack of funding, I might add) and at the introductory level, that that's what liberal arts colleges were like. Those courses weren't harshly graded and were treated like second-rate courses because their school was a specialty school. If you in fact went to such a school, you do NOT have first-hand knowledge of what a liberal arts degree entails.
But the bottom line is that a credential is not the same thing as an education, and turning universities into credential mills would be a very, very bad thing.
Hello, I am a new to writing comments here but I have lurked for a while. I thought it would be helpful to share my experience because I have a B.A. in English and I am a couple semesters away from finishing a B.S. in Environmental Biology.
Let me start by describing what happened when I popped out of my liberal arts school with my shiny new English degree. For about 6 months I attempted to get a job as a journalist/editor, then as a writer of various website articles, then just about any job I could find. I ended up as a PT assistant, luckily with flexible-enough hours that I could continue my schooling. I don't attribute this to a useless degree, but it certainly opened my eyes to how vaguely the English major defines its end job market.
In my senior seminar, the very first week was spent going over a book about jobs people with English majors took, and no one at the seminar was particularly satisfied with what they heard (one of the chief complaints was "why didn't we have a FRESHMAN seminar where we learned this?"). I think that from the perspective of jobs, a major in the sciences is always going to win out over a random liberal arts major-- and most of my friends at my liberal arts school agreed with me.
But I think the point some people are trying to make here is that college shouldn't just be a job factory, but about experiences. I suppose I enjoyed some of my later experiences in the English major, though I kept having the strange inkling that I could have simply joined a theater or writing club and gotten the same exact thing. In fact I was editor of a writing club in my senior year and I learned more there than I did in my classes. I can't say, after having done the English curriculum, that I would recommend a liberal arts major to anyone.
Furthermore, it may have just been my school but the English major was laughably easy, particularly compared to my later Biology studies. In English you do enjoy class discussion at an earlier point in time (you're still taking "foundation" courses in Biology through senior year), but again you can find your way to those sorts of critical thinking experiences outside the major. In my case the challenging of ideas was also far less rigorous in the English major than the Biology major, because my English teachers lacked a desire to demand proof for a particular opinion. People could say whatever brand of bullshit they liked and have the whole class nodding along in agreement.
It is nice to think that college is about buying an experience, but for people who struggle to put just one child through I think it would be more practical to consider it in terms of networking and jobs. In that case the "practical" majors are obviously the best choices. Women's Studies, English, etc seem like luxuries, not necessities.
But if you do have the ability, like I do, to dabble around in various majors then it's fine to embrace college as an experience and not simply as a means to an end. Certainly it's the better way of doing things! And obviously targeting an area of research and development because it's "racy" isn't valid, and there are probably better things to cut (like administrator salaries) than an entire degree program. If it ever came down to the wire I would take doctors and engineers over liberal arts majors, but I think such a situation is unrealistic even considering the current economy. People should always have a choice.
What I said was that "something like religious studies or whatnot" did not necessarily teach you anything useful (critical thinking skills) in the job market.
You and I obviously took some very different humanities classes (religious studies, art history, etc.).
Let's just cut the Liberal Arts colleges altogether, right?! All of America can be super "useful" worker drones who have never had their world view challenged by a book or people who turn to darker forms of outlet because they can't express themselves. I've had a friend here at college ask me once what I'll do for the world that's useful.
The ability (and desire) to create things purely for pleasure or for introspection is uniquely human. It's what makes our lives worth living. The first people drew on cave walls to celebrate their victories and record their adventures. They embroidered stories about their kills to impress their friends.
That drive to create things is what drives every Liberal Arts major to defy society and want to go to graduate school or be a writer instead of go into publishing because it would make her mother happier.
Take all of the "useless" majors out of the world and it would be a very sad world indeed. Please read the book We or Brave New World for examples of what the world would be without art or those who create it.
No soma for me, thanks.
First, I should point out that I have very specifically left fine arts out of my lists of things that might hypothetically be cut because I think that learning how to produce art (whether music, painting, etc) is certainly more likely to be a useful skill than having read some Nietzsche and Sartre. As such, perhaps literature shouldn't be on that list, but most lit programs I'm familiar with teach literary criticism, rather than how to be a good writer.
That said, to move the debate along: I like art, and I love to read. But I think plenty of artists of all types have proven that you don't need formal training (4 year BAs, Master's degrees, and PhDs) or even training at all to be a successful artist. Can formal training in the arts be useful? Sure. But should state universities focus on teaching people to be artists or on teaching people to have more typical workplace skills? Couldn't (much cheaper to run) community colleges, or even local community arts programs (assuming they ever got funding, granted) serve the same purpose?
So funny since you're talking about me exactly. I want to go to grad school and go into academia so I can teach more useless skills to America's young people.
And btw. There's a growing divide between M.F.A.'s who have better chances at getting published or selling art than people who rise up from the bottom. So yes teaching art and writing is still useful because they are both things that you have to have talent for yes, but are still skills that need to be developed.
Besides the fact that going to college and taking classes like womens studies and analyzing literature challenges the way you look at the world. Womens studies programs produce majors who yes can get jobs and become very successful(like the women who run this blog) but most importantly are the people who take it as an elective. People who have their ideas challenged their ways of thinking about women changed. English classes where books bring up ideas of what's right and what our world should be like. Who you should be as a person. These classes develop you as a person, instead of just teaching you a skill. All of the people who major in these kinds of things yes can go into business and do JUST AS WELL as someone who had a business degree, but are also the kind of people who try even in some small way to change the world or educate people about ways of thinking that they've never been exposed to before. I'm surprised if you've read Brave New World that you think we should all be A's, B's, C's and D's. Be taught a skill and do it everyday like a good capitalist citizen. Just because I don't want to make huge sums of money but affect the way people think about the world doesn't lessen what I want to do.
Obviously you're the kind of person who isn't looking for me to change your mind, you just want to pick a fight. Good luck with that. I'll not reply again but I do feel sorry for you and closed capitalist mind.
Oh, I think this is a big misconception of the arts. For most of the jobs and contracts out there, the arts are a trade. While rare self-trained people do succeed, most of the jobs will go to people with mastery of trade skills, experience, and a strong portfolio.
Snarfer,
All of your posts on this topic point to a solution, but it's *not*, as you suggest, to cut or reduce liberal arts and humanities (called "human" for a reason; think about that) from university curricula.
The solution is for vocational programs and institutes to receive and raise funding that will allow them to develop programs of equal rigor to those of liberal arts universities. Then, students who seek professional programs like Teaching, Nursing, Engineering, and the like are free to enter vocational programs geared to those things alone, and universities have less pressure to focus only on those professional-geared courses of study. They can then keep alive those disciplines that train people in the vital skills of social and narrative analysis.
Having said that, I think you're a bit ill-informed about the utility of various courses of study. I am an anthropologist, and although I am currently in academia, I have not always been so, nor are many of my colleagues who used their graduate degrees in other ways. Are you aware that most major companies in the U.S. employ either in-house or permalance social anthropologists to work on marketing, proxemics of store layout, and a host of other issues? It used to be that only Masters and above in Anthro were recruited for this, but I have since received many job notices for people with only a B.A and some undergrad independent research under their belts.
This is not even touching the many Biological anthro-degrees including B.A.s working in public health and forensics; the Archaeology students working in museums and tourism, and the Linguistic Anthro students working in fields such as special education, cognitive development, and speech pathology.
Likewise, sociologists are employed in urban planning capacities and in social work organizations; Literature /English degrees are widespread in the editing world; Foreign Language degrees work as translators; Classics/Humanities folks work in museums and tourism; the lists go on and on.
We live in a society with a highly specialized division of labor that neither requires nor benefits from everyone being involved in the same 10-20 fields. If you would like examples of how disatrous are the economic effects of societies in which only a limited selection of degrees and fields is made available, take a look at certain Middle Eastern and African nations. Some of these countries are suffering from a huge surfeit of Engineers, Accountants, Doctors (though nurses are still needed), and Dentists because those were the "useful" fields everyone was encouraged to go into. Now, literally millions of people in these professions cannot find jobs (and work as takeout-deliverers, taxi drivers, and street vendors instead). A diversified range of academic and career options would go a long way towards cutting down the unemployment rate in such countries.
Though I must, say, my proffered solution is not great, either, since everybody--including and especially teachers, nurses, i-bankers, and engineers--benefits from liberal arts and social science coursework. The people themeselves benefit, but mostly, society benefits. People who have been trained in self-awareness, analysis of both self and society, and in the underlying mechanisms of social frameworks will almost always benefit society as they move through it and work in it.
The idea that social science or ethnic studies or women's studies, for three examples, do not benefit students or society is so wrong-headed it is almost laughable.
Pardon my alarmism, but without these disciplines that train people in the skills I discussed above, I believe we will be one step closer towards society going to hell in a handbasket.
So much more eloquently put than my defense was. Thank you for giving more concrete evidence. I concur wholeheartedly.
I think both of you did a great job.
Every time I hear somebody pushing more economically-driven models for education, I shudder. Somebody else falling into the business world's plan to take over absolutely everything and better ensure we will all be cogs in the machine.
"Degrees in women's studies don't help people get jobs (and frankly, neither do degrees in philosophy, english lit, religious studies, etc). "
there is only one problem with this statement, which is that it is not true. the subject you study in college is irrelevant unless you're going to be an academic (in which case you need to go to a million years of school and your undergrad is irrelevant anyway) or something really technical like an engineer or IT person.
generally, it's possible to get a general admin/office job with ANY degree in ANY field, whether it's women's studies or business administration. it really is just the piece of paper or the line on the resume that matters.
@Kathleen: totally right. business/science/engineering people need to come off their high horse and quit judging liberal arts people.
Haha. Actually my boyfriend is in IT (he's a web programmer) and his undergraduate degree was a double major in Math and Philosophy. He said that the critical thinking and problem solving skills he learned in these fields are vital to his job. So even IT people don't need a skill-specific degree to be successful.
I find it hilarious that Snarfer choose to post such a comment on a blog like this. Not a crowd likely to jump on his bandwagon.
I'm only slightly sarcastic when I say that it sounds like what Snarfer is really interested in is a society like the one in Brave New World.
Surely, the only reason people would ever go to college is so they can happily join the system and keep up the work, even if it's something they're miserable doing. And I say this knowing that not everyone has the opportunity to go to college in the first place.
I'm only slightly sarcastic when I say that it sounds like what Snarfer is really interested in is a society like the one in We or Brave New World.
Surely, the only reason people would ever go to college is so they can happily join the system and keep up the work, even if it's something they're miserable doing. And I say this knowing that not everyone has the opportunity to go to college in the first place.
This was used as an example in one of my poli sci classes. Were reading Marcuse (One-Dimensional Man) and his basic premise is that weve become brainwashed by the society we live in and everything is blinding and conformist to the people, ie, theres no rebellion. So, the prof was asking us how tangible this was. She used the example of how if we had an elective between bus management or philosophy theories which one would we take? Most of us would probably take the business class because its practical. Thats the problems Marcuse was expounding on. We dont break out of whats practical and useful in society so we never really innovate and all the power remains in the hands of the elite. Marcuse believed that the arts would help us break out of this impotent cycle. So, I dont think its rational to take away liberal arts or anything in that department. They all balance each other and are all needed for tangible purposes. And whose to say the student majoring in philosophy isnt aiming to become a lawyer later on?
You know, I consider my Women and Gender Studies major to be the more practical of my two majors! The other is English, which has been my academic love for my entire life.
And you know, I started out thinking I might major in Comp Sci, and then I realized that it might be practical, but I hated it and didn't see it leading to any of the things I want to do with my life. Instead, as a WMGS and ENG major, I am currently applying for internships at various pro-choice and sex ed nonprofits, most of which state they are looking for students with exposure to psych, social work, education, public health, and women's studies. I might not be able to get these internships that are in the area I'm interested in without the WMGS major!
You're absolutely right about that.
I recently read an article (it was from a couple years ago, but I only just found it) that pointed out that a lot of women take impractical majors that will not enable them to get a real job, and this often leads those women into situations where they have to marry a man for economic reasons, just to support themselves.
The article is here :
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=10659
It was a minor theme in a much broader article, but it is true.
I definitely think that women's studies departments are important, and should be on all major campuses in this country.
I also think that all students should take at least one women's studies class during the course of their career.
But women's studies as a major?
Bad idea - unless you're planning to get into a masters or PhD program after you get your undergrad degree and then go on and TEACH women's studies.
The same would go for art, theater, Africana studies - in fact, most of the liberal arts majors are a really bad and impractical idea.
Look, most businesses and public agencies are still run by men. They'd much rather hire a man for a management-track position than a woman, so why give them a legitimate reason for doing so?
Colleges and universities do women undergrads a real disservice when they don't advise them to take practical majors.
In fact, institutions of higher education should be going out of their way to encourage women to go into fields where women are grossly underrepresented - engineering, physics, computer science, mathematics ect.
Those majors lead to high paying jobs - and there are far too few women in those programs.
I'm at the University of South Florida and two semesters ago we were threatened with the loss of our position as an autonomous department (I believe we're the oldest autonomous department of WST in the state). The school's plan was to combine WST with Africana Studies and send both of us to the lowest rung in the College of Arts and Sciences. The early rumors were that WST would lose its grad programs, but I think administration backed off when people started getting agitated. There were a few protests/demonstrations, a massive petition (of which Gloria Steinem was the first signature), and e-mail campaigns. We're safe--for now.
Our listserv did send an email about the situation at FAU, so at least colleges within the state are communicating and working with and for each other.
To Snarfer: Not everyone studying WS is a major only studying Women's Studies. I'm an education major minoring in Women's Studies. Or grad students may have BS/BA in something "real" and want something more. I understand your point, but I don't think any college curriculum should be reduced like that.
I was just going to say this Kelly Hiccups!
I participated in these demonstrations, it was quite interesting to watch Provost Wilcox's expressions as he faced about 200 angry WST and AFA students and faculty firing questions at him.
And don't forget they wanted to lump in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean studies with Womens Studies and Africana studies...
What's is featured on USF's homepage banner as a reason for students to come to USF? It's DIVERSE student body?!
Ahh, the irony.
Oh yeah, I forgot to say in regards to your comment to Snarfer, I also was not a Women's Studies student. I earned my BA in Sociology and minored in WST. There is much to value in the Women's Studies curriculum whether you're majoring it or not.
I am glad to see you mentioned the situation at FAU being that I am a graduate student at that university in the Women's Studies department. When I heard that they were going to close our graduate program with the swiftness that they were moving with I was and am outraged. We were told last week that we were loosing our grad program and that the decision would be finalized in March (does anyone else see some type of irony here that the final decision to close the Women's Studies department is happening during Women's History month??) I think the most upsetting part of all of this is that our department makes up only .0025% of the budget that they are claiming we impact so greatly while the president of the college gained an IMMENSE raise this year. He has been trying to impress on all of us, every year during our departments graduation ceremony, that our department is key to the university to help women be multi-tasking dynamo-wives and mothers. I think we can all see the problem here can't we and why my department is at risk and the need for action to save it.
I think that the issues, themes and ideas taught in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies are not elements that most people get from their K-12 education in this country. When people get into college and start taking courses (sometimes willingly and sometimes through requirements) in Women or Ethnic Studies, they learn so much about themselves and the culture they are living in.
Shouldn't education not only consist of acquiring "marketable" skill sets, but of personal development as well? That, to me, is a true education: gaining skills for a profession and developing one's personality and identity.
I have to say that at my university, Gerontology was cut, among others and Women and Sexuality Studies did not seem to be as hard hit. Ethnic Studies dealt with some cutbacks, but I am not clear on how that effected the department.
It's never surprising to me that the classes deemed "nebulous" or that "don't teach a skill set" are cut first. I honestly don't think that Women, GS and ES are nebulous or don't teach skills. They definitely expand a person's perspective on their society and that is priceless and something that cannot be taken away from a person.
Unless it gets cut from a university, of course.
Shouldn't education not only consist of acquiring "marketable" skill sets, but of personal development as well? That, to me, is a true education: gaining skills for a profession and developing one's personality and identity.
I agree with much of your post but have a very different idea of the purpose of an education -- which I think should be neither to build professional skills nor to develop student identity. (How exactly does an identity get developed in a lecture on Shakespeare or Keynes or something, anyway?)
Personally, I find the notion that colleges want to develop students' personalities and identities pretty creepy and coddling. I am less concerned with how an education develops one's personality and more concerned with how it develops one's intellect, critical aptitude and understanding of ideas, words and arguments.
And I would rather take a seminar populated by kids who have excellent points to make or questions to ask in class than excellent personalities.
(Separately, I've read a few texts on how the collegiate emphasis on the development of personal identities, values and the like has historically been a coded way for administrations to keep up discriminatory quotas of well-adjusted WASPy men. That makes me even more skeptical of that obsessive interest of colleges in the "personality" of its students.)
I am sure that you will find isolated pockets in which communities target the "scandalous and immoral" departments like Sexuality or Women's Studies. I think that this economic downturn will be used by some people as an excuse to carry out their pet projects, like that.
More likely, though, the targets will be stuff like attacking tenure (in New Orleans, places like Tulan used Katrina as an excuse to fire many tenred professors), or the Arts and other "economically useless" disciplines.
Universities more and more are run by business models only; the idea of learning for its own sake is going out the window and attitudes like Snarfer's above are sadly very prominent. I hope I am wrong, but that bias against so-called useless disicplines is going to drive cost cutting as well as the desire to replace tenured positions even more with adjuncts who have no benefits and no stability.
Just to add another perspective to the table, one argument that has been put forth on a Women's Studies list that I'm on is that the reason why area studies programs (women's studies, queer studies, South Asian studies, etc) are being targeted is because they've actually done a decent job of influencing other disciplines (history, sociology, political science, etc) of broadening their scope to be inclusive of the area studies issues.
Just wanted to point out that without seeing the basis of that 16,000 claim, I believe that it is misleading to use that figure in reference to a State higher Ed inst.
I say this because at least in NJ, there is a strict coded system of salaries and raises that faculty get. Many people with high salaries have been at an institution for many many years. In one case I know an admin assist making near 100k/year.
This will skew any average since legacy of women being excluded will mean that there are more men who have been with a particular institution for far longer than women.
What would be more reasonable would be to state whether the average salary for men in women in the same departments and with the same time on the job are of x-amount. This way one can reasonably exclude variables other than gender and initial salary negotiation skills.
Cuts to gender studies departments do not concern me as much as cuts to education in general. Schools of education at the college level and then P-12 institutions have to constantly justify their existence while defense and other entities are written blank checks. I think we need to realign our outrages a bit here and consider attending first to cuts in programs that serve our youngest and most vulnerable populations.
Because, it's not possible to be outraged about more than one thing at a time.
I'm proud that my university, in the middle of a bad economy and even an affirmative action ban, it has kept its women's center and it's affirmative action scholarships. The university can't help that the voters are racist and sexist, but it has been doing what it can to work around the new law. The chancellor has even addressed it publicly. We even have a new multicultural center being built. I guess 42% of the voters didn't see that coming as a result of the ban!!
If the only options were business, engineering, etc., I would not have gone to college at all, because I am not interested in studying those things. Then I'd really have been screwed, since all my jobs have required a college degree.
I got all my post-college jobs with a BA in English and History. I am a grant writer for a nonprofit, and you can bet my ass I learned critical thinking and writing skills that a business or math major probably would not have learned. Most of the job postings/networking meetings, etc. specifically asked for applicants with English or other writing-heavy liberal arts degrees. I write all day long at my job, and my bosses have known that someone with a liberal arts degree is more likely than not well-prepared to do so.
And give me a fucking break about people with liberal arts degrees not doing any real work. Writing 12+ pages a week (usually far more) and reading upwards of 150-200 pages a night for each of my classes WAS real work. I had to take science and math electives, and they were real, just as challenging work, too, but writing and reading critically was not the emphasis of the coursework to the degree it was in my history and literature classes.
And as far as grades were concerned, at my college, the valedictorian was almost always a physics or math major, because it is possible to get 100% on an assignment in those subjects, whereas the History and English profs very, very rarely gave As on papers. (And no, I'm not saying the math and physics programs were easy; they were far, far from a cakewalk).
And if you want to kill off liberal arts departments, should Harvard's undergrad programs be slashed? Yale's? Both of those schools, and many other great colleges, are liberal arts schools. If all those smart people want liberal arts degrees, does that make them lazy kids who want to avoid critical thinking? Should all those people now go to community college?
And why don't I play devil's advocate here? If all those liberal arts majors end up succeeding in business without business degrees, that doesn't say a whole lot about the utility of a business degree, does it? Why don't marketing majors actually learn to hone their intellects in an academic discipline in college instead of getting a degree in a subject they don't really need? They might learn better writing (and yes, critical thinking) skills in courses that actually teach that kind of thing than in courses that teach how to sell Coca-Cola.
Do you think that reasoning is fair?
And no, I don't actually think business school is fluffy or useless! I'm just turning the tables and saying that pointing fingers at women's studies (or other liberal arts programs) as useless in the job market is a flawed argument.
Think about it - the business grads make a whole lot more money than you do. So yes, their degrees are more valuable than yours in raw market terms (the only terms that matter in our capitalist society).
That's why a law school graduate with less than a year out of college makes over $ 100,000 a year (which - and I hate to be presumptuous, but I'd bet it's true - is probably a whole lot more than you make even after several years in the work world).
That's why women get steered into liberal arts programs while guys get encouraged to get practical degrees like law, business, engineering ect.
Middle class males are expected to be the breadwinner - the one who supports the wife and kids (and yes, this mentality is still being promoted today).
Women from the same class are expected to be a wife and mother first, a worker second. Even if they have one of the more valuable degrees, they are encouraged to go on the "mommy track" while men are encouraged and in fact EXPECTED to go on the career track.
Kathleen, going to college is not about what your "interests" are (and, honestly, how much real perspective does the average 17 year old have on that anyway?)
College is about preparing yourself for a cold hard world where nobody cares about you and what you want - but if you have the right credentials , they will pay you a high salary and enable you and your family to have a very good life.
Your "interests" and personality don't matter to employers - your ability to add value to their business is ten thousand times more important to them than you and your personal quirks and beliefs.
If more educated young women understood that cold hard reality of life under capitalism, there would be more women in decision making positions in the sciences, law, government and business - and this country would be a better place to live in.
I think whenever people need to eliminate teaching positions they look for areas they consider "expendible." Sadly, that often includes classes that expose students to groups of traditionally oppressed groups. I'm an African studies minor, and the department, along with the African languages program at my school is really suffering. One of our two Kiswahili professors was laid off. Since I hope to work in East Africa, learning that language is really important for my career goals and if I can't continue to take it for a third year because we only have one prof, the quality of education I recieve will be hurt. It really pisses me off that so many people think learning about people who are different than them is a waste of time. Sorry for the barely-on-topic rant, but thinking about this takes up a lot of my time these days.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear that universities in Texas are encouraging interdisciplinary studies and liberal arts. This topic made me ask my professor who is both in the English and the Women's Studies program whether they were experiencing anything like this. She said that A&M has been very supportive of their program and is even increasing their faculty. So at least not all southern schools are following this trend. Some optimism to throw in there. :D
my campus is cutting stuff pretty much across the board as well as raising tuition differentials, but the most egregious cut was to an advocacy center that provided resources to survivors of sexual violence, stalking, and hate crimes. fortunately, students protested these cuts and were successful in getting funding restored.
Actually, the international business major (which was what I majored in) was cut this year. I was in the last graduating class. The women's studies program is small but still there.
reading posts that say that my double major in women and gender studies and studio art are useless life skills that won't help me get a job is making my day!!! haha, come on people, it's not like i already don't have all types of insecurities about what I'm going to do with my life when i get out of college...
but to answer your question,
my college has recently had to cut about 40 million dollars from its budget (about 10 percent), but it has made a commitment to keep academics exactly the same. the only changes that it has made in academics is a 2% reduction of all classes. not bad at all. unfortunately though, in order to keep academics intact, it has had to lay off about 50 employees.
A side, though related issue is the way that colleges will lay off *people* before they will actually find ways to cut other costs, like electricity, or administrative luncheons.
Here at the University of Oregon, our WGS program has actually expanded a bit. At the beginning of this term, the queer studies minor became official, which I promptly declared within the first week.
Anyone who thinks that liberal arts majors don't work hard is seriously delusional. Most of the dim-witted athletes (not all athletes are dim-witted of course, but some are) at my school are business majors.
seriously, every frat bro moron and his mom was a business major at my school.
i don't want to talk shit about other majors like business and engineering, but it bugs me to no end how some people in those fields love to disparage liberal arts students and pretend our work is meaningless and super easy. my friends who are engineers freak the fuck out every time they have to write more than a page of anything and call me looking for help.
liberal arts isn't for everyone, but i feel like i got such a broad range of knowledge as an english major. sometimes it was easy, other times not at all. so yeah. in law school i felt bad sometimes for people who had undergrad degrees in fields that involved no or very little reading and writing because they got their asses handed to them that first semester.
I go to the University of South Florida, a university not far from FAU but much larger. Last year, amid mounting budget cuts, the administration started throwing around ideas on how to save money. Number 1 on the list? Scale back (and some even said eliminate) the Women's Studies department (2nd-oldest in the country), Africana Studies, and the Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean (ISLAC) -- even though these were BY FAR the least-funded programs at the university. There were student-run marches, protest letters, petitions, the works. Eventually, everything was just "realigned" -- another way of saying all but eliminated. Now these programs have to share the meager sources and lost most of their core faculty.
What's happening at FAU is typical of institutions that don't value the voices of marginalized people or the scholarly efforts to vocalize them.
Last semester I actually wrote an article for my school magazine (what the hell, might as well plug it) that dealt with, among other things, the effect of the recent budget cuts on the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State. No one ever reads the magazine and us writers rarely get emails, but within 24 hours I had an angry email from an English major who took issue with my statement that ethnic studies stood to lose more from the budget cuts than English.
Clearly, this is a touchy subject- the amount of anger she had was honestly stunning to me. Her argument was basically "English is getting cut too, and besides, ethnic studies is totally useless," which was ridiculous to me- I mean, we're comparing a reduction in the number of sections of a Shakespeare class offered to potentially completely getting rid of the American Indian Studies undergraduate degree. No doubt it'll be more difficult for English students to get their degree as well, but the point I made in the article was that our program, the first and biggest of its kind, is a model for ethnic studies programs everywhere, and cuts would affect the entire discipline of ethnic studies across the country in a way that cuts to the English program would not. As far as "useless" goes, it's a liberal arts degree, same as English. We offer classes in literature, art, sociology, psychology, history and community work with an ethnic perspective, which I'm not sure is any less relevant to the job market than Chaucer.
Anyway, I see similar debates going on higher up in the thread, which is, well, interesting. It's easy to say that it's not an overtly sexist move and be done with it, but I think the fact that these disciplines have been marginalized in the first place- not in comparison to engineering or computer science, which are a different kettle of fish, but in comparison to English, which teaches roughly equivalent skills and has about the same value in the job market- says something. And on a side note, I'm stunned that they would even suggest combining gender studies and ethnic studies into one department. I guess it's because it's so impossible to imagine on my campus... not only do the ethnic studies and women's studies departments have nothing to do with each other, I think that ethnic studies is considered a little sacred because of its particular history and influence at SF State. Doesn't stop them from axing 1/3 of the Asian American studies department, but I think people would really go apeshit if they proposed combining it with women's studies. I wonder what they would call a department like that? Oppressed People Studies? Huh.
There was actually a huge protest here on campus (I attend the University of South Florida and am currently a women's studies major) last spring semester regarding the funding of women's studies as well as africana studies. The women's studies department here at USF is actually the second oldest in the nation, and the oldest in Florida (if not the only one in existence, I'm not sure on that point). However, the budgeting folks here were planning on robbing us of our departmental status and merging us with other departments, such as africana studies (We bitterly called it "The department of marginalized studies"). Well, the student body wasn't having any of it and we staged a huge televised protest, stormed the provost's office, and made him answer questions regarding why these two disciplines were being targeted while so many people were talking about "diversity" out of the other side of their mouths. The provost himself called women's studies a "dying enterprise" at the gala that was held to celebrate our 35th anniversary. A group including myself and some friends of mine actually called him on that at the protest, and he ended up muttering and moving on. However, the protest was still a huge success. Needless to say, the women's studies department is still autonomous, but we have still been the victim of budget cuts and lack of funding for years. We do what we can and make the most of it, however. Still, I wish there was more respect for our discipline and the great work we do.
Hi!
FAU Feminists here,
Thank you so much for mentioning our plight! Just one minor correction: the department didn't send out that e-mail, a feminist action group sent it out that is trying to combat the administration's proposal to suspend the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Center and M.A. Program @ Florida Atlantic University. I only mention this, so that it is clear that no one in or affiliated with the department wrote that e-mail (we did :) ).
Thanks again for helping to draw attention. If you think this is a messed up as we do, please sign the petition that will be delivered to the administration next week here: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/saveFAU
If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, words of encouragement or solidarity please send them to: saveFAU@gmail.com
All my life I was taught that the whole point of going to school and university/college was to get a job to make money.
Funny, I always thought I was here to get an education. I guess that's just an added bonus to go with the pretty piece of paper?
You can get an 'education' for free at the public library, or by auditing courses at public colleges.
You pay tens of thousands of dollars to get a degree - and that degree enables you to get high paying jobs which are not offered to people who don't have degrees.
It's a way of rationing privilege.
That's the real reason for the high tuition prices at elite institutions like Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Stanford ect.
If you want to get an education - do a lot of reading.
If you want to get a degree that will help you get a high paying job - go to college, if possible, an elite college.
I've been told Harvard grads speak of "The H Bomb" effect - the reaction they get when people see that they have a Harvard education on their resume.
Just real quick--an e-mail linking to this post was sent out to our listserv, which possibly explains why two or three other USF students joined the discussion.