SUNY Albany To Cut Language, Classics and Theater Departments (VIDEO)

At the State University of New York at Albany, budget cuts mean saying goodbye to French, Italian, Russian, classics and theater.

In town hall meeting Friday, the university's president, George M. Philip, announced that the five departments will be phased out in the next two years due to more than $32 million in cuts from state funding the school has faced in the past three years (along with another $12 million decline anticipated this year). Students who are currently majoring in these areas will be permitted to complete their degrees.

His speech detailed a pressing need to "rethink, balance and reallocate resources." Practically, this means that by the end of 2012, an additional 160 positions will have to be eliminated, making a total of 360 position cuts since 2008.

In an email to student and faculty obtained by CBS 6, Philip wrote that the decision to eliminate the five programs "...was based on an extensive consultative process with faculty, and in recognition that there are comparatively fewer students enrolled in these degree programs," adding that the programs' quality -- in terms of curriculum and staff -- had nothing to do with them being cut.

Although Philips cites the aid of a consultative process in making the difficult call, affected faculty members are skeptical. Chair of the Department of Languages Jean-François Brière said to Inside Higher Ed that "we were told [of the eliminations] without any hint," that extermination of these programs was imminent, and leaders of the faculty union said that they were not aware of any type of consultation.

CBS 6 notes that other casualties of the decline in state funding include Project Renaissance, a program for freshmen designed to help them take advantage of educational opportunities at SUNY Albany, some scholarships and levels of university policing.

Let us know what you think about SUNY's cuts in the comments section.

WATCH: Union members protest at capitol:

Comments

[jgrossmann]

10:04 AM on 10/16/2010

Low enrollments in humanities majors (and perhaps classes too): that is precisely the problem--and one Dr. Stanley Fish failed to acknowledge in his recent NY Time piece about this very topic. Administrators look at numbers, and they run universities as businesses (and this is a completely different can of worms). Why are then so few students interested in humanities? Perhaps the reason lies in the poor state of primary and secondary education in our country, the crisis that expands beyond economics and finance to a perhaps an intellectual crisis. Students learn from very early to become interested in careers that will be the most profitable, instead of cultivating their talents and discovering what they really love. Greediness, financial ambition has contaminated the core of our youth's souls. Universities have become, as Chris Hedges points out in Empire of Illusion, instruments for making careers instead of producing minds. The pragmatism of our education system will eventually backfire. We're "educating" a new generation of simplistic, profit-oriented individuals who are not only ignorant, but who are also not ashamed of being so.

[EthicalJournalist]

09:22 AM on 10/21/2010

Perfect analysis. So very sad...and so very frightening. Fanned and faved. (I particularly like your last line...and I will doubtless send it on to friends worldwide who will also love it for it succinct exposition of the problem.)

[Ronald Helfrich]

11:15 PM on 10/07/2010

Oh god, where to begin. The SUNY system never created a flagship university on the level of Wisconsin, Madison, Michigan, Ann Arbor, Indiana, Bloomington, or Berkeley. UAlbany, for instance, is more akin to Ball State, Bowling Green, and Kent State.The only universities in the state that rival those great state universities are Cornell, Columbia, and NYU. Budget cuts will only widen the abyss between first level research universities like those listed above and the "university centres" of the SUNY system. If you really want to create a state university on the level of the great state universities in the midwest (and even those are suffering) you have to devote far more money to public higher education than NY does now and you have to establish differential support for these universities like Wisconsin does (Madison gets the most followed by Milwaukee and then the others) and perhaps even merge universities and colleges in the state. Personally, I don't see any of this happening in the short or long term. I thus see only further decline in store for higher education in NY. My advice to New Yorkers: think about moving to Wisconsin and Michigan.

[Cosimo Mazzaferro]

08:57 PM on 10/06/2010

Shame on you SUNY ALBANY to cut Foreign Languages Programs! We live in a global economy!

[suigeneris]

05:58 PM on 10/06/2010

Wow. My alma mater sucked enough when they HAD those programs. I can't imagine how bad it's going to be now that they plan on cutting them. What exactly is the point of going to SUNY Albany, unless you're planning to be a climatologist or Business major?

[madgrrl]

05:49 PM on 10/05/2010

What I am wondering is - where is all the lottery money going? It is supposed to be used to support education. If you knew how much the average tavern or convenience store makes a night on gambling - you would be shocked. I find it hard to believe they don't make enough from all this gambling to support both the SUNY system and public education.

To the uneducated you may feel these programs are a waste but in a global economy it is more cruicial than ever to have these foreign language programs offered. If someone wants to be a lanugage teacher they need a degree in that language to teach. As far as the theater program - one word - Jimmy Fallon - has been known to steer filming and acting gigs back to his hometown stimulating the economy here. I think they need to find the money.

[corwin]

07:34 PM on 10/05/2010

" One word-Jimmy Fallon ".
Maybe after they find the money,some of can go to teaching you how to count

[Voz]

01:04 AM on 10/05/2010

Of course, I see we have the usual moronic comments here. Grow more food? Waste of taxpayer money? Clearly these people have no clue as to what education is really all about. Yeah, why don't we all quit all this book learning stuff and go back to farming. Hell, lets just move into a cave and see if we can de-evolve, that's progress for you!

Let me clue you in. I left a career in IT to go to college and major in Classics; I'm now working on my PhD. Yeah, it's only the foundations of Western civilization and thought--what a waste of taxpayer money. What we really need is a gazillion more lawyers and corporate execs. phhhht!

[madgrrl]

05:51 PM on 10/05/2010

and you can see what a good job they did with our economy - it's run by lawyers and corporate execs with their short sighted greedy thinking.

[Arrive2 net]

07:43 PM on 10/04/2010

SUNY is considered one of the largest university systems in the world, and it has other university campuses besides the State University of New York at Albany, including Buffalo and Stony Brook. Maybe the cuts are getting rid of some unnecessary redundancy. You don't necessary need to four duplicate, small and expensive departments across the system. Sometimes bureaucracies will propose to cut programs they know will be rescued, but that does not seem to be the case here. Good luck to the SUNY-Albany profs and students.

Bernard Schuster
Arrive2.net

[fardarter2010]

12:38 PM on 10/05/2010

We study foreign languages to better understand our own. I am fluent in four languages and I read about 12. I bet you are unable to guess what my language background could be. A hint: It is not English. My point is: I know what I am talking about. You obviously do not. Are you an expert in education? How many years have you spent educating people? I started in 1991. And after 19 years, I still have a lot to learn, since people like you are growing disproportionately. What is your problem? You do not speak any foreign language? Are you a xenophobe? Do you feel insulted every time you feel you ignore something, so you just consider such knowledge as you do not possess 'unnecessary'?
Unnecessary redundancy?! What makes one an expert in determining what is redundant in education? Language, letters, the arts, the ability to learn from one another's past? The only feature that clearly distinguishes humans within the animal kingdom?

[fardarter2010]

12:49 PM on 10/05/2010

Valid and helpful viewpoints on the dehumanization of American education available in two recent books, one by the late Tony Judt, Ill Fairs the Land (2010), and another by Martha Nusbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010).

Paolo Asso

[seustis]

05:29 PM on 10/05/2010

I understand that you want everyone to be educated in every subject that his/her heart desires, but universities have a bottom line. It's never good when programs have to be cut, but if the university had, say, 5 tenured professors and on average 5 students graduating a year (I have seen this ratio at many universities in language programs), it is not financially responsible during a time when higher ed costs are spiraling to maintain the program. This has nothing to do with the validity of teaching a subject, it has to do with whether or not students are taking the classes.

[PartyOfMaybe]

06:44 PM on 10/04/2010

they're doing you a favor, kids! study ag science instead and find a way to grow some more food for people to eat

[NYC-CatLover]

04:34 PM on 10/04/2010

Good riddance, sounds like a waste of taxpayer money. Just keep a few foreign-language departments for the most relevant languages today - Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, etc.

[maggiee]

03:57 PM on 10/04/2010

I guess they aren't expecting any of their graduates to attend graduate school...not even their own since they require foreign languages for admission.

[black series]

03:17 PM on 10/04/2010

Just cancel the gen-ed requirements and focus on core subjects. This is as simple as that.

[slaxx]

05:58 PM on 10/04/2010

exactly. please get rid of phys ed.

[nyjag22]

09:44 AM on 10/06/2010

phys ed hasn't been a UAlbany requirement in over 15 years

[palindrom]

03:11 PM on 10/04/2010

A university without a French department? Awful. SUNY Albany was, for a time, a jewel in the crown of the NY system. No longer, it appears.

[slaxx]

05:59 PM on 10/04/2010

it appears that there are no gems in the SUNY system...

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/09/20/2010-09-20_suny_grads_get_jobbed.html?goback=%2Egde_2618582_member_30153803

[nyjag22]

09:50 AM on 10/06/2010

I really take offense to this as a UAlbany student. We have the #1 Nanoscience program IN THE WORLD, the #2 ranked criminal justice program in the country, and over 10 other nationally ranked programs. Though it does hurt to see these departments cut, it doesn't change the fact that we have some of the best academics in the country in certain disciplines. What really should be cut is the Division 1 sports. The only sports that make the university any money are basketball and football - the other 17 or so sports are just sucking up funds that could fund the language departments and provide economic security for other humanities.