As an SSU alumni from a program slated for closure (MA in Organization Development), I met the news of SSU’s retreat with a mix of sadness and resignation. SSU feels to me a bit like our local coho salmon, its habitat having been slowly destroyed over decades. This is clearly a tough time for higher education. There are simply fewer college-age students to go round and many of those question the value of a college degree. Sonoma State was at its heart a liberal arts school, as interested in teaching how to think as much as how to do. To be excited about programs at SSU like its interdisciplinary studies Bacherlor’s and Master’s you have to believe that taking a wider view the purpose and value of education is meaningful. But the liberal artist walks a lonely path in a society that worships (and hires) narrow expertise. No question much of what happened at SSU had to do with the quality of leadership and management at the school. It would have taken Herculean efforts to grow a small university in the CSU system through the challenges of the last decade. I am hopeful, not that a figurative Hercules will save SSU, but that on the other side of our current paroxysm of narrow-mindedness places like SSU can be reimagined to grow citizen scientists, artists, and human beings once again.
Love this analysis, Joseph. Although I have to disagree with you about the student population problem. The other CSUs don’t seem to be having this problem. Their enrollments are steady or up.
Fair enough. The Projections of Education Statistics to 2030 done by National Center for Education Statistics at the US Department of Education shows a 10% decline in enrollment at degree-granting postsecondary institutions from 2010 to 2020. They predict an 8% growth in total enrollment in the next decade. There are other nuggets in that report (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/PES/section-5.asp) that may paint the SSU picture including an 18% decline in first-time undergraduate students--the bread and butter at SSU. SSU may have been at particular risk for these kinds of enrollment losses because of its dependence on full-time students occupying dorms, where other CSU's have been able to tap pools of urban/commuter students. Bottom line, SSU has underperformed relative to other SSU's and hasn't done much to address things, which is just sad for the North Bay and education in general in CA.
Indeed, looks like a more complicated picture. However, from that same article: "While San Marcos students have raced to find parking in the first weeks of recent academic years, Sonoma State students in contrast can usually find dozens of empty spaces in the Bay Area school’s main parking lot. The campus has suffered the worst enrollment loss in the university system, contracting from 9,408 students in 2015 to 5,784 students in 2024. Recent statistics suggest it had the highest dorm vacancy rate in the Cal State system..."
It’s not that there are “fewer children”. That’s the official Woke Agenda story, Joseph. It’s really because of all of the Woke infiltration that normal kids are not interested in. Young people are going back to the trades, where they’re not groomed or brainwashed like they are in government schools and Universities. THAT, my friend, is the reason for the decline in enrollment.
That does not explain the unique decline of SSU. CSUs in general are seeing growing enrollment. First year enrollment is at an all-time high for the second year in a row.
If you believe that, I have a bridge in Arizona. I’d like to sell you. Nothing the Establishment Monopoly media reports is true. That’s been confirmed, time and time again. Some perfect examples: “Hillary Clinton is ahead by 85%.“ “Kamala Harris is ahead by 85%.“ “Safe and effective“. None of which are/were true. And how about these butt nuggets: “Eggs and butter are unhealthy for you.” “Salt is unhealthy for you”. Lies, all lies. All they do is lie to us. If you believe anything that the Establishment Monopoly media or polls tell you, then you might want to consider turning off your TV. That’s how they dumb people down.
Isn't it nice then that you have the opportunity to share your views on things in this, our local, decidedly not establishment monopoly media. Please bring us data, information we can verify and consider, so that we can understand and trust your own views. A society that can not agree on facts can never be unified and achieve its potential.
Respectfully, Joseph, I stopped researching for other (typically lazy) people a few years ago. People need to do their own research or they won’t believe it anyway, that’s been my observation.
What I will recommend you do is look up people on Substack like “2nd smartest guy in the world”, “agent 131711”, who research the researchers. They always provide documentation that you can confirm, but I’m not providing anyone anything anymore. I’ve wasted so much time giving people links only to have them refuse to believe the facts. People only seem to believe facts when they look them up for themselves, so have fun!
Steve Kirsch is another great researcher on Substack. FYI, as well as the usual suspects like RFK Jr and Tucker Carlson. Rumble.com has a plethora of researchers and Truthtellers there, as well.
Thanks American Nation for sharing some sources. Question for you, what makes these sources, as opposed to others, more reliable? RFK Jr. is a great example--do we trust his take on vaccines vs. those of polio survivors? Seems like America has gotten itself into a very difficult place by not being willing to agree on what constitutes knowledge, data, facts, theories, and myths. All of us are experts on our own experience and none of us are experts on another's individual experience. Seems like these days folks have grown apart from simply not being willing to accept there is always more than one way to look at a thing and know a thing. I imagine both of us might feel that some kinds of media are designed to mislead, but my guess is that we would not agree on which media was doing the misleading. Tough spot!
from that same source, "While San Marcos students have raced to find parking in the first weeks of recent academic years, Sonoma State students in contrast can usually find dozens of empty spaces in the Bay Area school’s main parking lot. The campus has suffered the worst enrollment loss in the university system, contracting from 9,408 students in 2015 to 5,784 students in 2024. Recent statistics suggest it had the highest dorm vacancy rate in the Cal State system..."
Yes and no. Peak enrollment of 12th graders in CA was indeed last year, according to the census. However, each grade below that is noticeably smaller. Absent significant immigration of people with children or a return of adults to college the CA college system will shrink by as much as 20% over the next 20 years.
Remember back in the days when a California state university education was affordable? In my opinion, the root of this, like so many of the problems our country is facing, is the imbalance of wealth and the continuing whittling down of the taxes the wealthy pay that at one time helped to support our school systems. There are too many people with degrees and college debt that can’t find a job.
I agree. Democracy works best when wealth is not accumulated by a small group who use their wealth to purchase political power, which is where we are now.
Some liberal democracies provide every citizen full university educations at no charge, and even with stipends and health care. The billionaires living in those countries are not so wealthy, poor souls, and pay much higher taxes to pay for those students. If those taxpayers get too fed up they’ll move someplace else, with lower taxes, like to the US and live on their estates away from the squalor.
I looked at the enrollment in the entire CSU system. It went down during covid and now for the last few years enrollment is bouncing up. To me this points at lack of competence of administration at Sonoma State. My own experience in analyzing management problems is to always start with incompetence and then corruption.
Thank you, Sebastopol Times, for opening this forum for comments. I will share a couple of impressions, in light of recent developments.
First, why is it that administrators and management positions are the last ones to be cut, in just about any organization? It is the fiscal managers and overseers of the business side of higher education, who have fallen down in their role of shepherding the university through these changing and challenging times. And rather than sharing in the pain of gaping deficits that have been building for years, and re-examining their own role and assumptions that led to this dire situation, they inflict the pain of cuts almost entirely on the faculty, staff and students, along with their dreams, dedication and aspirations.
Second, where is the imagination, the vision, the humility/courage/bravery to engage community members and come together to face these daunting challenges, in a cooperative undertaking to build a stronger, tighter university operation?
Just brainstorming, for the sake of example. What about asking all administrators, faculty and staff to take a proportional pay cut, in order to save the jobs of the 10% or however many are being laid off? There may be legal and contractual obstacles to such a proposal, but with inspiring leadership and a compelling vision, individual employees might be ready and willing to give up some of their job protections if it contributes to the university emerging more unified and sustainable.
I would like to think, to believe, that we can do better.
Since Establishment Monopoly Universities began pushing Woke ideology instead of quality education, like “Gender Studies” (One gender sees a Gynocologist and the other sees a Proctologist. The other genders see a Psychiatrist), people have become aware that Universities are being used for brainwashing, and they always have. People are waking up and abandoning the Establishment Monopoly/Central Banker System. Homeschooling is all the rage, thank God. The Establishment Monopoly has targeted Godless Liberal Leftists as a hiring practice, and now we have Transvestites in the classrooms with 5-6 year-olds?! Other Godless folks see nothing wrong with that, but Godly people with Spiritual discernment see that Queer Storytime is really about Grooming children for homosexuality. No wonder Normal people are abandoning the Establishment Monopoly system. Happy days are here again.
Sad to hear, but understandable as students and their parents are finally wising up to the useless and egregiously nonsensical curriculum sold to students as “education” for the last dozen years. Women’s studies, queer studies, museum and gallery studies, gender studies, etc., etc. - all utterly useless in the real world, and all designed to indoctrinate students with the “progressive” ideology of established academia. Especially sad that real courses like engineering, economics, marketing, english, math, geography etc. will suffer accordingly, thanks to the operating costs of the WOKE curriculum mentioned above. And let’s not forget the skyrocketing tuitions caused by such bloated and ironically regressive courses.
Students and their parents, i.e. customers, have awoken to WOKE education, realizing that degrees in Balkan Folk songs and ancient Egyptian basketweaving are meaningless, and can be studied as electives privately, not in taxpayers-supported institutions.
I have full faith in the wave of Common Sense now sweeping across the country, knowing that eventually colleges and universities will not close, but simply right-size themselves.
Rex, my experience is a bit different. Education is first and foremost a means to better the mind and ready oneself to be a citizen and a productive member of society. To do that means studying and understanding things are not just preparation to work in factories, fields, or offices. Would you have a world with no Enlightenment? No industrial revolution? No art? No music? No dance? No movies? Human beings are built to be creative, this is one of our greatest gifts. It is easy to use a term like 'woke' to sweep up everything you may not like, but liberal arts--the study and appreciation of the whole of the human experience is a core part of what makes life worth living. It deserves our appreciation and protection.
Joseph, I wasn’t referring to traditional liberal arts curriculum, like music, art, philosophy, etc. that builds well rounded citizens. Those are essential. What’s not essential are specific programs referenced in my piece. - that are losing new students, but also damaging core disciplines like math, English, geography, etc.
In addition and regrettably, there is next to no demand whatsoever for students seeking a music degree or credential. College administrators know this, and still promise students glorious post-graduation outcomes that bear no relation to reality. Unfortunate, but true. So where to cut? First, CUT the WOKE grievance and guilt courses immediately. They produce nothing for students but anger and conflict.
Thanks for that clarification. My guess is that we have a different definition of what constitutes traditional liberal arts. For me this includes the full range of human experience, so something like women's studies seems pretty relevant. My experience is that the women in my life have a quite a different experience of life than I do and I'd like to understand that.
One of the curious things about liberal education that I appreciate is that you can not always tell what is going to be useful. Museum and gallery studies for example may be excellent training for managing information in a way that makes it useful.
The heart of your concern seems to be this "CUT the WOKE grievance and guilt courses immediately". I really want to understand your take on this. What does WOKE mean to you? I understand that some use it to describe anything they perceive as liberal. Others see it as paying attention to role of race and power in our history.
My guess is that if we were to sit down for coffee in town, there is plenty we could agree on around how higher education can be more effective. I appreciate you engaging here.
Interesting conversation here with many points of view. The topic of education seems to interest many folks. I've always been supportive of education. That's why my particular soapbox is the cost our nation has placed on it. Putting our children into debt before they even begin their caeer is reprehensible. Other developed countries support higher education, knowing that an investment in education is the most important investment citizens can make toward their future economic and social growth. When I attended the Academy of Art in the 1990's, students from South Korea, Vietnam, and Thailand sent their youth to the U.S. on full scholarships to study automobile, textile, and fashion design. Major advancements in those industries took place in those countries when their graduates returned home.
As a member of a low income family, I would never have accomplished my degrees with today's financial requirements. It's short-sighted for the U.S. to make education so expensive that ordinary low and middle income families must go into debt in order to send their offspring through college. I am embarrassed by our lack of support and insight for higher education.
I am an alum of the Anthropology Dept. and Organization Development MA program at SSU. My liberal arts education there served me well as a business executive. I hope for the best for SSU. I suspect the high cost of living in Sonoma County is a significant issue for the decline in enrollment. I also wonder if previous administrations were over optimistic about student enrollment and were part of this problem by overreaching.
The article’s graph clearly shows the trend: Fewer and fewer students are enrolling at SSU. The University is wisely cutting the curricula that fewer and fewer students/parents WANT.
Universities are not lofty, magical institutions immune from reality. They’re BUSINESSES. When your customers increasingly reject your goods and services, you CUT those goods and services. Then you offer them the core courses they want.
👏🏼SSU administrators deserve a warm round of applause for finally zeroing out the absolutely frivolous and useless WOKE courses. They were never about “diversity.“ They were always about DIVISIVENESS.
Last I recall reading about SSU was some scandal the dean was embroiled in. Wondering if administration costs/positions have been chopped as ruthlessly as have the professors and courses... any line-item budget information available for reporting?
The number of school age children has been decreasing steadily resulting in school closings and consolidation at every level. Just not enough kids being born. Add to that the expense and young people no longer see the value in taking out a big loan for a liberal arts degree. Sonoma State is trying to survive in a very difficult environment and time. We will be lucky they don't shut down entirely. I pray they find their way to a new future
I think everyone knows the reason. The model that Reuben Armiñana put in place, his vision of SSU as a "public ivy" was actually working. Everyone admitted that. But the next president wanted something different, and ripped down the ivy.
I don't agree. See Steven Johnson's article: "Revenge of the Humanities." He writes: "we are entering a period where it will be a great time to be a humanities major with an interest in technology. The conventional story of course is that we're in the middle of a mass exodus from English or History as majors—sometimes blamed on the excesses of cultural theory, sometimes on the fact that all the money is in Computer Science and Engineering right now. And to be sure, the exodus is real. But there is a case to be made that college and grad students are over-indexing on the math and the programming, just as the technology is starting to demand a different set of skills." https://adjacentpossible.substack.com/p/revenge-of-the-humanities
As an SSU alumni from a program slated for closure (MA in Organization Development), I met the news of SSU’s retreat with a mix of sadness and resignation. SSU feels to me a bit like our local coho salmon, its habitat having been slowly destroyed over decades. This is clearly a tough time for higher education. There are simply fewer college-age students to go round and many of those question the value of a college degree. Sonoma State was at its heart a liberal arts school, as interested in teaching how to think as much as how to do. To be excited about programs at SSU like its interdisciplinary studies Bacherlor’s and Master’s you have to believe that taking a wider view the purpose and value of education is meaningful. But the liberal artist walks a lonely path in a society that worships (and hires) narrow expertise. No question much of what happened at SSU had to do with the quality of leadership and management at the school. It would have taken Herculean efforts to grow a small university in the CSU system through the challenges of the last decade. I am hopeful, not that a figurative Hercules will save SSU, but that on the other side of our current paroxysm of narrow-mindedness places like SSU can be reimagined to grow citizen scientists, artists, and human beings once again.
Love this analysis, Joseph. Although I have to disagree with you about the student population problem. The other CSUs don’t seem to be having this problem. Their enrollments are steady or up.
Fair enough. The Projections of Education Statistics to 2030 done by National Center for Education Statistics at the US Department of Education shows a 10% decline in enrollment at degree-granting postsecondary institutions from 2010 to 2020. They predict an 8% growth in total enrollment in the next decade. There are other nuggets in that report (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/PES/section-5.asp) that may paint the SSU picture including an 18% decline in first-time undergraduate students--the bread and butter at SSU. SSU may have been at particular risk for these kinds of enrollment losses because of its dependence on full-time students occupying dorms, where other CSU's have been able to tap pools of urban/commuter students. Bottom line, SSU has underperformed relative to other SSU's and hasn't done much to address things, which is just sad for the North Bay and education in general in CA.
I'm gonna have to disagree. 11 out of the 23 campuses have seen 10 year declines. https://edsource.org/2024/enrollment-rises-at-some-cal-state-campuses-falls-at-others/723526
Indeed, looks like a more complicated picture. However, from that same article: "While San Marcos students have raced to find parking in the first weeks of recent academic years, Sonoma State students in contrast can usually find dozens of empty spaces in the Bay Area school’s main parking lot. The campus has suffered the worst enrollment loss in the university system, contracting from 9,408 students in 2015 to 5,784 students in 2024. Recent statistics suggest it had the highest dorm vacancy rate in the Cal State system..."
It’s not that there are “fewer children”. That’s the official Woke Agenda story, Joseph. It’s really because of all of the Woke infiltration that normal kids are not interested in. Young people are going back to the trades, where they’re not groomed or brainwashed like they are in government schools and Universities. THAT, my friend, is the reason for the decline in enrollment.
That does not explain the unique decline of SSU. CSUs in general are seeing growing enrollment. First year enrollment is at an all-time high for the second year in a row.
If you believe that, I have a bridge in Arizona. I’d like to sell you. Nothing the Establishment Monopoly media reports is true. That’s been confirmed, time and time again. Some perfect examples: “Hillary Clinton is ahead by 85%.“ “Kamala Harris is ahead by 85%.“ “Safe and effective“. None of which are/were true. And how about these butt nuggets: “Eggs and butter are unhealthy for you.” “Salt is unhealthy for you”. Lies, all lies. All they do is lie to us. If you believe anything that the Establishment Monopoly media or polls tell you, then you might want to consider turning off your TV. That’s how they dumb people down.
Isn't it nice then that you have the opportunity to share your views on things in this, our local, decidedly not establishment monopoly media. Please bring us data, information we can verify and consider, so that we can understand and trust your own views. A society that can not agree on facts can never be unified and achieve its potential.
Respectfully, Joseph, I stopped researching for other (typically lazy) people a few years ago. People need to do their own research or they won’t believe it anyway, that’s been my observation.
What I will recommend you do is look up people on Substack like “2nd smartest guy in the world”, “agent 131711”, who research the researchers. They always provide documentation that you can confirm, but I’m not providing anyone anything anymore. I’ve wasted so much time giving people links only to have them refuse to believe the facts. People only seem to believe facts when they look them up for themselves, so have fun!
Steve Kirsch is another great researcher on Substack. FYI, as well as the usual suspects like RFK Jr and Tucker Carlson. Rumble.com has a plethora of researchers and Truthtellers there, as well.
Thanks American Nation for sharing some sources. Question for you, what makes these sources, as opposed to others, more reliable? RFK Jr. is a great example--do we trust his take on vaccines vs. those of polio survivors? Seems like America has gotten itself into a very difficult place by not being willing to agree on what constitutes knowledge, data, facts, theories, and myths. All of us are experts on our own experience and none of us are experts on another's individual experience. Seems like these days folks have grown apart from simply not being willing to accept there is always more than one way to look at a thing and know a thing. I imagine both of us might feel that some kinds of media are designed to mislead, but my guess is that we would not agree on which media was doing the misleading. Tough spot!
And the biggest LIE of them all for four years straight: “President Biden is as sharp as a tack!”
Thank GOD we finally have a real POTUS again who actually delivers on his promises.
(Sorry, off topic, I know)
Characterizing enrollment decline to specifically SSU is not accurate.
https://edsource.org/2024/enrollment-rises-at-some-cal-state-campuses-falls-at-others/723526
from that same source, "While San Marcos students have raced to find parking in the first weeks of recent academic years, Sonoma State students in contrast can usually find dozens of empty spaces in the Bay Area school’s main parking lot. The campus has suffered the worst enrollment loss in the university system, contracting from 9,408 students in 2015 to 5,784 students in 2024. Recent statistics suggest it had the highest dorm vacancy rate in the Cal State system..."
Yes and no. Peak enrollment of 12th graders in CA was indeed last year, according to the census. However, each grade below that is noticeably smaller. Absent significant immigration of people with children or a return of adults to college the CA college system will shrink by as much as 20% over the next 20 years.
Remember back in the days when a California state university education was affordable? In my opinion, the root of this, like so many of the problems our country is facing, is the imbalance of wealth and the continuing whittling down of the taxes the wealthy pay that at one time helped to support our school systems. There are too many people with degrees and college debt that can’t find a job.
I agree. Democracy works best when wealth is not accumulated by a small group who use their wealth to purchase political power, which is where we are now.
Some liberal democracies provide every citizen full university educations at no charge, and even with stipends and health care. The billionaires living in those countries are not so wealthy, poor souls, and pay much higher taxes to pay for those students. If those taxpayers get too fed up they’ll move someplace else, with lower taxes, like to the US and live on their estates away from the squalor.
Sebastopol Times punches way above its weight, while Sonoma State punches way below its… A sad day.
I looked at the enrollment in the entire CSU system. It went down during covid and now for the last few years enrollment is bouncing up. To me this points at lack of competence of administration at Sonoma State. My own experience in analyzing management problems is to always start with incompetence and then corruption.
Thank you, Sebastopol Times, for opening this forum for comments. I will share a couple of impressions, in light of recent developments.
First, why is it that administrators and management positions are the last ones to be cut, in just about any organization? It is the fiscal managers and overseers of the business side of higher education, who have fallen down in their role of shepherding the university through these changing and challenging times. And rather than sharing in the pain of gaping deficits that have been building for years, and re-examining their own role and assumptions that led to this dire situation, they inflict the pain of cuts almost entirely on the faculty, staff and students, along with their dreams, dedication and aspirations.
Second, where is the imagination, the vision, the humility/courage/bravery to engage community members and come together to face these daunting challenges, in a cooperative undertaking to build a stronger, tighter university operation?
Just brainstorming, for the sake of example. What about asking all administrators, faculty and staff to take a proportional pay cut, in order to save the jobs of the 10% or however many are being laid off? There may be legal and contractual obstacles to such a proposal, but with inspiring leadership and a compelling vision, individual employees might be ready and willing to give up some of their job protections if it contributes to the university emerging more unified and sustainable.
I would like to think, to believe, that we can do better.
Very well stated. It does not require much in the way of leadership to slash and burn.
Unfortunately, that approach appears to be the go-to option in all organizational forms.
Since Establishment Monopoly Universities began pushing Woke ideology instead of quality education, like “Gender Studies” (One gender sees a Gynocologist and the other sees a Proctologist. The other genders see a Psychiatrist), people have become aware that Universities are being used for brainwashing, and they always have. People are waking up and abandoning the Establishment Monopoly/Central Banker System. Homeschooling is all the rage, thank God. The Establishment Monopoly has targeted Godless Liberal Leftists as a hiring practice, and now we have Transvestites in the classrooms with 5-6 year-olds?! Other Godless folks see nothing wrong with that, but Godly people with Spiritual discernment see that Queer Storytime is really about Grooming children for homosexuality. No wonder Normal people are abandoning the Establishment Monopoly system. Happy days are here again.
Who are you? It's interesting that yours are the only comments that don't have a real name. Curious why you don't appear to want to be known?
His/her name is irrelevant. What matters is the substance of what was said, which happens to be 100% factual.
Sad to hear, but understandable as students and their parents are finally wising up to the useless and egregiously nonsensical curriculum sold to students as “education” for the last dozen years. Women’s studies, queer studies, museum and gallery studies, gender studies, etc., etc. - all utterly useless in the real world, and all designed to indoctrinate students with the “progressive” ideology of established academia. Especially sad that real courses like engineering, economics, marketing, english, math, geography etc. will suffer accordingly, thanks to the operating costs of the WOKE curriculum mentioned above. And let’s not forget the skyrocketing tuitions caused by such bloated and ironically regressive courses.
Students and their parents, i.e. customers, have awoken to WOKE education, realizing that degrees in Balkan Folk songs and ancient Egyptian basketweaving are meaningless, and can be studied as electives privately, not in taxpayers-supported institutions.
I have full faith in the wave of Common Sense now sweeping across the country, knowing that eventually colleges and universities will not close, but simply right-size themselves.
Rex, my experience is a bit different. Education is first and foremost a means to better the mind and ready oneself to be a citizen and a productive member of society. To do that means studying and understanding things are not just preparation to work in factories, fields, or offices. Would you have a world with no Enlightenment? No industrial revolution? No art? No music? No dance? No movies? Human beings are built to be creative, this is one of our greatest gifts. It is easy to use a term like 'woke' to sweep up everything you may not like, but liberal arts--the study and appreciation of the whole of the human experience is a core part of what makes life worth living. It deserves our appreciation and protection.
Joseph, I wasn’t referring to traditional liberal arts curriculum, like music, art, philosophy, etc. that builds well rounded citizens. Those are essential. What’s not essential are specific programs referenced in my piece. - that are losing new students, but also damaging core disciplines like math, English, geography, etc.
In addition and regrettably, there is next to no demand whatsoever for students seeking a music degree or credential. College administrators know this, and still promise students glorious post-graduation outcomes that bear no relation to reality. Unfortunate, but true. So where to cut? First, CUT the WOKE grievance and guilt courses immediately. They produce nothing for students but anger and conflict.
Thanks for that clarification. My guess is that we have a different definition of what constitutes traditional liberal arts. For me this includes the full range of human experience, so something like women's studies seems pretty relevant. My experience is that the women in my life have a quite a different experience of life than I do and I'd like to understand that.
One of the curious things about liberal education that I appreciate is that you can not always tell what is going to be useful. Museum and gallery studies for example may be excellent training for managing information in a way that makes it useful.
The heart of your concern seems to be this "CUT the WOKE grievance and guilt courses immediately". I really want to understand your take on this. What does WOKE mean to you? I understand that some use it to describe anything they perceive as liberal. Others see it as paying attention to role of race and power in our history.
My guess is that if we were to sit down for coffee in town, there is plenty we could agree on around how higher education can be more effective. I appreciate you engaging here.
Interesting conversation here with many points of view. The topic of education seems to interest many folks. I've always been supportive of education. That's why my particular soapbox is the cost our nation has placed on it. Putting our children into debt before they even begin their caeer is reprehensible. Other developed countries support higher education, knowing that an investment in education is the most important investment citizens can make toward their future economic and social growth. When I attended the Academy of Art in the 1990's, students from South Korea, Vietnam, and Thailand sent their youth to the U.S. on full scholarships to study automobile, textile, and fashion design. Major advancements in those industries took place in those countries when their graduates returned home.
As a member of a low income family, I would never have accomplished my degrees with today's financial requirements. It's short-sighted for the U.S. to make education so expensive that ordinary low and middle income families must go into debt in order to send their offspring through college. I am embarrassed by our lack of support and insight for higher education.
My compliments to the editors here. The Sebastopol Times seems quite fair minded dealing with serious writers’ contributions. Thank you.
I am an alum of the Anthropology Dept. and Organization Development MA program at SSU. My liberal arts education there served me well as a business executive. I hope for the best for SSU. I suspect the high cost of living in Sonoma County is a significant issue for the decline in enrollment. I also wonder if previous administrations were over optimistic about student enrollment and were part of this problem by overreaching.
The article’s graph clearly shows the trend: Fewer and fewer students are enrolling at SSU. The University is wisely cutting the curricula that fewer and fewer students/parents WANT.
Universities are not lofty, magical institutions immune from reality. They’re BUSINESSES. When your customers increasingly reject your goods and services, you CUT those goods and services. Then you offer them the core courses they want.
Simple.
👏🏼SSU administrators deserve a warm round of applause for finally zeroing out the absolutely frivolous and useless WOKE courses. They were never about “diversity.“ They were always about DIVISIVENESS.
Last I recall reading about SSU was some scandal the dean was embroiled in. Wondering if administration costs/positions have been chopped as ruthlessly as have the professors and courses... any line-item budget information available for reporting?
The number of school age children has been decreasing steadily resulting in school closings and consolidation at every level. Just not enough kids being born. Add to that the expense and young people no longer see the value in taking out a big loan for a liberal arts degree. Sonoma State is trying to survive in a very difficult environment and time. We will be lucky they don't shut down entirely. I pray they find their way to a new future
They did it to themselves, Kate.
I think everyone knows the reason. The model that Reuben Armiñana put in place, his vision of SSU as a "public ivy" was actually working. Everyone admitted that. But the next president wanted something different, and ripped down the ivy.
I don't agree. See Steven Johnson's article: "Revenge of the Humanities." He writes: "we are entering a period where it will be a great time to be a humanities major with an interest in technology. The conventional story of course is that we're in the middle of a mass exodus from English or History as majors—sometimes blamed on the excesses of cultural theory, sometimes on the fact that all the money is in Computer Science and Engineering right now. And to be sure, the exodus is real. But there is a case to be made that college and grad students are over-indexing on the math and the programming, just as the technology is starting to demand a different set of skills." https://adjacentpossible.substack.com/p/revenge-of-the-humanities
I was a humanities major in college.