More Details on the "Butchering" of the Philosophy Program at the University of Southern Mississippi

"Butchering" was the apt term used by a faculty member who sent me the following details:

The on-going budget crisis at USM required a $15 million reduction in spending for the academic year 2011-12. This is on top of a $12 million cut made last year for the 2010-11 academic year.

Last year’s cuts on the academic side of the budget were determined primarily on the basis of suggestions made by the Deans of each school (Arts and Letters, Business, Science and Technology, Education and Psychology, and Health). Included in those reductions was the elimination of the Economics Department from the school of business. Several faculty complained that those cuts were capricious and arbitrary (and in the case of Economics, political and personal).

In an attempt to make the process more fair and open, the administration formed the University Planning Committee (UPC). The purpose of the UPC was to evaulate and rank every “program” in the entire university. The administration would then base their cuts on these rankings, thus eliminating only those programs judged to be the weakest. Criteria included things like contribution to the mission of the university, history, uniqueness, internal demand, external demand, scholarly productivity, cost, etc.

In the cuts announced recently (August 2010) twentynine total current faculty are to be laid off across the university —fourteen tenured, eleven tenure-track, and four instructors. Ten of these faculty were from the College of Arts and Letters. The Department of Philosophy and Religion received a grossly disproportionate reduction. The entire Regious Studies program was eliminated, including one tenured professor, two tenure-track professors, and one instructor. The M.A. in Philosophy was also eliminated and the Philosophy faculty was reduced from six to four by the firing of two tenured professors.

The administration eliminated two tenured faculty in philosophy without eliminating the philosophy  program. They justified this by the termination of the Philosophy M.A. degree. Instead of identifying particular faculty with this program, the administration estimated that the M.A. program requires about two extra faculty, and so eliminated that number (by seniority). Other departments, however, lost their M.A. degree without losing any faculty. One possible motivation the administration might have for reducing the number of philsophy professors is a decision by the Business School that, starting next year, business majors will no longer be required to take the Business Ethics course taught by the Philosophy Department.

The cuts were supposed to determined largely by the UPC assesments. It seems highly unlikely, however, that the Department of Philosophy and Religion was ranked especially low in the UPC rankings. Over the past three years the department produced thirteen peer-reviewed publications (including articles in Synthese, Philosophical Studies, Social Theory and Practice, and International Studies in Philosophy, plus a forthcoming article in American Philosophical Quarterly). The department also published three books in the last year (two philosophy, one religious studies). The total credit hours taught for lower-level philosophy courses in the fall 2009 was 1386 (462 students, 66 per faculty member) and 1101 for lower-level religion courses (367 students, 92 per faculty). This is considerable tuition revenue at very little cost, given how low our salaries are. The department has also created successful study abroad programs in Tibet (2008) and India (2009 and 2010). In the past three years faculty members in our department have been honored with one USM Junior Faculty Outstanding Teaching Award, two Mississippi Humanities Teaching Awards, and the distinguished two-year Moorman Professorship. Furthermore, an external review of all Mississippi philosophy departments (conducted by Richard DeGeorge, of Kansas) judged U.S.M.’s philosophy program to be the best in the state.

But we do not know for certain how our department was ranked because the administration has not made the UPC rankings public. (So much for transparency.)

 

UPDATE:  More details here.