Kentucky Governor Suggests Cutting Degree Programs Like Interpretive Dance
“cut unnecessary degree programs to help balance the state’s budget”
It’s hilarious that Governor Matt Bevin chose this particular discipline as an example. Someone had to say it.
Campus Reform reports:
KY Gov suggests cutting degrees like interpretive dance
Facing an estimated $200 million deficit, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin (R) encouraged his state’s universities to cut unnecessary degree programs to help balance the state’s budget.
In a speech to the Conference on Postsecondary Education Trusteeship on Tuesday in Louisville, Kentucky, Bevin suggested that the universities and colleges could “find entire parts of your campus…that don’t need to be there.”
He suggested eliminating programs because of the potential cuts the state could make and because they don’t produce graduates filling high-wage, high-demand jobs.
“Either physically as programs, degrees that you’re offering, buildings that…shouldn’t be there because you’re maintaining something that’s not an asset of any value, that’s not helping to produce that 21st century educated workforce,” he said.
“There’s not a lot of jobs right now in America looking for people with [interpretive dance] as a skill set,” Bevin pointed out, echoing his previous criticism of French literature majors.
“There’s a whole lot of kids sitting in their parents’ basements and competing with people for jobs that are minimum wage or a bit better who have four-year degrees, some of them graduate-level degrees,” the Governor said. “I challenge you to say to yourselves, ‘If we’re graduating 250 people out of our engineering school…why is it 250 and not 1,000? And what are we going to do between now and 2030 and a whole lot sooner to make sure it’s 1,000?’”
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Comments
Excellent! Let’s hope this realism catches on and they can start eliminating many of the superfluous “gender studies”, etc. Not every college needs to have all of these degrees for which there are such limited jobs.
They need to pull a Japan and simply cut all public funding to any university that maintains any non-STEM programs.
Not that there’s ever a good reason for public funding of post-secondary education, but if there must be it ought to be limited to those programs that produce immediately employable graduates.
But, but, but where will bartenders come from then?
I hope this doesn’t mean they cut standards in the engineering school. I doubt more than 1% of those Interpretive Dance majors could graduate in engineering.
The reason that 250 isn’t 1000 is mainly (although not entirely) that there not 1000 able to get that degree, but there are 250 at least.
But that’s not nice to say. So you cut the fluff and let them enroll in something substantive, and if they can succeed great. And if they can’t then they don’t waste 4 years and everyone’s money, but they go elsewhere to find what the market wants that they can do.