If Pitt received billions of dollars from the state, we wouldn’t have any problems. Pitt gets just over $150M from the state to offset the in-state tuition discount (which covers about half of that discount; the rest is covered by Pitt), plus some variable additional amount of assistance for physical building projects and renovations.
I never implied that I would be happy with Clarion closing. I only stated that rumors to that effect were growing.
You, of course, would rather return to the days when DEI stood for discrimination, exclusion, and inequity.
LMFAO @ "misinterpretations". I flat out directly quoted you (emphasis mine): "I want Pitt to return to the core business of a university - preparing young adults for a future in the real world,"
What does “sustain itself” mean? No public funding at all? By that logic, we won’t have any public schools.
Attract enough students to have class sizes per the norm and program/course of study/majors that hold enough undergrads (1-4) to supply faculty with work loads in line with the normative workload in the industry. (hope this makes sense)
Nah. I would like to return to meritocracy and ignoring skin color and sexual orientation.
I only read through your second paragraph because you lost me with nonsense. I never said that Pitt's core business went away. I said that it has added layers to the core that should be stripped away to "return to its core". That seems too complex for you to understand, though.
I have no opinion. It is meaningless to me and does not affect my life one iota.
6 pages of you not caring.......
I made the mistake of thinking you might want to have a deeper conversation on these fairly important issues at more than a shallow slogan level, such as your use of vapid statements like "cut fat," that offered no real insight or consideration of either what "fat" is or the consequence of what cutting it could mean. Seeing as you haven't bothered to provide any information of substance, your dismissiveness and unwillingness to address actual information presented, and the logic-bending hoop jumping that you engage in to justify your backpedaling, I'm going to go with it is just not worth engaging further.
It is a single issue that I've not discussed in those 6 pages.
I would love to get into a deeper discussion. But you've proven that you can't be trusted because you misstate my posts on a regular basis.
It is logical to assume that consideration of anything other than merit is not a meritocracy.
Great, I missed mention of DEI as the fat to be cut.
Yes. Most of those titles seem unrelated to the issues you listed. But I don't speak "academian" so what do I know.Great, I missed mention of DEI as the fat to be cut.
So you are aware, the Pitt's Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion office is also responsible for ADA compliance, Title IX compliance, civil rights (including religious accommodations), and veterans programs (Pitt has been designated as a Military Friendly School).
Consider the following questions regarding cutting DEI initiatives:
1) how much would cutting DEI initiatives save. And since this is a thread on tuition cost, specifically, how much would it reduce tuition for all students (graduate and undergrad).
2) What are the legal issues and costs (see Title IX and ADA, etc) as Pitt's office covers legally required programs and reporting
3) how will that affect positively or negatively on the university from a local and national publicity point of view
4) how will that affect positively or negatively on peer perception of the university (which directly impacts many rankings including US News & World Report)
5) how will it impact the recruitment of new students and faculty, also considering #4
6) how will current students and faculty react and what costs will these reactions incur
7) Since faculty at Pitt are now unionized, and staff are attempting to organize, how will these layoffs be managed and how will this impact union organization and ongoing faculty union negotiations.
8) Considering the above, what are the real costs of dealing with #2-7 in comparison with the costs savings in #1
Here's the list of the 23 staff members of Pitt's EDI office.
People | Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion
www.diversity.pitt.edu
I will throw in one other university wide position outside of the office, the Vice Provost for Faculty and Diversity Development.
Note I do not think the regional campuses have dedicated staff for DEI programs or compliance, rather they have individuals who cover these areas as part of their responsibilities...consider 1 to <2 equivalent positions at each of the three regional campuses (Bradford now oversees the training hub at Titusville). Individual schools, like medicine and law, also have a few diversity employees, usually 1-4 depending on size. Quick googling, it doesn't look like all schools have these position themselves...and I've eliminated some that don't have them to get down to about 10, but I'm not checking all remaining 10. So let's go with 10 different schools within the university have maybe average 2 faculty/staff of their own dedicated to DEI initiatives as well. So let's add 20 more employees for the individual schools and 6 for the regionals plus Vice Provost and all 23 positions in Pitt's EDI office to get to about 40 individuals across the university.
The following information comes from the latest Pitt fact book and audited financial reports for FY 2022:
Total students all campuses: 33,632
Total employees all campuses: 14,699
FY22 audited total salaries+compensation: $1,563,566,000
If you cut the approximately (and likely overestimate) 40 jobs related to DEI at Pitt's main and regional campuses (not just salaries but costs of the entire benefits package), going by the mean cost of an employee salary and benefit package for employees of the university ($106,372.27, which is also likely overestimated considering that non-faculty staff make and most of the positions), I'd calculate that you'd save roughly $4,254,890.81. Just dividing by total students, if all savings went to tuition discounts and not, say, faculty recruitment or retention, that means you'd save each student: $126.51. This is very rough, but likely in the ballpark.
So there is a rough estimate to question #1: $126.51, but I would guess that is likely an overestimation. And of course you couldn't cut all those positions in the EDI office because you'd run afoul of all sorts of legal requirements and end up getting all sorts of fines from the Fed, if not risk losing nearly $1 billion a year in federally sponsored research.
So one has to ask, does cutting that "fat" make sense as a solution to cost of attendance issues considering questions 2-7?
Why do I get the feeling that you might not really know what DEI is outside of whatever your media source of choice telling you that you should be very mad about it.
Well the luxury amenity issue has been covered in two prior articles I posted, which, if you read them, does not seem to be a significant part of higher education cost inflation..and I've seen similar analysis in other publications as well. Whether DEI or luxury student amenities are necessary or even right...honestly...is besides the point when considering the operations of a single university. Making a university a martyr for a ideological or political bent will kill that university because it has to operate in the current ecosystem. The change has to be made across the entire higher education ecosystem, at a higher level. And in no way am I saying these things are necessary or good. I'm only talking about how to deal with cost at one university and one university only, because that has been the entire topic of this posst.
That has always been true but the quality, or at least the reputation of the institution for a given field of study, does matter.
Perhaps Pitt spends too much?? Aren't they, with psu, the highest in-state tuition?? Pittsburgh is a relatively a low cost area. Is the BOT doing its job in cost control?
And Democrats want to dismiss any move to cut spending? How much was dumped into the woke blackmail?
Just my weird sense of humor. I'm sure nothing was spent to take care of whiners.
Not liberal. I like traditional liberals such as those who are anti-war and pro-free speech. I don't much like anyone who doesn't follow the Constitution.
As has been mentioned, PA ranks next to last in per capita spending on higher education, which is reflected in the tuition for in-state students. We spend $156 and the national average is $318. Higher state subsidy would mean lower in-state tuition.
More accurate to think of it this way: they offer the smallest in-state discount.
