… but its students can.
The governor of Louisiana thought he’d figured out how to rid the state of Southern University, a total money-pit bearing no resemblance to a university. He was going to merge it with a better university. But that doesn’t seem to be happening.
In 2001, Southern had a 5% graduation rate. That rate is now 8%.
As the governor tries to do something about this scandal, Southern devolves into farce, the latest act of which involves a fired professor who just kept teaching and being paid because no one noticed he was still there.
He was fired as part of an emergency two years ago, when
enrollment declines and state budget cuts prompted Southern to declare a financial emergency, called exigency — in this case, a 20-month process that allowed the university leeway to cut academic programs and lay off tenured faculty.
Those enrollment declines are going to be the only thing that will eventually be able to shut Southern down. It’s fun to be in the audience for the last acts of a farce, but no one wants to be onstage. When no one goes to your school, you have to stop existing.
Or do you? Maybe Southern can figure out a way to keep going. Maybe administrators can designate one another professors and set up classes for themselves.
September 19th, 2013 at 3:16PM
Well, if they have a football team, they can save money by getting rid of all them perfesser thingies and no one will notice.
September 19th, 2013 at 10:38PM
I knew a brilliant guy, Fred Thayer, a former professor at your school, UD, who is/was an expert on the history of US federal budget deficits and their affect on economic and financial depressions. A great teacher, who went to Southern U. in order to try to boost their Public Policy department. This was back in the late 90’s, lost track of him, but at one time, Southern was attempting to be a proper academic institution. Just so damn sad that it’s all fallen apart…