interesting tidbit

[Devin P Browne]

Thought the following message (from a different listserv) was intersting
in light of discussions "out there" on declining enrollments and the
effect on the survival of a program.  Pretty scarey......

Read on...

Devin


___________________________________________________________________________
Devin P. Browne                                   Clairton Education Center
Foreign Language Teacher                                 501 Waddell Avenue
dpbrowne+ at pitt.edu                                      Clairton, PA  15025
                                                             (412) 233-9200


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 09:50:09 EDT
From: Anthea Tillyer <ABTHC+ at CUNYVM.BITNET>
To: Multiple recipients of list TESLJB-L <TESLJB-L at CUNYVM>
Subject: You thought it couldn't happen!

---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender:       "TESLJB-L: Jobs and Employment Issues (TESL-L sublist)"
              <TESLJB-L at CUNYVM.BITNET>
Poster:       Anthea Tillyer <ABTHC at CUNYVM.BITNET>
Subject:      You thought it couldn't happen!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, in terms of jobs, tenured jobs for people with PH.Ds, this piece of
news is terrible (15 of them will be let go), but in terms of the implications
for all of us English teachers wherever we are, the news is both terrible
and completely astonishing......

At Queens College (a highly-regarded senior college of the City University
of New York system) the English Department is going to be ABOLISHED!

Yes! Abolished.  It was announced last week as part of the Queens College
president's retrenchment (money-saving) plan.

The department will be abolished, laying off 15 senior faculty members who
are mostly eminent in the area of literary criticism and poetry. INstead,
the college will create two "programs" - literature and creative writing - in
which no one has tenure.  "Programs" in CUNY means a sort of temporary status
and no governance and no tenure. Abolishing a department abrogates any union
contract in force for the affected faculty.

Obviously, this action removes any kind of developmental writing and ESL from
the college.

This is mind-boggling of course, but consider the fact that CUNY is working
together with its "sister" systems (The State University systems of NY
and California) to create common curricula (a euphemism for shared courses
taught by distance learning).  Consider also that these three systems CUNY,
SUNY, and CSU together account for 12% of all the college students in the
USA.

The impact of this kind of decision, while still "only" on one campus, is
bound to be tremendous and wide-spread (and frightening).

Can you believe it?

Anthea Tillyer       City University of New York       ABTHC at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU