More on Tulane

Here's more on Tulane's "re-tooling," this from The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Last week university officials announced a sweeping restructuring that will slice $60-million from the annual budget and will result in the layoffs of 233 faculty members, the elimination of 14 doctoral programs and 5 undergraduate majors, and the suspension of 8 athletic teams.

(snip)

The changes are wide-ranging:

The university will go from 45 doctoral programs to 18. Fourteen will be totally eliminated: economics, English, French, historical preservation, law, political science, sociology, water resources planning management, social work, and five in engineering. Other Ph.D. programs may be combined.

At the undergraduate level, the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering will be reorganized into two new schools — the School of Liberal Arts and the School of Science and Engineering. Five undergraduate majors will be eliminated — four in engineering, plus exercise-and-sports sciences.

Of the 233 faculty members laid off, 53 are from academic departments and 180 are from the medical school. The medical school took the biggest hit because the smaller population of New Orleans will result in fewer patients and less revenue, Mr. Cowen said.

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i17/17a00101.htm

Elsewhere in the article, it says that the programs that got cut are the weaker programs, and that the graduate students weren't just dumped -- they were mostly moved on to other programs: which is likely the case. I can't imagine a graduate student from Tulane finding it hard to be accepted into another program.

Still: how depressing. My lovely city.

The kid's grandmother is coming today to fetch her down to Metairie for the holidays. Then, on the 23rd, mr. delagar and I are traveling down there to spend a week or so, over the break. I'll see for myself how things are in the city, I guess.