Carissa Duhamel – Copy Editor
Having security that every class registered for actually runs during the semester is crucial to college seniors. In the crunch before graduation a simple class cancellation can mean the difference between completing a degree on time or a whole semester late – and paying an entire extra semester’s worth of tuition. With the cost of college at an all time high and a stressed economic atmosphere, a simple class cancellation might be the financial breaking point that causes some students to halt the pursuit of their degrees. Despite this reality, several courses at Southern Connecticut State University are at risk of being cut from the curriculum this upcoming semester, which could have adverse effects on both students and staff.
SCSU senior Amalia Calafiore has firsthand experience with the anxiety a class cancellation can provoke. As an elementary education and liberal studies double major looking to graduate in the fall of 2014 Calafiore has little to no spare time in her jam-packed schedule. She was forced, however, to invent some for this fall when a class she needed to complete her degree was cancelled. “I was informed about the cancellation three weeks before going back to school,” she says, “I had to scramble and try to find another class that would still fulfill my requirement…If the other classes [I could replace it with] were full I would have had to consider taking a winter or summer course in order to fit that in and graduate at the same time.”
The kind of difficulty Calafiore faced is not an isolated event – many of Southern’s courses this fall are liable to be cut, and the reason is larger than students might imagine. “Overall, the university’s state appropriation budget has continued over the years to decrease. Funding for public higher education not only in Connecticut, but nationwide, is decreasing,” says university Executive Vice President Jim Blake, “And Southern’s enrollment has declined…it’s gone from 12,500 to just about 11,000.” As a result, less money is coming into the university from both fronts. Therefore there is less money available for our professors’ salaries, meaning there is simply no budget for some professors to teach and get paid for low-enrollment courses.
Such a fiscal situation spells disaster for adjuncts. “Every semester we have this cadre of people who are our part-time teachers who the school couldn’t function without…because they need them for all of these courses, and at the same time they’re trying to fire them,” explains English department Chair Dr. Michael Shea, “Departments that have low-enrolled courses have had them cancelled so that the person teaching the lower enrolled course, if it’s a full timer, can move down a notch and teach a course an adjunct would teach and the adjunct gets let go. Or if it’s an adjunct’s course then the adjunct is just let go.” This leaves students at a disadvantage in their attempt to graduate, professors out of work, and the university functioning at a staff minimum.
In this situation, the fingers of blame are not fair to point at the university. “Its just a trend. A professor [at Southern] did a progression that showed by 2028 there will be no state appropriation,” says Blake. This move in American higher education away from funding by tax dollars and towards private, tuition payment puts state universities in a different financial situation than they were originally designed for. As a result, classes and jobs are being cut in the awkward transition. “Originally, the reason we had public education was not just so that you could get an education, but so that we could have an educated populace,” reflects Dr. Shea, “Taxpayers would still be served by putting their money into public higher education because a lot of people who are living in their state and making decisions that effect their lives are going to these schools.”
Students, and the general American public, are left with a philosophical question – should education be a commercial business that the individual alone is responsible for financing? Or is it more beneficial to America to enable education for its masses in order to profit the country as a collective? As the inclination of our politicians seems to be rapidly progressing towards the former it is pertinent that students and taxpayers put in their two cents now, before tuition rates leave them without two cents to spare.
