Thread by @Kaos_Vs_Control

🧵/1
Thanks to a provision slipped into legislation without public discussion, Indiana public universities are required to ax any programs that don't have a minimum enrollment of degree seekers. IU alone has to kill *249* programs. ipm.org/news-section/2…

2/ The list of programs on the immediate chopping block includes pretty much all modern languages, math, geology, environmental sciences, history, geography, earth and atmospheric sciences, religious studies, cognitive sciences, journalism, physics, education, statistics,

3/ astrophysics, biochemistry, fine arts, neuroscience, anthropology, and literally hundreds more. And even more inane, double majors don't count as contributing to the head count for a degree.

4/ Let's take chemistry as an example of how self-destructive this is. People who major in ANY life science or who are pre-med, pre-nursing, pre-OT, or pre-PT have to take the chemistry sequence, from gen chem to organic chem.

5/ If they suspend a chemistry program at a university because they have decided that not enough people are actual chem majors, then -- we don't have classes for these future professionals to take, and we eventually don't have people who can teach these classes.

6/ For further knock-on effects, that means that the people employed in these programs, to support these programs, to maintain the physical infrastructure where these programs were established, and the local businesses that in turn

7/ support those people will absolutely just *bottom out* economically. This attack on education is an attack on the economic health of *any municipality* where a college or university targeted in this way exists.

8/ The alleged rationale for this is to streamline offerings to train students for professions. That's nonsensical on its face because as the current landscape for CS grads clearly illustrates, predicting successful professions and the skills that will be needed for them is even

9/ a near-future gamble and very much a long-term risk, and also? I hate to seem like a dreamer, but education at a four-year school has been and should still be more than just obtaining skills for a profession.

10/ There are already schools for people who want that kind of streamlining. It undermines the values, mission, and ethos of education to close off every single opportunity for expansion beyond the immediate perceived payoff of gaining a skill set for employment.

11/There is such an all-out assault on education in this country right now that it is just mind-boggling. This will gut these universities, wholesale, & I imagine that's the intent
Courtesy Emily Willingham, PhD

Author,  journalist, scientist, lifelong learner, sometime teacher,