Admins are telling everyone that the reason for cutting programs in the humanities is "dropping enrollments." Let me tell you how those same admins are CREATING the problem of low enrollments so that they can eliminate programs in the humanities. 🧵 Let's look at my dept for example. We bring in lots of majors from our gen ed courses. Those gen ed courses also count as our intro survey courses for the major - awesome! We did this strategically. What's next? They're excited to take all the upper level seminars that come next.

I don't know how to break it to people, but test scores don't reflect intelligence, ability, or aptitude, they only reflect test scores. Similarly, grades merely tell you...what grades a student got taking THOSE classes at THAT place THAT time. Bc these metrics are so limited... None of them mean much of anything in college admissions. I mean, yes, for very elite admissions you have to have all those ducks in a row bc they're a very basic game and if you can't do something so basic, you can't even be considered. But it's just the price of CONSIDERATION.

Ever since grad school spouse & I have been making vows to each other not to end up like the senior academics we saw then, and it occurs to me that it's about time I take my oath: I will not treat colleagues who happen to be junior to me as if they are children.

I will not get personally offended when new evidence shows things I published to be wrong or incomplete.

I will celebrate the new directions the field takes and try to keep up with them.