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Originally posted by: freedom4usm
" Part of the Shelby spin machine's response to the SACS embarrassment has been to emphasize the health of individual program accreditations.  This, for example, off the university website: "Many programs also can be reviewed and accredited by organizations in specific educational or disciplinary areas. Southern Miss has program accreditations for 98 percent of the programs eligible for such accreditations. Examples of accredited programs include Nursing, Computer Science, Construction Management, Business, Education, Public Health, Medical Technology, and many more." But how many of these individual program accreditations are today under threat, not from the SACS probation, but from either the ill will or the negligence of the Thames regime?  How healthy is Nursing's accreditation long about now?  Word has it that some programs on (if not already over) the edge  of violating standards on faculty resources will not be allowed to fill -- worse, will lose altogether -- vacant faculty lines.  This appears to be the case in Public Health, Speech & Hearing Sciences, and Social Work.  Do Thames and Exline not care about losing these program accreditations as long as the SACS probation can be lifted?  Does Dean Fos not care?  Or is the plan to deliberately decapitate most of the programs in the College of Health?   "

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How many accredited programs across campus are DEPENDENT on SACs accreditation to maintain national accreditation?  I've heard that Nursings accreditation (and other programs) are in danger of losing their accreditation if we lose our SACs accreditation.  Any comments???

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Originally posted by: Green Hornet
"How many accredited programs across campus are DEPENDENT on SACs accreditation to maintain national accreditation?  I've heard that Nursings accreditation (and other programs) are in danger of losing their accreditation if we lose our SACs accreditation.  Any comments???"

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Most program accreditations are dependent on university accreditation.  Even if the SACS crisis is averted, however, the "other" crisis of threatened accreditations due to resource deprivation (notably deprivation of adequate qualified faculty) remains.  I'm skeptical that a master plan is at work here, but I do think SFT is counting on the statewide financial crisis and looming cuts across higher education to cover a lot of sins.  Nursing's demise will have been in the works for a long while, for example, but the real cause will be lost in the welter of draconian actions taken in response to whopping funding reductions.  If these "other" accreditations are lost, it will not be Shelby's fault, but the fault of a bad budget and the need to allocate scarce resources for the highest "return on investment."

Shelby is completely enamored with the commercialization model.  He has no apparent interest in academics as a "public good" so departments and college, in his view, are valued for their grant leveraging ability.  Health, as opposed to Nursing, opens up opportunities for grant funding. The same thinking can be applied to Education, Business, and Science and Technology. COAL's value comes in those "Arts" that make Hattiesburg a more attractive community for recruiting. Ditto for athletics.

Remember, universities as "gold mines" not as institutions of higher learning.

I believe that part of Shelby's original support base came from convincing the university's external constituencies that all of his plans would be improvements on what the university already was.  The reality is that his schemes were undisclosed trade-offs.  If there had ever been public debate, then his reorganization, industrial hires, and subsequent devastation of programs would have been exposed and aborted.  There is a reason he likes to operate in the dark.  His plans do not stand up under transparency and light.  Those outside the university assumed he knew what he was doing and had the competence to do it.  Those inside knew better.  Outsiders never heard the other side because all disagreement was stifled and dissidents silenced.  Shelby loses external support when his incompetencies are revealed.  Even the people who think well of him are tired of the problems.

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Originally posted by: freedom4usm
" You are on-target, Dr. Young.  Thames has, both in word and in deed, denounced the ideal of university service to the public good.  The public be damned; it's all about the money, now -- long-term interest sacrificed for short-term gain.  "

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To be fair -- it IS about money.

But only because the public has been sold on the idea that you can get something for nothing by politicians who seem to think that there is a never-ending pond of wasted spending that  can  be tapped. Now that much of the waste in critical areas has been pretty well exploited (except in those little personal political mudponds like the Lott Center) politicians are stuck trying to fugure out how to fund critical activities without raising the taxes they have committed themselves to continue to cut. The public has bought lock stock and barrel that to work for the government (meaning the taxpayer) to be be fat, lazy and unproductive.

Ironically, the public no longer believes that public service means just that -- even the best paid public servants never come close to matching the salaries of those who work in the private sector. In fact, the primary purpose of "public service" at the upper echelon (for those who are trying to make a profit)  isn't to make money but to make the appropriate contacts, to convince the powerful in the private sector that one can be useful AFTER leaving public service. Look at the salary of the President of the United States, the worlds largest economy, compared to the CEO of any of the top 100 American companies . . . .

Finally, many university Presidents have forsaken a major duty: to explain the university and to explain higher education and its value to the general public. Instead of being diplomats for higher education, instead of becoming ambassadors of knowlege and teachers for a deluded citizenry,they have become mere fundraisers, content to cut and snip the university budget, or to change the nature of the university for money rather than change the public's perception of what high education can be.  They refuse to get in the rhetorical boxing ring and contest the Snopses who have persuaded the public that the only education which matters is an education that produces workers who do not question their bosses, who work themselves into the grave without a whimper, and who care only which new high tech toy will purchase them from boredom because they have never been encouraged to learn to enjoy anything connected to the life of the mind.

Our President almost never talks in specific terms about education and its many functions in a society. Like most public figures with lots of visibility but little depth, he speaks in cliches that are so general that almost no one can disagree with them. But when budget time comes, almost no one remembers them either -- they compete with all of the other cliches being shouted about all of the other areas that need funding.