This Associated Press piece, "US colleges are cutting majors and slashing programs" further confirms that VU is hardly alone in contemplating and making cuts.
https://apnews.com/article/college-degree-programs-cuts-music-f0c271f6d61a13404f93688fcc6c589b
@david81, thanks for posting this article. I saw it over the weekend and was going to bring it to this board - this story has been picked up by many news outlets.
Part of the story has personal connection, as the article mentions St. Cloud State University - my mother graduated from there 60-some years ago (when it was St. Cloud State Teachers College). The article mentions enrollment peaked at SCSU at 18,300 in 2020 before falling to 10,000 last fall. SCSU has some interesting parallels to regional universities in other states (think Ball State, or Illinois State), as D-1 hockey is its flagship sport and regularly makes the NCAA hockey tournament.
The bigger picture (as 81 notes!) is that VU is not alone in making cuts, and that programs in arts, music and humanities have been particularly hit hard due to declining student enrollments.
Agreed on a Statistics major not being needed in the current workplace. If someone wants to move into a data-tied field, they pursue Data Science or Product/Business Analytics, versus just having a Math/Statistics major focus. I haven't seen Statistics on a resume in quite some time, and we hire a lot of Data Scientists/Data Analysts at SiriusXM.
@valpotx Honestly, I really detest this kind of thinking - "If I don't see it in my applied industry, then it must be useless everywhere." This reductive mentality against basic science and math skills is really killling our universities and the US's R&D more generally. Do you think China is saying, 'eh, guess we don't need people who understand raw math and physics anymore'?
For example, statistics is still SUPER highly sought after in many discpilines. In fact, there's a terrible lack of bio-statisticians in the U.S. these days, especially as far more data spinning off of everything than anybody can parse. If you're a bio-statistician, you can get a job anywhere and have your pick of the best, because every lab/grant these days needs one, and universities/institutes/companies/government agencies are desperate for them. There are all these biomedical engineers clamoring to get their patents and make a buttload of money, but not enough statisticians who actually can verify the validity/variables for the actual basic science.
VU No one is discounting the need for people to know these skills. Data Science and these other degree maps even require statistics and high-level mathematics as core classes. What TX is saying is that the need for a statistics degree is waning. Statistics and high-level Calculus is not only highly sought after, but REQUIRED to get degrees in the Data and Computer field. In fact, at my institution, there is such an influx of required math courses for degrees such as Computer Science, that counselors recommend a math minor as the math minor only requires 1 extra math class to complete with the CS math requirements. Don't be mistaken, math is still essential to the workplace and will always be essential to the workplace. However, the requirements to get into certain positions have changed. Hence the Statistics major is being replaced by the Data Science Major in some fields.
@vuindiana, you missed my point, which is also not just tied to my company/industry, but what I see in the overall labor market in my role. My view is not that Statistics/Math classes are not worthwhile, as Rez mentions, but that Statistics as a general major no longer makes sense. You need more specialization nowadays, to get into the types of roles that you are mentioning. Statistics and Math are still core classes to these other degrees that are more specialized nowadays, but not solitary and general majors that companies seek. I am a big proponent of Data and Math/Statistics, so you have my comment all wrong. Data/Statistics remains a core part of our Pandora brand's Music Genome Project, and we hire a lot of folks with this mathematical background in Software Engineering, Data Science, Data/Product Analytics, Marketing Analytics, and various other areas.
I think I do understand that you support science/math/data statistics classes -but what does that matter if students are not in majoring them and the departments/programs (which house the classes) get cut? As we know, the metric that matters these days is not class enrollment or the part that a class serves in a degree, but # Declared Majors -- so all over the country, math programs are being cut (because of low #s of majors) in favor of 'business analytics' type programs (because they can put the students under their program name).
More generally, I still do not believe that "statistics" and "data analytics" are the same thing. Sure, there's overlap.... but it is one thing to understand the science and the mathematical variables well enough to *set up* a valid and useful scienfitic experiment to begin with. It is a different and much later consideration to be on the tail end of data processing/marketing (at which point, one's analysis can only be as good/relevant as the data that other people or algorithms first generated, whether they did sensical or nonsensical ways).
I would agree that statistics and data analytics aren't the same thing. However, In the current market, it just seems like a specialization such as "Data Science" is a preferred degree over something more general as Statistics. Hence why biostatistics seems lacking. Students get the idea in their head that they need some form of specialized degree in order to obtain said position. Computer Science and a select few other degree paths seems to be the only "General" degree that works anymore.
I would like to point out that although those degrees are waning. It is incorrect for schools to downsize their departments considering the requirements of math and science being as plentiful as they are. Full departments are a necessity in order to meet requirements.
Have long stayed silent on this thread because I've always felt there's just so much going on behind the scenes that we don't know about and that ultimately, I trust Padilla to steer the university right. Does that mean I've agreed with all of his decisions? No, but again, I assume he has info and skills in these areas that I do not.
Today, however, I'm doubting that faith. Just a few minutes ago I received an email I'm assuming many of you have as well, from Jill Schur, VP of Enrollment & Marketing with the subject title "Your Opinion Matters" asking me to take a branding survey for Vu. I don't have any illusions that this stuff is taken too seriously but I was still excited that they were at least asking. After several years of declining enrollment, negative headlines, and faculty infighting, they were at least asking for some opinions.
Then I checked the box for "Alumni graduated before 2013" and the next page said "Sorry, you do not qualify to take this survey. Thank you for your time."
Are you f*$%ing kidding me?
You want to discount or ignore our opinions? Fine. Do it in private, like you clearly did for the mascot change. To openly give a middle finger to anyone who hasn't taken a course in the last 10 years is a pretty bold strategy. I graduated in '00, have lived 17 of my 24 years since living in or around Valpo. I've participated in job fairs, hired students as interns, and guest lectured in the business school. And I know at least half the regulars on this board are even more deeply involved than I am, and I'm pretty pissed off right now.
But the real danger for Valpo isn't my, or anyone else's, anger. It's what comes after: Apathy.
But then again, It's clear my opinion doesn't matter.
I would send a direct email to Jill: jill.schur@valpo.edu and copy Padilla: jose.padilla @valpo.edu
I plan on doing the same. Let's bury them in emails.
I pray that it is only an error CheeseHead. Alienating the alumni is a poor choice
Huh, but isn't the difference more substantive than just an issue of general vs. specific scope?
I think of statistics as a fundamentally more inductive process of reasoning, in sofar as you are constantly checking that that the differentials you register are going to be valid for the sample size and using controls to verify that you are actually testing the variables you think you are. In a lot of research math and science, you have to stay cognizant that you actually don't know what math or scientific problem you're working on, since that's part of what you're trying to figure out. Maybe at first you suspect you're charting the relationship between "A" and "B", but it turns out that some unconsidered factor "P" is the key mover in there - though you'll never know the difference unless you're checking for control in the system.
On the contrary, data analytics seems much more deductive, picking up much later in the understanding process and moving more quickly to the application side of it all. Data analytics tends to take some data set that some other (person? study? computer?) already spit out, and then it cleans, simplifies, and visualizes it, or feeds it into a predictive machine learning to try to make predictions, or trieds to to translate it into meaningful insight for business purposes. It seems to me data science people mainly talk about how to extract insight FROM data, but generally have little critical understanding of where the data pieces they're working with came from or what went into generating them.
As you say there's plenty of overlap and elements of inductive/deductive reasoning in both, and I don't mean to bash data analytics as always faulty or something. There is a huge need for data science, data analytics, and data applications!!!
But I guess I'm just worried that in this huge swing of popularity towards the application-oriented majors (and the drastic cuts to anything else in the curriculum), students (and administrators?) don't really realize they're missing out on the inductive reasoning side of inquiry. This is a growing problem across all of higher ed and in many sectors. I saw an NSF grant proposal the other day where the were trying so hard to analyze months worth of negative results within a more complicated, larger experiment building upon DNA sequence (using pre-made kits) but they didn't understand the DNA was closing up and invalidating the experiment, which they would have known if they were purifying it themselves. Or I saw a retraction of a news article about religious demographics the other day, where the journalist had polled and spit out all this data about falling church attendance for different denominations for Sunday morning -- but hadn't realized that actually pretty statistically significant chunks of Catholics go to Mass on Saturday evening, so the data in Sunday attendance was actually partial and thus all the relative comparisons and pie graphs or whatever, were all outright misrepresentative.
I really fear our society is starting to drown in a sea of data overwhelm, spinning our wheels trying to analyze (sometimes just plain faulty) data without the inductive reasoning skills to understand what we're looking at.... So especially as the basic maths and science departments get deemed obsolete and impractical like the humanities before them, we risk becoming dumber and dumber as a higher ed system and as a country.
@VU72, oof sorry, perspectives from before 2013 are not worthy of data analysis
😛
Today, however, I'm doubting that faith. Just a few minutes ago I received an email I'm assuming many of you have as well, from Jill Schur, VP of Enrollment & Marketing with the subject title "Your Opinion Matters" asking me to take a branding survey for Vu. I don't have any illusions that this stuff is taken too seriously but I was still excited that they were at least asking. After several years of declining enrollment, negative headlines, and faculty infighting, they were at least asking for some opinions.
Then I checked the box for "Alumni graduated before 2013" and the next page said "Sorry, you do not qualify to take this survey. Thank you for your time."
Are you f*$%ing kidding me?
I would send a direct email to Jill: jill.schur@valpo.edu and copy Padilla: jose.padilla @valpo.edu
I plan on doing the same. Let's bury them in emails.
I received the same email, and was similarly appalled. I wondered if it was the survey company that goofed this up - it would, of course be very easy to analyze the data separately for alums who graduated in the last 10 years. (Of course, this is coming from one of those old dinosaurs who took graduate courses in statistics. Maybe one of those new whipper-snappers who have a fancy degree in data analytics who designed the survey!)
Possibly bad in terms of college experience feeling like remedial high school with actual high school peers.
But possibly good in terms of enrollment pipeline since they seem more likely than the Chicago community college students to transfer/continue into VU undergrad.
Purdue and IU offer dual enrollment and dual credit courses. This isn't a bad decision, bit it is also not a gamechanger either
I had two dual-credit students from VHS in my evening courses at VU during past years. Though not a large number, they were well prepared for classes, very good contributors to discussions, and both eventually enrolled as full-time freshmen at Valparaiso, where I continued to assist in informally advising them. I have always encouraged greater cooperation and activity between VU and local high schools, especially increasing communication with teachers who are VU grads. I am pleased to see this program return, even if it proves to be just a blip in overall enrollment stats.
