This critique gives a more detailed analysis of the flaws in data and quantitative reasoning in Pathways.

According to President Wildes and Provost Harris, the Pathways Plan was based on quantitative issues, e.g. decline in enrollment, resulting in financial deficit, and qualitative issues.  The latter have not been defined.

This summary specifically enumerates the incorrect data and incorrect interpretation of the quantitative issues.

• The Provost’s office did not give the Faculty Senate much of the data that was requested by the Senate motion.  A&S also requested by unanimous vote for almost the same motion prior to the Senate vote.  Thus, we do not have most of the data that was used to justify the cuts in programs, departments, and colleges.  No data was presented for the Law School.

• All data from the President’s and Provost’s offices are based upon one year – 2004-2005. Sometimes, the data compared are not from the same year.  For example, revenue data is from 2004-2005, but enrollment data is from 2006.  The Delaware Study data used 2004-2005 from Loyola and 2003-2004 from the comparison schools. 

Imagine if your career was based solely on one year’s worth of work.  Furthermore, suppose parts of your career were based on one year but other parts of your career were based upon another year.  And what if that year was the worst year in career or you received release time(s) for university service.

3.      Sub-specialties within a Department are not majors.  Sub-specialties are not stand-alone departments.  At Loyola, these sub-specialties are called by the following names: programs, tracks, or sequences.

Go to http://cas.loyno.edu/ugprograms.html, which is published for the public to see what departments within the College of Arts and Sciences that a student can choose to major.

Examples:

• A student declares a Communications major with a specialty (called sequences) in Broadcast Productions or Print Journalism.
• A student declares a Chemistry major with a specialty (called tracks) in Forensic Chemistry or Pre-medical Chemistry.
• A student declares a Psychology major with a specialty (called tracks) in Pre-med Psychology
  

4.      The President and Provost eliminated specific sub-specialties within a department, based

upon low enrollment for one year (Katrina year: 2005-2006) and did not count students who have yet to declare a sequence.  

Two specific examples:

         (a.)  Department of Communications enrollment (eliminated programs in blue, retained programs in green):   The four sequences were eliminated based on the 78 students enrolled in February 2006.

      All of Communications              =    442 students as of February 23, 2006

               Broadcast Journalism        =    27 students

               Broadcast Production        =    21 students

               Communications Studies   =    18 students

               Film Studies                     =   12 students

                                    Total           =   78 students

               Advertising                       =   49 students

               Photo Journalism               =    10 students

               Print Journalism                 =   18 students

               Public Relations                 =   66 students

                                    Total            = 143 students

Notice that:    78 + 143 =  221 students

And:               442 -221 =  221 students who have not declared a specialty.

In Communications, students do not need to declare a specialty until they graduate!  So the President and Provost did not count these 221 students (50% of the total Communications students) at all. 

Notice that Photo Journalism has 10 students, lower than any of the specialties that were eliminated.  Print Journalism has 18 students as did Communications Studies, but Communications Studies was eliminated.

If a true count of students in each sequence was sought by the administration, a quick email to the Chair of the department asking that the faculty make sure each of their advisees had declared a sequence would have accomplished that.  Instead, the number was taken from the student records on what seems to be a random day, February 23, 2006.  An open and honest process would have forewarned the faculty and resulted in a more accurate representation.

• The Department of Education enrollment (all of the Department was eliminated based on the 35 Elementary Education students):

            Education Elementary           =    35 students

            Education Secondary            =    21 students

                                    Total             =  56 students

Notice:  the President and Provost only counted the 35 students, not the 56.

      This whole argument is predicated on the presumption that the faculty has a responsibility to generate revenue.  That requirement is not listed in Chapter seven of the Faculty Handbook: ”Professional Responsibilities of the Ordinary Faculty.”   However, if we were given notice that we had to generate revenues at any specific ratio, we would have done it.

5.   The President and Provost under-counted total enrollment for majors in order to claim that specific majors or sequences are under-enrolled.  Translation of enrollment is into dollars.  Each student enrolled brings in tuition dollars as revenue.

      Thus, in the above examples:

• 221 Communications majors may have specialized in the 4 eliminated sequences, but since those students were not counted, then their tuition dollars are not added into the 4 sequences.  For all anyone knows, most – perhaps all (unlikely, but possible!) are specializing in the eliminated programs.
• 21 Secondary Education students were not counted, so 21 divided by 56 = 37.5%.  The revenue of Education was decreased by 37.5 % by the President and Provost.

6.   The President and Provost inflated faculty salaries and benefits by adding dollars that should be located in the tuition/revenue from students category in order to generate a ratio of tuition/salary under 2.28. 

               In the additional data requested by the Senate (“Background Information on the Programs that have been proposed to be ended” – circulated on May 10, 2006, emailed from Assistant Provost Cornwell to the Dean to the chairs to the faculty), the data for the following programs/departments were provided to justify the cuts:

      Broadcast Journalism and Broadcast Production (calculated together) (A&S)

      Film Studies (A&S)

      Computer Science (A&S)

      Computer Science (CC)

      2.28  =    Tuition $$$ from students enrolled in each department

                                      Faculty salaries + Faculty benefits

      But:   President and Provost only calculated a few departments – the ones they wanted to eliminate. 

      And:  The President and Provost selected certain numbers so that the departments and/or programs would not reach 2.28.

      Examples:

• Communications –Broadcast Journalism and Broadcast Production  (both are eliminated)

     2.89 =                         Tuition $$$ from 2004-05    = $540,051

                         Faculty Salaries + Benefits from 2004-05  = $186,627

      Notice:  2.89 is greater than 2.28. 

      Which means that Broadcast Journalism and Broadcast Production make more money than

      they cost to operate.

      But wait.  The 2.89 number would not support eliminating the two programs, so the

      Provost’s office had to add numbers and leave out numbers to the Faculty Salaries and

      Benefits to make the ratio get smaller than 2.28.

      In other words, the numbers have to work so that the administration can claim that

      Broadcast Journalism and Production do not make more than they cost to operate.

      For Faculty Salaries and Benefits, they added two more numbers: 

• $87,780  = given to Communications for equipment in 2003.  This was surplus money given by Father Knoth to several departments (including Biological Sciences which bought many microscopes).  This equipment money is not yearly equipment money for operations.  This was a one-time surplus money given to the departments to spend as they see fit.
• $66,200  = $100 student fee charged to all Communications majors from 2003-2006.

                        Total = $87,780 + $66,200 = $157,000.

      Notice:      the student fee is part of what students pay = like tuition!  Thus, student fees should be added to the top number (student tuition) since students pay this.

      Also notice:  the years (03 and 03-06) do not match the enrollment years (05-06).

      And:  Why did they add Broadcast Production and Broadcast Journalism together in the first

      place?

• For Computer Science (eliminated), an additional revenue of $189,000 for Advanced Common Curriculum courses were not added into the numerator (Tuition/fees); therefore, the revenue ratio for Computer Science was lowered due to not adding this revenue into the numerator

• For the Chemistry Department (retained but incorrectly assessed), the entire campus’s chemical disposal (including photography chemicals, etc.) were added into the “Faculty salaries and benefits” denominator so that the ratio would be less than 2.28.  Note that Chemistry was not eliminated (and that’s great) but based upon their calculations, Chemistry should have been eliminated.  As so many other departments (see item #6 next).

7.   In the document “Background Information on the Programs that have been proposed to be ended,” the eliminated programs also contain a dollar figure that is noted as a “shortfall.”  This is dishonest since the programs do not have a shortfall and do, in fact, generate revenue if the student fees are placed in the numerator (under “tuition $$) and the one-time equipment fee is deleted.  The “shortfall” indicates the program falling under the 2.28 ratio.

8.   The President and Provost did not calculate all the departments that do not meet the 2.28 ratio.   They only calculated the ratios for a few departments/programs.

      If we use the President’s and Provost’s data, we can calculate the ratio for every department except the Law School whose data was not provided to us.  It is important to note that these calculations are based upon the Administration’s data – the same data used to generate the examples given in #5 above.  So, it is possible that more programs are worse or more are better.

We cannot accurately assess the revenue-generating success of a program if incorrect numbers are used.

Programs that do NOT generate 2.28 revenues/expenses are in Red.

                        Salaries                     2.28*Salaries           Net Revenue  Ratios

BIOL              $879,235                     $2,004,656                  $1,878,480      2.14

CHEM            $513,155                     $1,169,993                  $1,012,050      1.97

Drama            $464,509                     $1,059,081                  $832,282         1.79

EDUC            $623,387                     $1,421,322                  $957,606         1.54

PHYS             $346,309                     $789,585                     $608,680         1.76

VISA              $606,915                     $1,383,766                  $1,226,492      2.02

Women           $61,941                       $141,225                      $14,956         0.24

COMM          $949,752                     $2,165,435                  $2,650,825       2.79

CLASS          $138,199                     $315,094                     $441,014          3.19

ENGL            $1,237,861                 $2,822,323                   $3,644,172       2.94

HIST             $926,098                     $2,111,503                   $3,899,451      4.21

MATHCS      $1,002,216                  $2,285,052                   $2,648,747      2.64

MFL               $710,598                     $1,620,163                 $2,105,033      2.96 

PHIL              $938,599                     $2,140,006                 $3,769,897      4.02

POLS              $439,510                    $1,002,083                  $1,099,611      2.50

PSYC              $583,713                    $1,330,866                  $2,178,592      3.73

RELS             $850,498                     $1,939,135                  $3,935,501      4.63

SOCI              $380,719                     $868,039                    $1,252,740       3.29

COMM ES     $34,914                       $79,604                       NA

AS ALL         $11,653,214.00           $18,679,303.56           $34,156,129.00 2.93

BUSI ALL     $3,095,083                   $7,056,789                 $6,876,102      2.22

ACCT            $671,935                      $1,532,012                  $854,210       1.27

ECON            $446,317                      $1,017,603                  $813,271       1.82

FIN                 $366,082                      $834,667                     $546,592      1.49

INT BUS        $235,573                      $537,106                     $140,243       0.60

MGT               $616,329                     $1,405,230                  $1,053,417    1.71

MKT               $539,105                     $1,229,159                  $911,330       1.69

DECS               $83,601                        $190,610                  $510,514       6.11

LGST               $74,643                        $170,186                   $321,031      4.30

ETHICS           $61,498                       $140,215.44                   NA             NA

MUSIC AL    $2,220,657                  $5,063,097.85             $3,009,493      1.36

MUED            $88,826                       $202,523.87                   $99,449       1.12

MUSIC           $2,065,211                  $4,708,681.08             $2,839,684      1.38

MUTY            $66,620                       $151,892.89                  $70,360        1.06

9.     The President and Provost based their quality and quantity assessments on a methodology called the Delaware Study (See Table 6 of the Program Review posted on the Provost’s web site).  According to the table, Loyola University New Orleans is the most expensive university in the United States.   

         Some details of the Delaware Study may be found at their website:  www.udel.edu

         However, only people with administrative access can obtain most of the information on the website.

!0. If one goes to the Deleware Study website, there are interesting public facts about the Deleware Study as follows:

• The participants are self-selected.  In other words, the universities and colleges in the study are not chosen at random and invited to participate.
• The CIP codes (Classification of Instructional Programs) are chosen by the participating university, not by a non-partisan group/individual.  The CIP codes represent the characterization of the program between comparable universities.  Thus, if your department is classified under one CIP code, your department will be compared to other universities’ programs classified with the same code.  The point is to compare apples with apples.
• The participating universities are listed in a large table that is downloadable from the website.  The universities do not participate every year.  Some universities participate seemingly random years.  Some universities only participated one year.  Loyola University New Orleans has never participated until this year.  In other words, the university itself chooses when and what year to participate.
• According to the Director of the Delaware Study, Michael F. Middaugh, in the website’s downloadable PowerPoint presentation: (direct quotes from the presentation, emphasis are mine.)
• “The Delaware Study is not intended to be used as a tool to reward or penalize programs, but rather to focus on strategies for program improvement.
• Participation in Delaware Study is voluntary, and is restricted to 4-year, Title IV-eligible institutions only. The issue of non-response bias must be addressed.
• Because the population for this study is self-selecting, it is not a random sample.  Descriptive statistics are applied to the data to describe expenditure patterns, but cannot be inferentially generalized to a larger population. The descriptive information is nonetheless valuable.
• The data reflect direct instructional expense only, and does not constitute a full cost model. As useful as Delaware Study teaching load/cost benchmarks are, they do not address the non-classroom dimensions of faculty activity in an institution and its academic programs.
• It is possible that quantitative productivity and cost indicators for a given program/discipline may differ significantly from other institutional, peer, and national benchmarks for wholly justifiable reasons of quality that can be reflected in what faculty do outside of the classroom.
• However, this cannot be determined unless measurable, proxy indicators of quality are collected.”

 11. The President and Provost used the Delaware Study to justify program cuts based on cost analysis using a flawed model. The President understood that the model is self-selecting and flawed (conversation with Drs. Spence, Calzada and Shuh on May 10, 2006, 2:00pm); however he said that it is the
best model we have."

Thus, the Administration is knowingly using a flawed model which has little to no scientific merit and which is not meant to be used as a punitive measure (as pointed out by the National Director of the Delaware Study).

12.    The CIP codes for Communications are not correctly assigned to Loyola’s programs of study.  Thus, the Administration is not using CIP codes to compare apples with apples but to compare apples with zucchini. 

13.    Since the universities select which year they want to participate, Table 6 of the Provost Program Review criteria was generated, most likely, with mixed years for the universities listed.

14.    Of the 4 universities which the President wants Loyola to aspire to become (Pathways Plan) – University of Richmond, Villanova, Santa Clara University, Trinity University – only Villanova has participated, once in 2003.  None of the other 3 universities have participated as of 2004, the last year listed in the Delaware Study website.

How does the President know – based on his acceptance of using the Delaware Study – that these aspirational universities actually meet the cost indicators of the study?