College Guide
Blog
Thanks to a Rick Perry-supported policy designed to improve higher education outcomes, Texas will go forward with plans to eliminate bachelor’s degree programs in physics at two of the states historically black colleges.
According to an article by Melissa Ludwig at the Houston Chronicle:
Earlier this year, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board identified 545 programs at public universities, community colleges and health institutions that were not producing enough graduates, including several at Texas Southern University and Prairie View A&M.
On Thursday, the board rejected a final appeal to save bachelor’s degrees in physics at both institutions, over protests from TSU President John Rudley.
Texas Southern and Prairie View A&M are the only historically black public colleges in Texas.
Rudley protested that the decision to close the programs is unfair: “When you try to find a kid in the ghetto and expose them to these areas of study, no one has ever talked to them about what physics is all about,” Rudley said to Ludwig.
The physics program at TSU has produced one graduate in the last five years. Under the policy, colleges must graduate at least 25 students every five years for the academic major to remain in operation.
Facebook
Twitter
Crissa on November 01, 2011 10:27 AM:
That seems a strange way to operate a college. There weren't many Physics majors at my university - most were engineers of some sort - but that didn't mean most of the courses you'd need for a Physics major wouldn't be taken by the engineering students.
Texas Aggie on November 02, 2011 6:07 PM:
Along the same thought line as Crissa, the value of a program isn't the number of kids graduating in that major, but whether the program has students taking its classes. I wasn't a math major, but I took three semesters of calculus. And I wasn't a physics major, but I took two semesters of physics as well as courses in religion, philosophy, sociology, literature, German, government, and music although I majored in none of those. Almost all of my classmates took extensive coursework outside their majors and the result was a well balanced education with the ability to think and reason intelligently in a number of areas.
If you are a chemistry major, without math, you go nowhere. If you are a part of society, without an understanding of how the society works, you're worthless or less than worthless. If you're in politics, but have never taken a single liberal arts course, you will be a failure (see Perry, Rick).