THE COLLEGE BUBBLE RUNS FLAT.

The University of Akron would like to unzip almost half its faculty.

The University of Akron offered a buy-out to about 47 percent of faculty on Monday in an effort to balance its budget.

Taking a “voluntary separation or retirement" offer would pay a faculty member 100 percent of 2019-20 base pay, split into two installments. The employee would leave the university on May 31, 2020. The first payment would come on July 2020, the second in January of 2021.

The offer does not appear to be an attempt, in the style of a 1980s railroad, to retrench to a core system, hiving off extravagances such as the Pacific Extension of The Milwaukee Road.  "Only full-time, permanent professors not teaching in what Akron calls 'strategic investment areas' are eligible -- some 340."  At the moment, the "strategic investment areas" are law, engineering, and polymer sciences.  (Rubber is a polymer, you see.)

The university's interim president, John Green, explains his efforts in a memorandum that is a paradigm of bafflegab.  "The feedback I have received from our continuing conversations has been useful and instructive on the key challenges of making UA’s academic programs more distinctive, fostering greater faculty collaboration, and addressing our enrollment challenges to achieve financial sustainability."  It goes on in that vein, and there is an accompanying set of talking points.

Nowhere in the talking points does anyone note that the university is losing enrollments.  But George Orwell would not be surprised.

Reorganizations are usually about eliminating “redundancies.” How many people would be let go?

There is no intention for involuntary personnel reductions because of the potential reorganization proposals.

Presumably, the lump sum offer to step out of line and disappear will achieve sufficient personnel reductions.

But is anybody really reassured by what appears to be a sacrifice of rigor?

How does this help to establish “clearer, easier-to-follow, and more efficient academic pathways for students?”

As one example, many students start out believing they want to become engineers but find they are unable to meet the math requirements. Having the degree offerings from the School of Engineering Technology that currently reside in the College of Applied Science and Technology located within the proposed “College of Engineering, Science and Technology” would enable those students to continue to pursue an engineering-related degree within one college. This is the type of model used at The University of Cincinnati’s College of Engineering and Applied Science.

With apologies to John Gardner: neither their curricula nor their polymers will hold water.

But at least Akron's women's basketball squad got a participation trophy.