SHAKING OUT THE EXCESS CAPACITY?

The budgetary nightmares continue at the University of Akron.  The public radio affiliate at Kent State has details.  There's analysis in a predictable vein from World Socialist Web Site, complete with news of carnage nearby.

On the same day as the Board of Trustees vote at Akron, faculty at Youngstown State University (YSU) overwhelming voted in favor of issuing a strike notice. The faculty at YSU, which like the University of Akron is part of the University System of Ohio, have expressed frustration with the sudden shift to remote learning and decision to lay off over 50 classified and professional staff this summer.

It's not a good time to be a penguin or a kangaroo, and the ominous signs might apply to the Mid-American Conference more generally.

Akron is a particular flash point because it is cutting so deep, and because of intense and very public faculty opposition to its plan. That opposition includes the faculty union’s contention that the administration is privileging athletics over academics, to the detriment of students.

“For years, the university has disinvested in academics while simultaneously losing millions on its athletics programs,” Akron’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors wrote in a position paper about proposed cuts earlier this month. “In the spirit of shared sacrifice, we believe that it’s time to move to a responsible and sustainable model of funding for athletics.”

While the vast majority of university revenue comes from academics in the form of student tuition and fees, the union wrote, its athletic programs are another story. According to the AAUP chapter’s accounting, Akron has been losing an average of $21.5 million per year on athletic programs for the last 10 years, topping $215 million in lost revenue during that time. Among other options, the AAUP advocates leaving Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Such losses, paired with the cuts of academics, are “no longer defensible,” the AAUP wrote in its report. This is “not fair to our students, who are subsidizing athletics at a higher rate than students at other Ohio public universities.”

Akron only recently replaced the vintage Rubber Bowl stadium with something newer.

Maybe it's time to consider a few fallen flag railroads, and ask whether restructurings might include some abandonments.  Consider one of the short lines that became part of what is now Norfolk Southern: Akron Canton and Youngstown.  It ran between Akron and Delphos, but those other cities were just outside yard limits.  Likewise, readers with long memories might recall James Michener's references to train traffic disrupting downtown Kent: a real ferroequinologist could tell you that those were Erie-Lackawanna trains getting into or out of the yards in Akron.  (We can relate in DeKalb, when things jam up in Chicago there are freight trains all the way west to Creston.)  In like manner to people in Wisconsin politics wondering about campuses at Eau Claire, Menomonie, Stevens Point, and River Falls, there might be people in Ohio politics wondering about that cluster of campuses at Kent, Akron, and Youngstown.