Burn it down and walk away…

I am going to try and say all this as coherently as possible…

Montreat College has announced today that it will be cutting up to 40 staff and faculty members and completely discontinuing the Music, Worship Arts, Elementary Education, and the Elementary Education Masters programs. The reason they are doing this? To satisfy the one requirement for re-accreditation proposed by SACS “The institution’s recent financial history demonstrates financial stability.” In an email the president said that they are making these decisions based on decreased enrollment and gift income in the last six months.

They are making permanent decisions because of shitty management in the last six months. They have faced financial challenges for at least the last five years if not longer and time and time again they have ignored the advice of administrators and trustees. Instead of raising tuition(an inevitability that most students have come to accept), instead of reducing athletic scholarships in order to create a more balanced and diverse student body and recruiting power, instead of making budget, benefits, and pay cuts all around, they are cutting one of the most important and respected programs at this college as well as another socially important program. Over qualified professors in all of those programs are being forced out of their jobs, with a handful being brought back on as adjuncts to satisfy degree requirements of students already enrolled in the affected majors.

Also, get this. The program I graduated from, Music Business, is not being cut due to huge growth over the years. Now, tell me, how can they have a Music Business program without a Music Department? They have undermined a third of the program and only two thirds of that program were worth anything.(The business department at Montreat is a joke) This has more or less invalidated my degree and completely destroyed any confidence I had in putting Montreat College on a resume.

On top of all this? The whole announcement was poorly communicated. It should have been clear that this was a possibility at the very least by the end of the semester. Reaffirmation of accreditation was not even that close to being on the line. This was the only requirement not yet met and the college was only on a warning status…which leads me to believe that this situation is much worse than is being led on. You don’t fire people with doctorates from Indiana University or leading education professionals in the region over a little credit scare.

One last little tidbit, if Montreat would have the guts to declare affiliation with the PCUSA (a Presbyterian denomination), they could tap into a whole new stream of admissions recruiting power as churches could offer scholarship money to students but that would require the school to be gay friendly and respect women. There were already enough things to give me qualms about my alma mater but this just tips the scales way beyond breaking. I am just glad that Katie and most of my friends will be able to escape this sinking ship while they can.