To the Editor:

Lest we forget, and many would like you to, SUNY Potsdam discontinued 14 major programs last year, mostly in the still so-called School of Arts & Sciences.

Remarkably, one cannot study art history, communication, French, dance, philosophy, physics, Spanish, or theatre in this “school”.

Along the way, seven tenured faculty members were terminated, along with a still carefully guarded number of untenured full and part timers, and an unsurprising though disheartening number who, perhaps wisely, rushed into retirement – better retire than be retrenched, after all.

The college is a shell of what it once was.

On the other hand, the campus will greet a number of newly hired faculty in programs deemed ‘salable’ by the powers that be; more evidence that the cries of financial exigency were convenient (indeed, manufactured), but not the real point of ‘downsizing’.

If it were the real point, and if the reorganization of the college was a serious attempt to address it, the college administration would have been able to justify their targets financially – something they have not done and cannot do.

The real point was to remake the institution into a professional school, which sells pieces of paper to those wrongly convinced they need such things to get a good job – the future of public higher education.

The result is a diminished education for all involved, perhaps most importantly for those who will go on to become our future educators, health professionals and entrepreneurs.

Regardless, it is unquestionable that the students who showed up on the Potsdam campus this fall are attending a very different, indeed, transformed institution from the one they originally applied to or attended even last year.

Perhaps SUNY Potsdam will thrive as a professional school long term. Short term, as recently as 2020 there were 2,837 undergraduate students enrolled at Potsdam.

In 2024, there were 1,823 undergraduates on campus for the first day of classes, a 7% decline from 2023 and a 35% decline since 2020.

The effects of the now going on four-year systematic and intentional dissolution of the College’s liberal arts programs by four successive college presidents? Thus far, at least, the campus transformation appears to be having the opposite of its intended effect. No real surprise there.

Who wants to attend a four-year public comprehensive college where you can’t study art history, communication, French, dance, philosophy, physics, Spanish, or theatre, when one can just as easily attend another four-year public college that does? You know, a real comprehensive college.    

Many of the faculty who started back to teaching this week know they won’t be back in a semester or two, others will just toil under the threats, as most faculty have been toiling for four years now.

Nevertheless, most of my colleagues will do what is best for their students regardless of their own personal situation.

This is because they are mostly professionals who mostly recognize the importance of a liberal arts education for life and for citizenship. Partly because of that, teachers will teach, and try to teach well, regardless of how you treat them (yes, Gillian Welch, everything is free now).

Administrators have known and taken advantage of this for years. It makes us easy to manipulate, as the narrative at SUNY Potsdam clearly illustrates.

While I do not look forward to returning daily to my office across the hall from my excellent yet terminated colleague, I do look forward to a semester of helping students learn how to think: about their lives, their careers, and their role as citizens.

It seems to me we need more, not less of that kind of thinking. Silly me.

David C.K. Curry
Professor of Philosophy
SUNY Potsdam