Credit: Wikimedia Commons

A report has just been released by a group called CLA 2015 (downloadable pdf available here).

An excellent article has appeared in the Star-Tribune that summarizes the situation:

Our problems have also been duly noted in both the Chronicle of Higher Education: U. of Minnesota's Largest College Pleads for Resources, Plans for Downsizing and Inside Higher Education: Radical Ideas Considered for Arts and Sciences at Minnesota

So what is this all about?

Simply put, the College of Liberal Arts has been starved financially over the past three years. Convincing data is presented that of all the Colleges at the University they have been hit the hardest. And this college graduates about half of the undergrads at the U.

They are not really in a situation to do much about this, other than cut, and try to do it in the most sensible way. They do not have the ability to do much about the financial situation because their hands are tied by a feudal financial system as outined in the 2015 report:

The 2015 committee is to be congratulated for doing an excellent job of laying out our problems. Would that the administration of the University of Minnesota had done something like this a long time ago. As usual, this problem comes down to priorities and money. That things in CLA - our crown jewel - have deteriorated to this is a sad commentary on the state of our university.

The report is an excellent illustration of what people other than those in Morrill Hall can do. As Mark Yudof put it long ago: