I wonder if this is part of the upshot of PSU eliminating the School of Extended Studies (who ran Summer Session the past several years) and moving Summer School under new jurisdiction. It's obviously working brilliantly this year.

It'll be interesting to see if this is what students can expect out of PSU in the foreseeable future. My bet is that it will. As always, a potentially great urban, flexible university . . . with counter-intuitive aspirations to be a residential research institution.

These cuts in Biology have also affected grad students who were given teaching assistant (TA) positions for the lab components of courses that have been cut. Most grad students are able to focus on their research during the academic year by teaching in exchange for tuition remission and a small stipend. There are already far fewer summer teaching opportunities than there are during the regular academic year, so they're not guaranteed, but several students had been told they had a teaching position for the summer only to have the course cut two weeks before it was due to begin. This leaves people scrambling to find outside income for the summer on incredibly short notice. The cuts are coming from the office of the dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, and also appear to be occurring in the Chemistry and Geology departments.

Cutting summer courses can also jeopardize students who need only one or two classes to complete their degree, and have been accepted into graduate programs in the fall, conditional upon completion of their undergraduate credits over the summer.

The logic is unfathomable, and the dean seems to have forgotten who the consumers are in higher education.

This is just another in a string of actions that directly compromise the educational mission of PSU.

I'll believe they are in real financial hardship when they stop hiring Deans and Directors of Sustainability and Diversity and stop building ridiculously expensive new building on the south waterfront--what are they going to use the buildings for? I'm guessing they won't be able to afford to, you know, actually teach people.

If they continue following their current path, PSU will become a set of sleek buildings where a bunch of administrators congratulate each other for talking about nebulous feel-good ideas like sustainability, and very little actual research or education gets done.

PSU could save a lot more money by eliminating much of its bloated administration.

The Mercury needs to look into the South Waterfront project. Talk about PSU mismanaging their money.