Talk:Emporia State University

User box

This user attends or attended
EMPORIA STATE UNIVERSITY.
I'm A Hornet.

Here is the user box for those who are an alum or current student. The code is {{User Emporia State University}}. Corkythehornetfan^(talk) 21:45, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

News

"Kansas universities demolishing old buildings to save millions on deferred maintenance"; Dec 28, 2023; KAKE tv. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 06:33, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Overly detailed and promotional material about recent tuition and fees changes

Fourmile45 is insisting that this article include the following paragraph:

As a result of the restructuring efforts, gains in efficiencies, and cost savings; in 2024 ESU was able to submit a proposal to the Kansas Board of Regents [KBOR] to reduce tuition and fees – making college education more affordable to students in Kansas. ESU’s response to the KBOR’s strategic principle of affordability was approved, resulting in a “net decrease in tuition and fees at Emporia State University.” Moreover, in an open letter President Hush announced ESU has rolled out a broad range of scholarship programs to further boost the affordability of a college education. In line with these affordability initiatives, ESU has entered into cooperative agreements with other universities, such as an “articulation agreement in which undergraduates at ESU can shorten the time to complete their bachelor’s and law degrees by taking law classes at Washburn Law during their senior year.”

Grammatical issues aside, this paragraph is both unnecessarily detailed and clearly promotional. We simply do need or want this level of detail in an encyclopedia article that is supposed to summarize the entire history, resources, organization, accomplishments, and challenges of a university that is over 160 years old. Moreover, we are not here to ensure that the university is "attractive to potential students."

I attempted to summarize this information in a much more concise and neutral manner:

The university implemented a "net decrease in tuition and fees" in 2024.

Fourmile45, what is your objection to this more concise and neutral summary? ElKevbo (talk) 03:54, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

I am sorry my information was insufficiently concise. The university has gone through a painful restructuring in which ~30 faculty in low-enrollment majors were laid-off. Someone included a long paragraph in the "Present University" section that goes into great detail about this. At one point, someone had also written in this section that the university was sanctioned by the AAUP. I verified on March 11, 2024, that ESU was not on the sanctioned list.

My point is that there is a very long discussion of these layoffs, with negative implications for ESU. It would be nice to be able to present the other side of the story in more than a sentence or two. And there have been some positive developments that have come from this pain. A positive example is the new articulation agreements. One example involves students being able to apply law classes from Washburn University (~45 miles away) toward their undergraduate degrees during their senior year.

I hope that you will allow me the opportunity to offset some of the negative material in the "Present University" section with positive material. For example, there is an unsupported assertion that the School of Education is no longer of high-quality. Enrollment declines have been positioned as an indication of the contributor's assertion that the School of Education is no longer of high quality. The contributor fails to acknowledge that enrollment declines in traditional teacher preparation programs have occurred across universities and across the U.S> over the past decade, reaching a low point in 2020 (Patricia Saenz-Armstrong, Aug. 23, 2023; National Council on Teacher Quality.) The good news is that such enrollments (in Kansas) have increased since then. There is also a negative discussion about the elimination of the debate team. Efficient allocation of resources has become critical at ESU and while the debate program had success, the program involved only a few students and was eliminated. Also, there is a long discussion about the elimination of the child-care services on campus. My research indicates that these university-sponsorship of such services is declining, with only 49% of universities providing them now. I would like to refute the negative implication that ESU is an outliner in this regard.

Back several months ago, one of messages you forwarded to me noted that someone had added quite a bit of negative information about ESU (December 25, 2023). You rightly were concerned as to why there were several content inputs from me. As you recall, there was a large amount of negative information dumped onto ESU's page on Christmas Day. It takes some space tell the other side of the story and I hope that you will me to do so.

Thank you for allowing me to respond. Fourmile45 (talk) 06:03, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your quick reply.

We do not seek to present a "false balance" in our encyclopedia articles where each issue or controversy is represented by two or more sides. It may be the case that some of the material currently in the article needs to be trimmed, tightened, or outright removed but those decisions need to be made because of the relative importance of that material and not simply because the material paints the subject in a light that is disagreeable to one or more editors.

We also do not need to uncritically repeat self-promotional information from the subject of this article. And, of course, we cannot include material that is our own original research. ElKevbo (talk) 13:35, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Dear ElKevbo,

Thanks for your guidance. I have inserted a compact presentation of five programmatic and other changes at ESU. They speak to the "Present University."

I have a question for you. Will you allow me to delete a sentence related to enrollment declines? A previous contributor inserted an unreferenced assertion that "Previously, the College of Education had a reputation for quality." This is the sentence that I would like to delete. The contributor has mistakenly inferred that a decline in enrollments reflects a decrease in quality of offerings. Enrollments in schools of education across the country have experienced enrollment declines. I have a comprehensive cite that supports this. It also shows that such enrollments in Kansas have increased since reaching a bottom in the Pandemic in 2020. Fourmile45 (talk) 21:24, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

References