What's happening at UChicago?

[Whippoorwill]

Just wondering if anyone knows what is going on at UChicago. It seems like the administration is in flux and that might be(?) impacting students. Anyone on the ground have any thoughts on this? The op-ed in The Maroon slamming the div school is kind of concerning. I deferred admission last year with the intention of heading there this fall. I would love to know what people think/have heard.

 

Some links:

https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2018/4/6/nirenberg-become-interim-divinity-school-dean/

https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2018/3/18/divinity-school-dean-zoloth-step-take-new-role/

https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2018/5/18/uchi-div-must-openly-confront-challenges/

 

[xypathos]

It's the same challenges that Yale, Harvard, Vandy, Duke, and other top tier schools are facing which ultimately comes down to money.

1) Most divinity schools are in the red (spending more than they're bringing in). This is also largely true of Religion Departments. Now, most of them have fairly healthy endowments where they're drawing out 4-5% annually to operate the school. The big problem is that they're not bringing in enough revenue (tuition) to cover those expenses so they're rarely able to put money back. Short term this isn't a big problem but they've essentially resulted to borrowing against themselves and are eating themselves to death. Some schools, notably Duke and Vandy try to counter this by having incoming classes of 70-100+ students but then you need staff and faculty to cover this.

2) Faculty and PhD students in the humanities simply don't land the kind of grants that STEM fields do. A lot of humanities work is funded by the interest generated from these invested STEM funds. While these schools understand the value of a liberal arts education and will continue to support it, it's getting harder to justify it from a budget perspective when the Board of Trustees come knocking.

3) All of the top schools are simply producing more PhD students than there are positions available for them + faculty are staying in their cushy tenured jobs longer and longer.

4) M* alumni and most/all of the PhD graduates from Div Schools won't see the kind of lifetime earnings that a STEM graduate will. So, less money to give back to the school and often students attach this to the school, which they do share some of this blame, but it's also a simple fact of the job market.

 

Chicago's Divinity School has also had internal strife by minority students that feel unsupported, subject to passive aggressive attacks by faculty and fellow students, etc. This is a rampant concern from probably every mainline divinity school, certainly every single one that I've visited.

[marXian]

Honestly the thing that put the administration over the edge was outgoing Dean Zoloth's very public fight with the Div School coffee shop, Grounds of Being, over their lease agreement with the university. In short, she wanted to charge them exponentially more in rent than they could have reasonably paid as a means of moving toward closing the deficit that xypathos describes. She chose the wrong hill to die on. Alumni got involved. It was unnecessarily ugly. I will say though that the change in leadership for the Div School is very very good news for students ultimately. PM me if you want to hear more.

[dr. t]

David is a weird choice, though, isn't he?

[Whippoorwill]

On 5/22/2018 at 11:22 AM, marXian said:

Honestly the thing that put the administration over the edge was outgoing Dean Zoloth's very public fight with the Div School coffee shop, Grounds of Being, over their lease agreement with the university. In short, she wanted to charge them exponentially more in rent than they could have reasonably paid as a means of moving toward closing the deficit that xypathos describes. She chose the wrong hill to die on. Alumni got involved. It was unnecessarily ugly. I will say though that the change in leadership for the Div School is very very good news for students ultimately. PM me if you want to hear more.

I'm glad to hear that people think it will be a positive change. I had heard about the coffee shop and to me it seemed like a weird way to try to close a budget gap as a new dean. 

 

On 5/24/2018 at 11:14 AM, telkanuru said:

David is a weird choice, though, isn't he?

Yeah, I also thought that- it seems like the University is getting a bit...closer?

 

Thanks to all three of you for the replies!

[rheya19]

I have a few friends who got their PhDs at UC's Div School. There are serious leadership problems there right now that go beyond these articles, though the Mdiv program is still doing pretty well. If you have any other options for grad school, I'd choose one of those. PM for details, if you want. 

[ParablesUnheard]

I’ve had brief conversations with professors in the ANE Ph.D. Department. Definitely less than satisfactory, their unprofessionalism coupled with a pretentious attitude is something I personally will not find good working with.