A department has merged. A visual facility has been cut. A library is closing.

Across the pond, universities throughout the United Kingdom have either closed departments or are considering closing them due to a lack of funding.

Still, so few people get it. Democrats use the stimulus as an excuse to fund pet projects which will not impact the economy until after the recession. Republicans blindly call for tax cuts without asking whether consumers will spend the money to stimulate the economy or will deposit it in banks too afraid to lend it.

Luckily, Cornell has received an influx of $2.2 million … to study grapes. Uh, does Cornell perhaps have more important priorities? If any part of that grant money could pay for expenses Cornell currently covers, then Cornell should force the grape researchers to foot the bill.

If Cornell wants to weather this recession, it needs to do a better job with money than the federal government. Here the University faces great challenges. Some items, such as Milstein Hall, will be essential regardless of the economic climate, yet the University must fund these priorities without doing too much damage elsewhere.

Despite my reservations about the merging of theoretical and applied mechanics departments, I recognized that it may ultimately be necessary. However, with the announced closing of the Physical Sciences Library, I believe that the sciences have been hit hard enough. I have not seen a similar level of sacrifice from the humanities.

I will admit as an engineer I may be a little biased. A good summary of my bias could be found in xkcd comic 451, Impostor, where our impostor can only impersonate an engineering grad for 48 seconds but still has not been caught as a fake literary critic eight papers and two books later.

Now at the same time, given my background in speech and debate and my interest in politics and current events, you could not accuse me of failing to recognize the value of the humanities. Yet much like I will never understand the overuse of nuclear war arguments and bio-power kritiks in policy debate, I will never understand the excesses of the “publish or perish” regime.

Let me put this in perspective. At Edinburgh, the library faced an unexpected shortfall of £200,000 simply because exchange rates affected the price of its academic journals. I imagine Cornell, also a high-profile research institution with expansive library resources, would possess a similar level of journals. But how many publications does it actually need?

According to a recent report by the American Enterprise Institute, in language and literature alone, “over the past five decades, their collective productivity has risen from 13,000 to 72,000 publications per year.” Similar results are discovered for other areas of the humanities, to the point where academic colleagues cannot keep up with the copious amount of publications.

Yet despite the skyrocketing supply-side pressures, with an entire book as well as a few articles now an unwritten baseline for tenure candidates, the AEI reports quotes directors of Harvard and Yale University Press on how the market for scholarly work has bottomed out. And this was before the recession hit.

So while some professors spend their free time writing books which will have a smaller audience than their large lecture classes, both the AEI report and a corresponding article from Inside Higher Ed have discussed a parallel negative trend in student engagement. And with Skorton discussing a reduction in the number of teaching assistants being hired, this problem will only become more acute. Cornell could do so much more with so much less if it would take the lead in fighting this trend.

It is not a fight against Shakespeare; it is merely an observation that 569 scholarly pieces on Shakespeare in 2007 is unnecessary after the 21,674 pieces produced in the previous 27 years.

Cornell has made cuts drawing the ire of students, professors and Sun editorials. I have no idea how one could justify more tough cuts without first addressing the excesses of academia. Perhaps “publish and perish” would be a more appropriate term …

Despite the importance of research to Cornell, and the opportunities professors get and should take to serve as keynote speakers to major conferences, research cannot be a sacred cow, especially when research harms the University’s teaching mission so much yet contributes so little to academia. And beyond that, we must remember that Cornell is ultimately an institute of teaching and research, not an institution of social change.

In the realm of sustainability, of course, Cornell should find ways to save both money and the environment. Despite my concerns about a few environmentalists imposing their will on many through tray-less dining, it does reduce the food consumed, the water used to wash dishes and ultimately the budget. But now is not the time to pursue loftier goals like carbon neutrality. Sustainability cannot become a buzzword used to obtain more attention and more funding.

For diversity, the University should definitely continue to support some initiatives, such as Breaking Bread, a program which pairs together groups that would rarely interact otherwise. However, research highlighting the benefits of interactions between multiple, diverse groups also often warns about the negative effects of groups defined by a single race or ethnicity. One must wonder why Ujamaa and the Latino Living Center have not been converted yet to general-purpose housing with the University admitting 100 more freshmen and with so many people already left only with program houses in the housing lottery. This will only force more people into places like Ujamaa, and Ujamaa residents have in one case shunned a fellow resident for not choosing voluntarily to live in Ujamaa.

With more drastic cuts on the horizon, we cannot afford to set our ambitions too high. While everyone can complain how they need more attention, everything has an opportunity cost — the cost of not being able to fund something else instead. If Cornell’s reputation starts to suffer, it just will not cut it to drink your worries away (not that I recommend that) with finer wine thanks to our cutting-edge grape research.

Mike Wacker can be reached at mwacker@cornellsun.com.