If not for him, there would be far fewer students from my school who would have stuck with programming. In 2004, we made a facebook group called "Everything I know about C I learned from [insert guy's name]". From what I can tell, the number of former students in this group keeps growing every year. He is beloved by all his current and former students, and I would vehemently protest to the school/department if he ever got cut prematurely for any reason.
The dean also stated several times and faculty must be accepted into this different dept. So it is not clear who which faculty will be allowed to continue research.
Does this really happen? This attitude that if you don't have a PhD you must be stupid is incredibly annoying.
There is a community college in Gainesville called Santa Fe (it's now considered a "college" I guess) but their graphic design program had something like a 95 percent job placement IN THAT FIELD.
The department chair at the time, Sartaj Sahni, responded by cutting teaching funding and letting some of the best teachers go. UF had a few teachers without PhDs, which reduces a university's ranking in US News & World Report. Of course, these teachers were the ones that REALLY cared about teaching, since they didn't have research distractions. These teachers were replaced with postdocs who lack the experience needed to teach at a major institution.
I don't know how you can have a solid program if you slash your best teachers to save research, then slash your research to save teaching. Doesn't make sense.