UConn May Cut Dozens of Majors
“It is anticipated that the end result for the review of low-completion programs will result in the closure of some programs”
Be sure to read to the bottom of this to see which programs are at risk.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports:
Another Public Flagship May Cut Dozens of Majors
What’s New
Faculty members at the University of Connecticut worry that dozens of majors could face elimination as part of a review of low-enrollment programs — a process that began amid a significant budget deficit.
The Details
Christopher Vials, an English professor at UConn’s flagship campus in Storrs and president of its American Association of University Professors chapter, said 70 majors were identified as having failed to meet a threshold of 100 student completions over the last five years.
Faculty members found out about the review in May when the provost’s office asked departments with low-enrollment programs to complete an evaluation report that Vials characterized as tasking them to “justify their continued existence.”
These reports were submitted to the deans of each respective school and college, who have until November 1 to decide whether to recommend the closure or suspension of each program. They also must provide a deadline for when they’ll decide to close or continue — with adjustments — a suspended program. Their recommendations are expected to be presented before the Board of Trustees on December 11, according to Stephanie Reitz, a university spokesperson.
“It is anticipated that the end result for the review of low-completion programs will result in the closure of some programs,” Anne D’alleva, the provost, and Gladis Kersaint, the vice provost for academic affairs, wrote in a memo to all academic deans.
Majors like philosophy, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, and animal science are on the chopping block. With the exception of Spanish, every program within the university’s literatures, cultures, and languages department is under review. The department, which houses nine majors, is seemingly divided on its next step, as it postponed a vote on Wednesday on whether it should move forward with the provost’s review or preemptively merge its majors into one or two programs, Vials said.
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Comments
Our university completed a review and announced the elimination of certain degree programs. The Chancellor and Deans held an open forum. Lots of crosses carried in there. Anyway, part of the reason this is happening is the expense of faculty (salary, benefits, etc.) combined with a shrinking pool of students. Push finally came to shove. Carrying all those faculty salaries for so few students, well, reality sets in despite all the speech-making and rainbow flag waving. Faculty in programs with more demand are quietly glad to drop the dead weight. Markets work, despite the outward devotion to Marxism.
Supply?
Demand?
Have you met?
Let me introduce you.
This is the second major public — the first being U. West Va., to take this step (a lot of smaller public unis have done the same). It’s a part of the great sorting out in higher ed.
As Jonathan Swift pointed out, professors love to ride their hobby horses, that is, their niche specialties, like Caribbean studies, or Shakespeare authorship studies, or environmental justice studies, but in the end students want jobs and these are dead-end degrees in that respect. As the previous poster mentions, the professors want to supply their hobby horses but no one demands a major in the literature of baseball or French film studies. Even the sacred cow of gender studies is losing enrollment. I worked for a while in a women’s college and the women’s studies degree was a perennial life support.
At the last four institutions I worked, the most popular majors were business and nursing. Jobs, baby … jobs.
“Which college degrees have best Return On Investment?”
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/which-college-degrees-have-best-return-investment
It is really strange to me how we are all told that degrees in Gender Studies, lesbian poetry of the 20th century and the like are crucial for the future. Yet every time I see a article about programs being closed it is always these programs that are being eliminated.
It’s almost like these degrees are useless and have no place in the real world……strange.
And society will be all the better after these programs are eliminated