Roughly 240 undergraduate, doctoral, master’s and graduate certificate programs — more than half of UConn’s academic offerings — could be on the university’s chopping block after meeting the provost’s office criteria for a low enrollment program.
More majors are at risk of being slashed from the University of Connecticut’s roster than those that have been spared from the administration’s sweeping review of low enrollment programs, a Courant analysis of newly released degree completion data has found.
The release of the degree completion data came as university representatives offered more insight into how the review will unfold, but faculty and students say they are still skeptical of the processes’ aims and possible outcomes.
In a statement to the Courant Friday, University of Connecticut Spokesperson Stephanie Reitz criticized “Sweeping generalizations that suggest large numbers of majors are in jeopardy,” describing them as “Not an accurate portrayal of the process.”
News of potential cuts broke last week as union leaders raised concerns about 70 undergraduate majors that are at risk of consolidation or closure because they failed to reach a threshold of 100 student completions over the last five years. Among those slated for review include special education, philosophy, athletic training, environmental studies, art, music, social work, geoscience, engineering physics, women’s gender and sexuality studies, Africana studies, and multiple languages.
University deans and their academic units have until Friday to decide whether they will recommend the suspension, closure, consolidation or continuation of these programs.
In a message to the UConn community this week, Provost and Executive Vice President Anne D’Alleva and Dean of Students Fany Hannon assured students that the university would “create detailed plans to allow current students to complete their degrees” if a “program stops enrolling, closes, or undergoes extensive modification.”
While university leaders have said from the outset that many low-enrollment majors will not be eliminated, some professors said the looming Nov. 1 deadline has left them feeling pressured to make decisions that could jeopardize the strength of their departments out of fear that their programs will be cut through the review process.
On Thursday, Andrea Celli, an associate professor of Italian literature and cultural studies, said faculty from the Literatures, Cultures and Languages Department voted to take their chances and move forward with the review after every program offered by the department, except Spanish, was flagged by the provost’s office. Celli said his department head had advocated for merging the low-enrollment majors as “a way to avoid the worst.”
In a statement to the Courant Friday, Reitz said the “review’s scope is limited, objective, and data-based.”
“It is the kind of organizational work that any institution must undertake to ensure its offerings are valuable, relevant, and targeted to their students’ current and future goals,” Reitz said.
Christopher Vials, the president of the UConn Chapter of the American Association of University Professors, disagrees.
Vials said he has participated in annual reviews before, but he said the evaluation form that all low-enrollment programs must complete if they wish to continue is “unprecedented.”
“I have no faith given what I’ve seen so far … that this is really some kind of meritocratic process whereby legitimately failing programs are cut and legitimately successful programs are spared,” Vials said. “None of us, I don’t think, have a problem with reviews and accountability. But that high stakes form, which doesn’t seem to be all that well thought out, which doesn’t seem to capture all that many dimensions of what these programs do — that’s unprecedented and it’s just strange.”
After meeting twice with upper administration, Vials said he walked away “more concerned that they were going to be cutting majors with popular classes” and that the university’s review would lack safeguards to prevent “legitimately productive and interesting and useful programs (from) being cut.”
While job cuts do not appear to be on the table right now, Vials said the union is “concerned that this could be the first step towards that.”
Vials said he believes UConn “will be cutting some programs and probably more programs than we’ve ever seen before.”
“I know it’s not all of the programs on the list,” Vials said. “But is it five, is it 30? Is it 70? I’m not sure.”
Under review
At least 240 programs at UConn are considered low enrollment, based on the number of degrees that the university has conferred within each major. For undergraduate programs, the threshold is 100 degrees in five years. The threshold for master’s programs is 50. The threshold for graduate certificate programs is 25 and the threshold for doctoral programs is 10 degrees conferred.
UConn currently offers more than 130 undergraduate majors. The average completion rate for these programs is 228 degrees conferred in five years. However, this figure is inflated by large majors like biological sciences, finance, allied health sciences, nursing, communication, physiological sciences and economics which have had more than 1,000 — and in the case of the physiological sciences and economics, more than 2,000 — students complete majors in the programs over the last five years.
As a result, nearly 75% of undergraduate programs fall below the 228-degree completion average, and approximately 53% fall below the 100-completion threshold selected for the provost’s review.
Similar can be said for UConn graduate programs where more than 1,000 students have completed master’s degrees in business analytics and project management and business administration in the last five years, but roughly 85% of programs fall below the average completion rate of 90 degrees conferred in five years, and 68% fall below the 50 completion threshold selected for the provost’s review.
In total, 70 undergraduate programs and roughly 29 doctoral, 71 master’s and 73 graduate certificate meet the criteria for the provost’s low-enrollment review.
“Across all levels of undergraduate and graduate programs, more than 90% of completions are in programs that are above the threshold set for review,” Reitz said, noting that less than 9% of undergraduate degrees completions occur in majors that met the threshold for the provost’s low-enrollment review.
When asked how the university selected the low-enrollment thresholds, Reitz said “The completion threshold signals the approximate enrollment/completion rates generally expected for a midsize program.”
“We entered this process without assumptions or pre-judgments about any specific programs and so used one threshold number for each type of degree. In this context, it’s important to understand the completion threshold as a starting point for discussion, not as a cutoff point,” Reitz said.
“There is a wide range of contextual information that relates to whether the low numbers are the right size for the program, and whether the program is meeting the mission of UConn and the needs of students,” Reitz added. “UConn is going through an evaluation process to be confident in the size and shape of the program portfolio.”
In UConn’s statement to the Courant, Reitz said there is “a difference between a program that is intentionally small and one that is underenrolled.”
Reitz said the university recognizes that some “programs are intentionally small to support the pedagogy and required certifications – such as some specialized School of Education programs paired with other majors.” Reitz said those programs “will be preserved as such.”
In cases where programs fall below the completion threshold for “justifiable reason(s)” — which Reitz cites as “accreditation standards, available facilities/faculty capacity, and/or disciplinary pedagogy” — Reitz said the result of the review “in many cases … will be that the programs will continue as they were before.”
Reitz explained that other majors that made the university’s low-enrollment list “were sunset in previous years, but not yet taken off the books.”
Reitz said “there is no prescribed outcome for programs that fall below the threshold.”
Reitz said some programs may “Revise curriculum to make it more appealing to students/aligned with the needs of employers, or a choice may be made to terminate a program or combine it with others.”
Other programs may try new initiatives aimed at boosting enrollment such as creating an early college experience course for high school students, and expanding course offerings in the university’s common curriculum, Reitz said.
Reitz said the idea that the review process would impact UConn’s rankings “Is not based in fact.”
“None of the ratings organizations make their judgments based on the number of majors offered and in fact, UConn currently offers more majors than most of the top-ranked institutions,” Reitz said. “What’s important is the strength of student outcomes.”
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