By David Golightly
Students have returned from the summer break to find that their College of Arts and Sciences has undergone some drastic changes. Under a plan called “Strategic Reinvestment,” part of University President John W. Shumaker’s Challenge for Excellence, 7 undergraduate and 6 graduate degree programs have been cut for not meeting the minimum graduation guidelines released by Kentucky’s Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE). The programs cut were the Bachelor of Arts degrees in Russian, German, Health Occupations Teacher Education (Bachelor of Science), and Geography, as well as the Master of Arts degrees in German and Theater Arts. Many other programs, such as Interior Design (BS), the School of Music degrees of Performance, Theory & Composition, and History, and the BA and BFA in Theater Arts, were combined into joint degrees with concentrations. The guidelines suggest a minimum average of 12 graduates per year for undergraduate programs, 7 for Masters, and 5 for Ph.D.s, averaged over a three-year period. Across the entire university, about 34 programs have been cut, 17 each in Bachelor and Masters programs.
Students currently majoring in these degree programs will have the opportunity to finish their degrees first, but the majors will no longer be available to new students.
The cuts were made in an attempt to “focus the university’s resources” on programs that have higher graduation rates, or “higher productivity,” and therefore “promote economic development,” according to President Shumaker’s Challenge for Excellence. They ride on the back of proposals by Shumaker to raise tuition, raise minimum class attendance requirements, and, starting in 2003, begin charging a per-credit-hour tuition rate for full-time students above 16 hours (undergraduate) and 12 hours (graduate).
“Technically, we still have a German minor, though it might be hard to do one,” says German professor Dr. Alan Leidner, since he believes that the department will virtually no longer be able to offer courses above the 200 level. The department has, in the past, offered courses in English on topics ranging from Grimms’ fairy tales to culture and politics in the Weimar Republic. Such courses will hardly be a possibility in the future, considering that one of the four German professors has resigned in the face of the cuts, and the senior faculty member is preparing to retire at the end of this year. “[A resigned professor’s] departure this year means that her courses on German film, and the one she taught for the Women’s Program, are a thing of the past,” says Dr. Leidner. “And who knows if we’ll ever be able to attract faculty that good to a department without a German BA.”
Edna Kubala, a U of L German major currently studying in Mainz, Germany, is irate about this decision. In fact, she may not be coming back to U of L to finish her degree: “I think the university is shooting itself in the foot,” she says.
Programs that were suspended have not been the only ones subjected to changes. In the departments of Physics, Fine Arts, Geography, Philosophy, Art History, Anthropology, Humanities, French, Spanish, Nursing, Economics and, at the graduate level, Biology, Higher Education, Foreign Languages Teacher Education, Music Teacher Education, Humanities, Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Criminal Justice, History, Sociology, Political Science, and numerous Medical School programs, departments whose programs fell short have had to submit proposals for meeting the proposed goal within a five-year term, usually involving a restructuring to target less purely theoretical research, instead preferring more immediately “marketable” specializations. In Philosophy, for instance, the focus will in the future be on ethics instead of speculative philosophy. In French and Spanish, the revisions have meant a lifting of the literature requirement, so that students could, in the future, be graduating with B.A.s in French without ever having taken a literature course, said a resigned French teacher who wishes to remain anonymous.
Although the guidelines issued by the CPE were considered the standard for all Kentucky colleges and universities, they are, apparently, meant only as guidelines, a sort of measuring rod to give an ideal, statewide standard and not intended to be understood as state-mandated regulations, at least not yet. One could respond that, in addition to the endowment, raised from $183 million to $492 million during Shumaker’s term of office, as well as tuition hikes and the closing of the School of Allied Health Sciences, the cuts were made in an effort to raise a supplementary bit of revenue, in part to finance faculty & staff salary catch-up raises. However, in the words of Mr. James F. Brennan, newly instated Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, “in terms of money saved, there was very little.” And although other universities in the state have been curtailing “inefficiency” by means of similar cuts, “the University of Louisville has been the most aggressive cutter,” according to a July 17, 2000 article in the Lexington Herald-Leader.
All of this begs the question: Why did the Administration choose to close these departments? Dr. Leidner thinks that, among other factors, “universities are different now. They run according to a business model that pays more attention to efficiency than ever before. They saw a program that was graduating only three B.A.s annually, and to them that looked pathetic.” But how can we pretend to have a strong research university when we subject our departments to streamlining from which they may never recover? Brian Batcheldor, a senior English major, is also concerned: “By losing the German department, we are losing an entire perspective on our literary heritage.”
“Betty” sees a method to the changes going on here. She recounts that, in the summer of 2000, the minimum course enrollment was raised from 15 to 20 for 100- and 200-level classes, and from 10 to 15 for 300- and 400-level classes. Any class not meeting the minimum enrollment, according to Shumaker’s Challenge for Excellence, shall be cancelled, unless an appeal for exception is made by the department and approved by the Dean of the College, a procedure that has only rarely met with success.
This has apparently led to the closure of many classes in traditionally smaller, already at-risk degree programs, especially of the higher-level courses required at the 300- and 400-levels, such as literature and special topics courses. As a result, many majors in these degree programs have been taking longer to graduate, and the annual graduation rate has therefore been sagging. The long-term consequence of this may very well be a gradual marginalization of weaker degree programs, to the point that departments and sections may be willing to make any and all sacrifices in their curriculum to stay alive.
Technically, “the programs eliminations did not mean that any faculty were let go,” says Mr. Brennan. However, “we are slowly redistributing faculty lines as they become vacant through resignation or retirement.” The position of the resigned German professor will be used to “support a program in Chinese in the Fall, 2002,” and, according to him, “Chinese is an area of high student demand,” although the first and only Chinese 121 class in 2000 was closed when no more than 4 students signed up, and was subsequently reopened to allow it to continue.
A press statement prepared by the administration stated that “the curriculum of any great university needs to be dynamic and flexible to the opportunities of the job market and career options of its students. Accordingly, it seems entirely reasonable that we continually develop new and creative programs to offer students,” although the ratio of courses cut to courses added has been 34 to 4. “Similarly, while we need to convey to students the benefits of focused study in various areas of the curriculum, it is the students ultimately who decide which programs are attractive to meet their educational and career needs;” in short, programs that are tailor-made to the academic appetites of students.
