@lucky18 –
Various sources of information. Some examples:
- IPEDS data at https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/ -- you can look up a school and see how many students are graduating with a particular major each year.
*College website department pages, faculty lists – colleges usually have a web page or section for each department and list their faculty for that department. The title “Professor” usually indicates a tenured faculty member. An “Asssociate” Professor is also generally tenured – whereas an “Assistant” professor is not, and an “Adjunct” Professor, “Instructor” or “Lecturer” would not be tenure track positions. So simply counting up tenured faculty can give a sense of the level of commitment the college or university has toward retaining a major – it’s worth checking the biographical data of faculty as well to get a sense of their age – as if the tenured faculty is nearing retirement age it makes it easier for a college to take steps to eliminate a major or department.
- Some colleges have current course offerings and enrollment numbers easily visible online -- so comparing the classes in department X actually offered with courses listed in the catalog, and looking at current enrollment information can give a sense of whether courses are underenrolled or overenrolled. Also, the course offerings give a sense of the depth of commitment -- if the beginner level classes seem to have a healthy enrollment but intermediate & advance offerings are sparse, that could be a a sign of trouble.
- Colllege publications -- magazines, student newspaper, etc. - may give some insight as to the value that a college places on a specific department. That's more of a serindipidous source of information - maybe there will be information there or not, but when the info does pop up it can be a rich source of information. For example, when my DD was developing a list, there was something of a conflict between students/faculty and administration over the underenrolled department -- the admin. wanted to cut back and eliminate the major, and the students/faculty were protesting with a "save department X" campaign. I dropped that college from the list I was developing based on that info.
While I didn’t choose to do this, I also think an email sent to the department chair is likely to be a direct and useful approach – if the faculty feels they need more students, then they are going be llikely to welcome email from a prospie. It is very rare for faculty to have any direct influence for admissions – but emails to/from the faculty could provide useful fodder for the “why this college” question on the applcation.