With the budget pressure on public and private schools, there are a stream of stories about budget cuts at colleges and universities. One of the stories that stood out was Western Illinois’s decision to cut four degree programs. Aside from the usual protest, it was surprising how small these departments that were cut are. The article is as follows:
So when it is acceptable to cut a program? How small can a department be and still be viable?
It disturbs me a little that they are cutting Philosophy, imo, one of the cornerstones of a liberal arts education. I feel like a public university should at the very least, offer the “basics” (of which I consider Philosophy to be).
The others are more “niche” areas, imo - I think they’re important, but I can see where a smaller university or college may not have the resources to offer them.
But Philosophy? That’s just kind of sad, whether or not they have only 17 majors… Just my humble opinion…
It may depend on how well endowed/funded the school is.
Another example of a basic liberal arts subject: Physics major degree programs are being cut at many schools, due to lack of students. Physics faculty may not be too enthusiastic about being relegated to a service department limited to offering courses for students not majoring in physics (biology majors, pre-meds, engineering majors).
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/10/03/departments-under-threat-few-majors-physicists-say-value-isnt-reflected-numbers
However, more specialized majors might be eliminated due to lack of interest without too many people noticing. For example, Berkeley used to have mineral engineering and naval architecture, and Stanford used to have petroleum engineering.
In some cases, a major leading to a licensed profession may be eliminated at the undergraduate level if the licensing requirements change. An example is occupational therapy, where the entry level degree prerequisite for licensing was changed from bachelor’s to masters.
Interdisciplinary majors may also be eliminated without eliminating any departments or faculty.
Oberlin had a communications department many years before I arrived there in the mid-late '90s. Ended up getting eliminated and the tenured faculty ended up getting scattered into various department including some which was a bit odd like CS. He ended up teaching CS courses geared for non-majors or those who were interested mainly in web development/light programming*.
Several universities including Ivies such as Harvard and Columbia closed down their Geography departments during the '50s and '60s.
NYU closed down their engineering school sometime in the '60s. Most of their engineering faculty ended up at Brooklyn Polytechnic** or Manhattan College’s school of engineering which a former supervisor attended on a full-ride after turning down a partial-ride to Columbia SEAS.
** Everything here came full circle when Brooklyn Polytechnic ended up merging with NYU to become NYU Poly.
A few years ago, SUNY Geneseo eliminated three majors: computer science, communicative disorders, and sciences and studio art.
http://www.geneseo.edu/news_events/suny-geneseo-announces-strategic-measures-confront-ongoing-state-budget-challenge
I went to college in Fairbanks, Alaska. It currently has about 5000 full-time undergraduate students. The state is mostly dependent on oil revenues, and with the drop in oil prices and the North Slope producing less and less each year, the university is being forced to drastically cut its programs. Engineering Management and Science Management were discontinued. It’s also merging a lot of programs.
I was stunned to find out that the Philosophy major was being dropped. How can you have a university without Philosophy? It turned out they were only averaging three graduates a year. They’re currently using the term “suspended” rather than dropped or discontinued.
While graduate-level Physics is very strong at the school, they’ve been talking about dropping the undergraduate Physics degree for years because there were only a few students in the major. I vaguely recall that one year it graduated two people. They’d still be teaching undergraduate Physics - just no Physics major. I guess the idea of a university not offering undergraduate Physics degrees was too incomprehensible even for school administrators because the program is still chugging along.
It’s worth pointing out that NYU has an engineering program currently. NYU took over the University of the City of New York School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, located in Brooklyn. The school is well regarded and the outcomes of the students seems to be very good. The experience of that campus, compared with the NYU campus in lower Manhattan, is different, of course. More men than women attend NYU Poly, for example. Brooklyn is nice and has its own inventive character as a borough, but it has a different feel from Manhattan’s.
???NYU’s engineering school had been Polytechnic University in Brooklyn.
Corrected. There’s a complicated history, but basically NYU seems to have cut one program and then picked up another. That’s the point I was making. The other person said that NYU had gotten rid of it’s ;program because of budget. That was part of the story. The other part was what I was attempting to add, which is that NYU then picked up the current program and it’s a good one and doing fine. Just so that people won’t overlook NYU for engineering, thinking it no longer has a program. That’s all.
Isn’t the NYU engineering story something like this:
a. NYU engineering separated from NYU and merged with Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.
b. Years later, NYU began acquiring Polytechnic University (formerly PIB and PINY), which was known during the pre-merger as Polytechnic Institute of NYU.
c. After the full merger, the name was NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering.
d. After a large donation, the name was NYU Tandon School of Engineering.
I am sure some LACs that maintain philosophy departments would love to see 17 philosophy majors. According to the NCES statistics, Williams graduated four primary philosophy majors last year.
Western Illinois, however, graduated only two. Its conversion rate on the 17 majors may not be high, or most of them may be majoring in other things as well. And Western Illinois seems to have a large-ish general humanities major that can probably absorb its philosophy offerings.
That’s basically what I said if one reads my full post including the starred footnotes.
Sometime in the late '60s
a. NYU engineering separated from NYU and merged with Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.
Some of the former NYU engineering faculty also decamped to Manhattan College’s School of Engineering. My former supervisor who was an engineering major there found many of his enginieering Profs formerly taught at NYU’s School of Engineering.
I’d say decades later as this really started within the last 15 or so years.
b. Years later, NYU began acquiring Polytechnic University (formerly PIB and PINY), which was known during the pre-merger as Polytechnic Institute of NYU.
Only within the last couple of years:
c. After the full merger, the name was NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering.
Last year:
d. After a large donation, the name was NYU Tandon School of Engineering.