03-12-2021, 06:44 PM
(03-12-2021, 04:56 PM)dfrecore Wrote:(03-12-2021, 12:20 PM)Alpha Wrote:(03-12-2021, 10:16 AM)dfrecore Wrote:Yeah, you're right. A tiny school cutting programs that are allegedly in demand. It makes me think that this school might be on its way out.(03-12-2021, 07:45 AM)Alpha Wrote:(03-10-2021, 10:20 AM)ss20ts Wrote:
It's not even a degree. It's a minor. This is a liberal arts school. They have a lot of programs under review now because they will have 1 or 2 students in the program. Why do you have a program for so few students? They don't have business degrees, IT degrees, etc. In good times they have about 2500 students. Now it's around 2000. I have no idea how they have survived having so many programs with a handful of students. I can't imagine they're the only college like this either. With Ithaca College dropping 20 programs, you can see how much can really be trimmed away at many colleges.
Here's another example of a university cutting programs except this time it's a group of STEM programs that are being eliminated.
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktake...5-programs
The school only offers 13 majors in total and 12 of those are STEM - so they HAVE to cut STEM majors if they cut anything. And they only have 77 students, more than half of whom are seniors in the 5 majors they're cutting. So basically they don't have students wanting those majors. They SHOULD be cutting them.
Or as they said, they're focusing on the degrees with the most students completing them. I'm not sure what the deal is, this is the most perfectly natural thing in the world. Schools should be looking at and getting rid of degrees all the time. Every year. Otherwise, they WILL go away because they're offering things nobody wants.
I think that schools/regions could cooperate so that not every school is duplicating the programs of the other schools. There may not be enough interested students to support an Art History department at every school but systems could be developed to insure that it's an available option somewhere in the system. That's one reason why I like state university systems. They can manage this more easily. Schools might become more specialized in this way, attract the best instructors and have a better chance of developing scholarly expertise within their respective areas. I think you could pay attention to shifting demand and preserve low demand academic areas at the same time.