Whether because of financial difficulties, sagging enrollments or a desire to align their curricula with shifting student demands, more colleges and universities are purging academic programs, with those in the humanities and arts often the hardest hit.
The past few days have seen the large-scale closure or sunsetting of hundreds of academic programs at the public universities in Indiana, and yesterday Syracuse university announced it would consolidate, end, or pause almost 100 of its undergraduate and graduate programs. Those announcements add to the almost weekly news of another college or university eliminating large numbers of academic degree programs.
Indiana’s Statewide Review
On April 1, the Indiana Commission for Higher Educationconcluded a review of degree programs in cooperation with all of its state institutions. Of the approximately 2,300 degree programs offered by those institutions, more than 1,000 fell below the following statutory thresholds, based on a rolling three-year average:
- 10 graduates for an associate degree
- 15 graduates for a bachelor’s degree
- 7 graduates for a master’s degree
- 3 graduates for an educational specialist degree or a doctorate
Collectively, the 1,000 flagged degree programs served about 4% of all Indiana public higher education graduates. A complete list of the affected programs can be found here.