Following a delay caused by disputes between faculty and administrators over data collection methods, the process to review under-performing academic programs is back on track, with results expected in March.
A Faculty Senate subcommittee was tasked with reviewing programs with five or fewer graduates over a period of three years. The process was initially scheduled to be completed by Dec. 31, but the process hit a snag when administrators and the committee had disagreements over how to count the graduates. The process resumed in January.
According to Provost and Vice-President for Academic Affairs John Wright, the five-graduates number was mandated by the University of Maine System Board of Trustees. “Low enrollment programs are not cost effective,” Wright said. “And as a result of them being low enrolled programs, it shows a lack of interest from students.”
In order to give a more accurate view, the committee felt it was necessary to have the specific financial data for each program and the delay was caused by the difficulty in compiling this information according to committee member Susan Feiner, a professor of economics and women and gender studies.
The committee was initially only allowed to collect data from the new Office of Institutional Research, according to Faculty Senate Chair Jeannine Uzzi, an associate professor of classics. Uzzi said this was problematic because the office was overwhelmed by requests for data from individual programs, and did not necessarily have up to date, reliable information.
Another problem, according to Feiner, was that the cost and the revenue that a program brought in were not catalogued in the same place. The dean allocates money to a given program, but student tuition is paid to the University of Maine system. Feiner said bringing all these data together proved difficult and time consuming.
According to Feiner there seemed to be some confusion about what exactly a degree and a program are, which led to problems with the interpretation of numbers or graduates. “You don’t get a degree in educational counseling, you get a degree in education, so the program in educational counseling never graduates anybody” she said. Feiner said failure to grasp this had caused faulty assumptions about the data.
Not all faculty are convinced that programs should be eliminated solely with size in mind. “The great thing about reviewing small programs is that you can learn some principles about programs and what they bring to this institution” said associate professor of biology Dave Champlin, another committee member.
Most of the hostility has focused on the general guidelines. “Many programs with few graduates also have few faculty. If you have a faculty of three, you can’t expect to have hundreds of graduates” said Uzzi. She also criticized what she called the “magic number mentality” concerning the five-graduate number.
Uzzi said committee should finish its analysis and have its findings presented to the Faculty Senate and the provost by the end of February. These will give him recommendations for his final decision. “We would tell him to consider the cost of that program versus the service of that program to the poor, the mission of the university and the needs of local business and the state” Uzzi said.
After this recommendation the provost will decide to maintain each given program as it is, invest more in it, or suspend admission. If he chooses the third option the program will either be revamped in a different way, or the University will spend several years making sure all the current students in that program graduate before finally ending it.