Academic program reviews are a standard process administrators use to ensure course offerings are aligning with their university’s mission and student needs. In recent years, universities across the US have more frequently been using APRs as a means to address growing financial pressures.
Chancellors across institutions in North Carolina – from East Carolina University, UNC Asheville, to UNC Greensboro – have eliminated several programs and departments in an attempt to balance yearslong budget deficits.
UNC-Chapel Hill leadership is currently in the midst of a multimillion-dollar budget restructuring, and they have targeted $2 million of that savings to come from “low-performing” academic programs.
“We are evaluating academic programs with low enrollment and waning interest,” university leaders said in a campus message on budget cuts. “This evaluation occurs on an annual basis but must be more rigorous in times like this.”
Provost Magnus Egerstedt said Wednesday that the goal of UNC-Chapel Hill’s APR is to ensure program offerings align with student demand and the state’s workforce needs. He’s previously told faculty that the process is also intended to inform deans on how to think about resources and faculty recruitment.
“I am not shutting anything down as a consequence of this,” Egerstedt said to professors at a July Faculty Executive Committee meeting. “I don’t like to pick winners and losers. Instead, I want to say, ‘here’s the data and here’s how I want to make decisions about resources.’ You adjust yourself accordingly.”
In its APR process, UNC-Chapel Hill leadership reviewed 275 programs and 64 departments overall. Administrators flagged areas that had a 20% or larger decline in awarded degrees or completed student credit hours over a five-year period.
This included 28 programs – from Latin American studies, geological sciences, to health policy and management. As well as 19 departments – from dramatic art, music, to women’s and gender studies.
Only a handful of programs have stopped admitting new students and are up to potentially be “formally discontinued” – digital curation and management, curriculum and instruction, environmental sciences and engineering, and health policy and management.
On the departmental side, several areas are “aligning” their resources to match student demand. This includes undergraduate departments like African, African American, and diaspora studies, history, and Germanic and Slavic languages and literatures; as well as graduate departments like art history, romance studies, and genetics.
Deans’ resource adjustments range from “faculty attrition,” eliminating vacant positions, to reducing tenure/tenure-track faculty.
Egerstedt told trustees on Wednesday that some were surprised at how few programs administrators flagged. He noted that the university is in a “rather unusual situation” where enrollment is growing across a lot of degree programs.
BOT member Marty Kotis, however, said he feels like the academic program review is missing some key data elements.
“In terms of just saying ‘no, we’re good overall’ – there’s always the weakest 10% and there’s always the strongest 10%,” Kotis said. “If you try and always maintain everything out there, you’ll never cut where you’re needed. You have to cut somewhere to make room for something else.”
Kotis said he wants to see the APR process consider all of the dollars that are involved in maintaining programs and departments – from the cost per degree conferred to student earning outcomes.
“I know we’re different from ECU and UNCG in their program review, but those were more dollar-driven,” Kotis continued. “Unless we set a target and we say we’re going to do this, it’s very easy not to ever make a cut. (If) we’re going to show this growth and we need to fund new programs, we’re going to have to find the money from somewhere.”
Egerstedt said he agrees with Kotis that money is a constraint university operations have to live within, but there’s already an implicit money aspect to the APR process.
“I never thought of this (process) as a ‘money-savings’ exercise – I view it as a ‘reinvestment in areas where students are going’ exercise,” Egerstedt said. “That is happening fairly organically, but it would be nice to capture that. And it’s happening because deans know that money follows students on our campus.”
Meanwhile, Egerstedt said he’s also been updating UNC-Chapel Hill’s faculty recruitment process. Now, if deans want to hire new faculty, they must first submit a request to the provost office. This includes tenure and tenure-track faculty hires.
Egerstedt said his office’s approvals will be partially based on how much research funding a faculty member can bring in, instructional needs, and UNC-Chapel Hill strategic directions.
“We have this conversation before we initiate the search, rather than having conversations after a search has happened,” he said. “So that we actually make sure that conversations about directionality happen before we’ve spent time, energy, money, resources pursuing faculty.”
Trustee Ramsey White asked if there would be tenure-track hires in programs or departments mentioned in the academic program review.
“Unless there are very clearly articulated, strategic reasons – then the answer is no,” Egerstedt replied.
UNC-Chapel Hill will also now have a “continuous” academic program review process.
“It will allow us to – year after year – adjust to what is happening not only among students’ interests but also in the broader higher ed landscape,” Egerstedt said.