Low-Hanging Fruit? - Kevin Kiley, Inside Higher Ed

When it comes time to cut a university's budget, who stands up for the small department that graduates fewer than 10 majors a year? The answer, it turns out, depends on the department. To help reconcile budget cuts and new policies aimed at producing more graduates prepared for good jobs, the Tennessee Board of Regents on Friday approved a plan by Tennessee State University to eliminate "low producing" programs, notably undergraduate majors in physics and Africana studies. Both programs, along with a bachelor's program in foreign languages, several master's programs, and two education degrees, graduate only a few students each year. The university will go from offering 67 majors to 61, and will consolidate eight schools into seven. Administrators said the reorganization comes after six months of consultation with faculty, students, and other interest groups, and will save the university $700,000 annually. That money will be reallocated to other programs such as nursing, which did not have enough faculty members to meet student demand. Discontinuing the programs will not eliminate courses, no faculty jobs will be eliminated, and both physics and Africana studies will continue to be offered as minors. The only change, administrators say, will be consolidation of administrative units and elimination of the major programs.