Dive Brief:
- Pennsylvania State University administrators issued a final proposal Monday to eliminate 47 undergraduate programs after a multi-year academic review of the public institution’s 403 associate and bachelor’s degrees.
- Collectively, those programs enroll about 1.1% of the university’s roughly 68,000 undergraduate students, according to a Penn State news release. Nine of the programs have no students.
- The final list goes next to Penn State’s Faculty Senate for review before final sign-off by the university’s provost. The university said it will develop teach-out plans for specific programs “over the coming semesters.”
Dive Insight:
The university cited low student demand among other factors for putting the 47 programs on the chopping block.
The final list, according to Penn State, incorporated feedback from university officials, including in the provost and planning offices, as well as deans, chancellors, faculty, staff, students and the consultancy Hanover Research.
The list of proposed bachelor’s and associate program closures runs the gamut from professional photography to astronomy and includes a host of degrees at Penn State’s regional campuses. About half the programs up for elimination will continue to be offered at another Penn State campus.
Penn State officials recommend closing 47 undergraduate programs
The university plans to continually review its programs to ensure they meet student and workforce needs.
“Regular program reviews will help us to be nimble and responsive as the world continues to change, and as we continue to face the reality of changing demographics, stagnant state support for our students, and rising costs,” Penn State Provost Fotis Sotiropoulos said in a statement.
Administrators recommended that roughly 70 of Penn State’s undergraduate programs be reviewed in another year. Those were programs that could benefit from “additional time for evaluation and refinement” such as those that had gone through recent curriculum changes or that need further assessment of student and market demand, the university said in an FAQ.
Meanwhile, Penn State officials recommended that another 50-plus programs be promoted, meaning the review team saw them as “strategic growth opportunities for the college.” That list includes bachelor’s degrees in data science, theater, petroleum engineering, anthropology and cybersecurity.
Penn State deems over 50 programs ‘strategic growth opportunities’
Similar program reviews — some voluntary, some mandated by state agencies or legislatures — have led to voluminous cuts across the country, sometimes many dozens at a single institution. This past spring, Syracuse University, in New York, said it would cut nearly 100 programs due to low enrollment.
The same month, East Carolina University announced plans to jettison 44 academic programs that it said “aren’t meeting expectations” as part of a larger budget-cutting push.
Iowa public universities also this spring put forward program cut recommendations after the Iowa Board of Regents mandated they review their academic portfolios.
And in Indiana, a new state law mandating that academic offerings that fall short of graduate thresholds be eliminated led public universities to axe or suspend over 200 programs.
