NEWS

Delaware State cuts more than a quarter of its majors

University cuts 23 low-enrollment academic programs

Margie Fishman, and Saranac Hale Spencer
The News Journal
  • Delaware State University has eliminated more than a quarter of its academic programs.
  • An official said the school must prioritize programs and reallocate resources to respond to demand.
  • The academic cuts are expected to save the university about $900,000 by 2020.

Delaware State University has cut 23 low-enrollment academic programs – more than a quarter of its offerings – to invest in higher-growth areas that are expected to bring in more students and revenue.

The university board voted quietly in January to "deactivate" the majors starting this fall against the recommendations of a faculty and staff committee that spent more than two years studying the issue.

Representing one of the biggest academic shakeups in the school's 125-year history, the program cuts in areas like education and romance languages won't result in layoffs or reductions in staff hours, senior administrators said.

Faced with stagnant state and federal funding, the Dover university had to prioritize programs and reallocate resources to better respond to student demand, university President Harry L. Williams said. More than one-fourth of DSU's $140 million annual budget comes from the state.

“We have to make the decision in the best interest of our students and the taxpayers of Delaware and the best interest of the university as a whole," Williams said.

Harry L. Williams

Board members did not respond to requests for comment. Minutes from the January meeting when the board authorized the cuts were not yet available, according to the board's secretary.

DSU's decision to ax programs has angered some faculty members who have spent their careers developing specialties now deemed "low productivity, low priority or unnecessarily redundant" by the university. Several departments are petitioning Williams and the board to reconsider.

DSU Provost Alton Thompson left the university shortly after the announcement.

Thompson resigned earlier this month after nearly six years at the school to take a position advocating nationwide for historically black land-grant universities. He had served on DSU's Academic Program Prioritization Initiative Task Force, but broke rank to recommend cutting rather than modifying the 23 programs, according to a committee report obtained by The News Journal.

Alton Thompson

Thompson took a sabbatical from DSU this spring. His resignation is not related to the program cuts, Williams said. Thompson could not be immediately reached for comment.

The university has launched a nationwide search for his replacement.

“We were very diligent in taking our time going through this process, and we wanted all the voices heard," Williams said of the academic restructuring. "We're looking at it from a very practical business perspective."

Among the dozen undergraduate majors cut, the majority are education specialties in the sciences, world languages and special education, along with Spanish, French and forensic chemistry.

Of the 11 graduate degree programs eliminated, eight are focused on education, including a master of art in teaching. Others are in applied chemistry, family and consumer sciences and historic preservation.

The cuts apply to future students only. Current students will still be able to graduate in their declared majors, school administrators said. The university could not immediately provide the total number of affected students.

The academic cuts are expected to save DSU about $900,000 by 2020. That money will be plowed back into 19 programs across many disciplines targeted for growth and investment. These include undergraduate and graduate programs in criminal justice, mass communication, agriculture, teaching English as a second language, applied chemistry, sports management, educational leadership and business administration.

Another roughly $5 million in savings is expected to come from administrative streamlining. The university has a hiring freeze in effect and has no plans to fill positions in the short-term as employees retire. DSU will net additional cost savings by reducing contract employment and technology costs.

Students on the campus of DSU.

Faculty reaction to the academic changes has been mixed.

For years, there has been a nationwide push to have prospective science teachers major in fields like biology or chemistry before getting their teaching credentials, said Christopher Ruszkowski, who oversees teacher preparation for the state Delaware Department of Education.

The department issued a report last fall evaluating teacher preparation programs across the state. DSU's education programs enrolled too few students to be included.

DSU biology professor Melissa Harrington said her department had been steering students away from the atrophied biology education program.

When professors heard the major would be cut, “we were like, ‘Do we still have that?’ ” she said.

“For us, it’s more of a housekeeping thing,” Harrington said, noting that several classes that count toward the degree are cross-listed with other majors. The department's molecular and cellular neuroscience program, meanwhile, is considered a growth area.

Associate French professor Ladji Sacko returned from a year abroad teaching in the Ivory Coast to learn that DSU would gut its French and Spanish major programs, enrolling about 10 students total.

"All the students at DSU pass through the [language] department. We are the backbone of the university," Sacko said.

Acknowledging American students' waning interest in foreign languages, the professor cautioned that "in order to win the war in every part of the world, we have to learn how to speak the language."

Aerial view of DSU campus.

Still, Sacko said he was happy that none of his colleagues would lose their jobs because students will still enroll in lower-level language courses to fulfill General Education Requirements.

Other faculty members said their departments are appealing the board's decision.

Political science professor Samuel Hoff, who served on the prioritization committee and previously directed the historic preservation program, said he had hoped that the provost and board would allow individual departments to make their case before eliminating programs.

"The process was not done in any way that was open and informing," Hoff said. "You can't really say it was legitimate throughout the process if you don't give a final opportunity to each and every department who you are recommending for termination."

Established in 1891 as the State College for Colored Students, DSU's mission is interwoven with preserving African-American heritage, Hoff said. The historic preservation program was earmarked for elimination in 2005, he said, but then-President Allen Sessoms stepped in to save it.

One year later, in 2006, Rehoboth magistrate Rochelle Knapp graduated from the program. A Milton native, she appreciated learning about historically significant buildings because it gave her a deeper respect for her roots.

Knapp said she understands DSU's financial pressures, but cutting the program is "a disservice to students."

Several students contacted by The News Journal did not respond to requests for comment. DSU administrators said students weren't involved in the decision-making process.

Universities scale back on liberal arts

DSU is not alone in nixing programs to contain costs. But the breadth of the university's cuts are troubling, according to John Barnshaw, a senior higher education researcher with the American Association of University Professors in Washington, D.C.

Low enrollment doesn't always give a complete picture of a program's viability, Barnshaw said, adding that it could take five years to see numbers climb after a department changes its marketing approach or course offerings. He advises universities to consider curtailing costs in nonacademic areas, such as athletics and administration, before sacrificing scholarship.

"It's concerning any time that number of programs are cut," he said of DSU's restructuring. "That's the core of any academic institution."

On a smaller scale, universities across the country have eliminated academic programs, many of them in liberal arts disciplines, to balance their budgets and invest in more popular offerings.

Delta State University in Mississippi, cut five undergraduate programs in 2014 in areas like foreign languages, theater arts and communications to save more than $400,000. That same year, the University of Southern Maine eliminated 50 faculty positions and closed programs in modern and classical languages.

Dr. Samuel Hoff

Closer to home, the University of Delaware's board cut three programs last summer, according to a university spokesman. UD offers Spanish and French as concentrations in broader foreign language majors. Ditto for some education specialties, which are lumped into science education or elementary teacher education.

Launched in 2014, DSU's 13-member program prioritization task force examined all 82 of the university's undergraduate and graduate degree programs based weighted criteria, such as enrollment, program cost, regional uniqueness and the program's centrality to the university's mission. The analysis involved online surveys and a ranking framework used by many peer institutions. It was supposed to be finished in less than a year, according to initial projections, but took more than two years.

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In many cases, DSU's provost and board followed the recommendations of the committee and college deans to change or improve programs. In others, the provost's ruling trumped the committee's data.

For instance, the committee recommended deactivating the family and consumer sciences undergraduate program but retaining the graduate program. The provost and board did the opposite.

The committee recommended modifying but not eliminating a graduate program in mathematics education, even though only two students had graduated with the degree over the last four years.

The committee also recommended modifying programs in English education, Spanish, historical preservation and world language education, but the board again sided with Thompson and cut those majors.

Other undergraduate programs like nursing were recommended for growth by the provost, despite scoring lower than programs recommended for cuts.

In the end, Williams said, the board took the advice of the provost, its senior academic administrator.

Delaware State University students graduate during a ceremony on May 17. The Dover school is re-configuring academic programs.

The cuts will result in 76 fewer courses; faculty members will be reassigned to related areas. Programs may be reactivated at a later date if there is enough student demand, Williams said.

DSU has also begun enforcing a minimum of 10 students per class. The university had the requirement for years, Williams said, but faculty members continued to teach classes with only one or two students enrolled.

The university's total enrollment this academic year is 4,560, slightly down from a record-high of 4,644 in 2014-2015. DSU's ranking among top Historically Black Colleges and Universities has slipped from ninth in 2014 to 21st this year, according to U.S. News & World Report.

Williams dismissed the ranking, noting that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently granted DSU $1.2 million to help retain low-income, first-generation college students.

Leaders are also committed to keeping the university affordable, he said. For the current academic year, the university board increased tuition less than 3 percent for in-state students to $7,532 and to $16,138 for out-of-state students.

College costs at an all-time high

News Journal reporter Matthew Albright contributed to this report.

Contact Margie Fishman at (302) 324-2882, on Twitter @MargieTrende or mfishman@delawareonline.com. Contact Saranac Hale Spencer at (302) 324-2909, on Twitter @SSpencerTNJ or sspencer@delawareonline.com.

Starting Fall 2016, the following programs will be "deactivated" at Delaware State University

Undergraduate: English education; Spanish; French; world language education; art management; science education; elementary and secondary special education; biology education; chemistry education; forensic chemistry; physics education. 

Graduate: Historic preservation; art education; family and consumer sciences; curriculum and instruction (this is a concentration, not a program); adult basic education; special education; science education; educational leadership; master of art in teaching; applied chemistry; mathematics education; physics teaching.

These programs are earmarked for investment

Undergraduate:  Criminal justice; mass communication; psychology; teaching English as a second language; agriculture; natural resources; food and nutritional sciences; aviation; sports management; health promotion; movement science; nursing; applied chemistry; biology; molecular and cellular neuroscience.

Graduate: Natural resources; master of business administration; educational leadership; neuroscience.

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