South Carolina State University: Trustees postpone cutting programs

CALEB BOZARD, T&D

South Carolina State University will not cut several academic programs just yet. The university’s trustees voted Thursday to hold off on plans to end the programs.

The board’s Academic Affairs Committee recommended the university cut its bachelor’s degrees in art education, history, social studies, special education and professional land surveying at the committee meeting on Wednesday.

The committee also recommended cutting the dramatic arts bachelor’s degree and replacing it with an 18-hour concentration in the Professional English program.

However, the full board decided Thursday to postpone cutting the programs, saying trustees need more information on the impacts the cuts would have on the university.

Academic Affairs Committee Vice Chair Doris Helms said she had voted to cut the programs “reluctantly,” because she wasn’t sure what would happen to faculty in the programs and what effect the cuts would have on the university’s overall academic strategy.

“Yes, we do need program elimination,” Helms said. “We're a small school. We don't have enough students to have as many programs as we have. I have no question about that. As a matter of fact, I think that these programs probably do need to be eliminated, but I really feel uncomfortable without understanding what's going to happen once they are.”

Helms said some of her concerns might be answered by President Alexander Conyers’s strategic plan for the university.

“You don't have a strategic plan yet,” Helms said. “We haven't seen it. I have no idea where the university is going in terms of what we're going to really be emphasizing, what we're not going to be. And I really felt that I needed to see the context of what would happen, for instance, to the African American studies program, if you eliminate history, where are the faculty going to go? What are we really thinking about in the context of the whole?”

Helms also said she felt there had not been enough communication between university administration and faculty on the programs.

At least 12.5 students must be enrolled in an undergraduate program, with eight having completed the degree, within five years to meet the commission’s standards for productivity, according to commission policy documents.

Many of the programs identified by the academic commission average between 5 and 10 students enrolled, with land surveying averaging 0.8 students. Conyers said some of the programs that would be cut have had one graduate in five years.

Programs that do not meet the commission’s standards are placed on probation for no more than three two-year review cycles, which covers six years. If numbers have not improved, the commission will give the institution a timeline to phase out the programs.

The commission can grant exceptions to programs that don’t meet these standards if the programs are “considered essential to the basic mission of the institution or deemed so unique in their subject matter and value to the higher education community in South Carolina as to make them essential,” according to commission policy.

The university expects “minimal” impacts on faculty positions, Watson said. Faculty will be shifted to core curricula or concentrations rather than degrees, he said. Any adjustments in personnel would take place over a two-year to three-year process.

"We still have to teach history," he said. "But as much history? Maybe not."

Offering the programs is a disservice to students who apply for those programs not knowing they will have few classmates and professors to choose from, Conyers said.

“You get a kid here who signs up for the art education class, because they don't know anyone – that kid doesn't know that no one has graduated from that program in five years,” Conyers said. “That student doesn't know that there's only one or two professors, and when he or she fails that course, there's no other option but to go back to that same professor that failed them the last time. That student doesn't know that there's no other students in his or her cohort that he or she can study with.”

This also hurts students in the more popular programs who are short of resources such as professors and class space, he said.

“You've got programs that need personnel,” Watson said. “We've got engineering classes that are packed. So we've got to be able to direct resources to those programs that are in high demand.”

Holding off on cutting the programs prolongs the teach-out period, where students in a program are allowed to complete their degree while no new students are admitted, Conyers said.

Alexander Thierry, president of the university’s faculty senate, said there are benefits to keeping the programs on campus.

Some of the programs would be more popular if the university provided resources for better recruiting, which currently falls on the shoulders of program faculty, Thierry said.

“I think that many of those programs just would like the resources that they've requested over long amounts of time to help with making their programs stronger,” he said.

Though cutting the programs had been discussed before, faculty were not aware the Board of Trustees would be voting on the cuts until the Academic Affairs committee meeting on Wednesday, catching many off guard, Thierry said.

Faculty in the affected programs have filed plans to improve recruitment and apply for exceptions to the higher education commission’s productivity policies and would like time to see these through, he said.

Thierry said he was glad the board wanted more information before making a decision. He said faculty members were also unclear on exactly what would happen to those working in programs that could be cut.

Thierry, as an associate art professor under the studio art and art education program, could see his program eliminated.

Thierry cited special education as a program that could bring value to the university and help solve South Carolina’s teacher shortage.

“If South Carolina State University is looking for programs to champion to help with those needs, then some of these programs on this list are in the critical needs area,” he said.

According to higher education commission reports, 35 of S.C. State’s 55 degree programs did not meet productivity standards between 2016 and 2020. Of those 35 degrees, six have been terminated, three are on probation and 19 have been granted exemptions.