At Southeast Missouri State University (Southeast), the geosciences department
and its degree programs closed their doors last month. Effective May 31, the
department closure occurred under a state of financial emergency declared by
the faculty senate in 2003, as requested by the administration. Although the
financial situation was severe during this financial emergency, annual raises
were granted, travel was not curtailed, and hiring continued throughout the
school.
During the events culminating in program elimination, we learned several lessons,
but it was too late to prevent our destruction. The short-term financial decision
not only adversely affected Southeast, but also is symptomatic of a broader
pattern of program discontinuance in higher education that apparently is proceeding
without due consideration of regional and national needs.
A strategy of the Southeast administration was to “divide and conquer.”
They limited the initial review to those 18 departments with fewer than 30 majors;
we had 29 that year. When it became apparent that most programs would not be
affected by this review, most faculty members and their senators did not speak
up. Of the 18 reviewed departments, only sociology, geography and geoscience
were eliminated. The sociology and geography programs had very few majors, and
those disciplines are now housed elsewhere. All other programs survived, but
many were downsized by one or two faculty.
The conventional wisdom, expressed in Geotimes and elsewhere, is that
programs of high quality with productive faculty of strong reputation, providing
graduates in a critical field as defined by the state, and having strong placement
of graduates in discipline-related positions and graduate schools would do well
in such a review. Our program met these parameters. Moreover, ours is the only
geoscience program in a public university in the eastern half of Missouri, the
nearest program being the excellent one at the University of Missouri-Rolla.
So what went wrong?
The most important observation I can share with faculty in other potentially
targeted programs is that these quality factors were of little or no importance
in the assessment resulting in the decision to close our department. Apparently,
the most important factor was the cost per major — determined by subtracting
the cost of teaching our service courses from the total cost of the department.
The fact that all active members of our faculty at the time of the review were
full professors skewed the cost analysis unfavorably. Many departments would
fare poorly in a review based on such a shortsighted financial analysis. The
concept that cost per graduate is a more important consideration than the outcomes
for graduates and the subsequent benefits to society is a hallmark of a university
that is being “run like a business.” (I frequently refer to it as
the discount department store model.)
The second most important lesson I can share is that targeted programs need
active, highly visible and successful recruitment of majors off campus. We were
reasonably strong in our recruitment efforts, being fourth highest in the reviewed
programs, but we had not considered that we were recruiting our majors primarily
on campus. The view of the administration was that these students were already
recruited, and once students are on campus they will find another major of interest,
such as environmental science, if geoscience were not available. This view was
in error because many of our majors came to the campus with a strong interest
in the geosciences, and likely would not have enrolled if the program was not
available.
The third important lesson I can share for faculty in programs at risk of elimination
is to negotiate early and diligently for an outcome you can live with. Once
the review process moves to upper levels of review, your fate will be sealed;
options and alternatives will be greatly restricted or not available at all.
We only learned of our fate when it was announced fait accompli at the Board
of Regents meeting in November 2003, a few months after the review was initiated.
We had no opportunity to negotiate a partial reduction that could have saved
our undergraduate geoscience and earth science education programs. Administrators
and regents did not acknowledge copies of the proposal, which only saw the light
of day in a letter to the editor of the local newspaper after the decision was
made.
The final lesson is this: If yours is an institution that is “run like
a business,” cost control and overhead generation need to be highly visible
and important concerns. Moreover, both need to be integral to your core functions.
One of our faculty members has a major mega-dollar grant in science education
with considerable overhead and a full-time release for him to run the program.
This grant program was separated from the departmental review as not germane
to our core functions.
What remains of the geosciences at Southeast has been combined with the physics
department. Two tenured faculty will teach mostly advanced courses in soils
and geoprocessing in support of the environmental science program. The remainder
of the surviving curriculum — introductory and general education courses
— will be taught by adjunct faculty (including myself). Although dismayed
at the demise of our department, we faculty were not materially impacted financially,
but the immediate effect on our geoscience students has been far less favorable.
Thankfully, in all but one case, we have been able to advise the affected students
to successful completion of their majors or satisfactory plans for transfer
to other institutions. A surprising complication arose when several students
showed up on campus last fall expecting to major in the geosciences. University
recruiters had not informed them of the cancellation of the program.
Much of our service region is extremely poor, and economically disadvantaged
students have no option other than to attend Southeast. For some of these students,
geosciences provided opportunities for exciting and rewarding careers that will
no longer be available to them.
Only time will tell how many other geoscience programs and other disciplines
will meet a similar fate, but it’s time now to take preventative measures.
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