WICHITA, Kansas — Consider the mounting money problems facing public universities in Kansas.
Decades of ballooning tuition have made students and their families increasingly worried about college debt. Tech schools offer cheaper faster paths to a solid job. Help from taxpayers has waned.
Then came the pandemic. Campuses had to spend heavily to retool for safety during the outbreak. Still, large numbers of students and the money they would have spent on dorms, tuition and the like stayed away.
The University of Kansas predicted over the summer that it would only come up short — by a full 25% — on the money needed to cover its costs.
The Kansas Board of Regents had eyed cutting entire programs before the economic crisis that came with the pandemic. Now that cost-cutting takes on new urgency.
Departments with the majors that draw the smallest numbers of students find themselves in existential peril — forced to justify themselves either as money makers or as the reasons to take a college degree seriously.
The discussion puts a bullseye on 60 programs scattered across public universities in the state. While they typically offer classes that nearly all students need to graduate, they also draw the fewest students to pursue their majors — in history, in mathematics and other staple subjects.
That’s partly why making those cuts isn’t so simple. Schools have to weigh the needs of their students against the schools’ increasingly dire finances. And just because few students major in a program, doesn’t mean it isn’t essential for a university.
The majors getting a hard look aren’t obscure or outdated programs, like Secretarial Science (Fort Hays State University is already phasing that one out).
While they might not be popular as majors, just about everyone at the university takes classes in subjects such as math, history and biology to earn a diploma.
Of the 60 majors the Regents are reviewing, 34 are listed as supporting general education.
Universities would need to find a way to still offer things like U.S. History 101. That may mean dumping the tenured professor who’s written the textbook for an adjunct at a fraction of the cost.
Many of those adjuncts are already overworked, underpaid.
If the programs go away, students could have some jury-rigged options, like taking online classes from another school in Kansas. If Emporia State University’s chemistry major disappears, and its general education courses go with it, those students could be allowed to take an online version from K-State University.
Rich Sleezer, the chair of Emporia State’s Department of Physical Sciences, opposes the idea. Not only would his programs get cut, he argues it would hurt Emporia State students interested in med school or other scientific fields. Online chem classes might do in a pandemic, but Sleezer said those classes need to happen in-person.
