Dive Brief:
- Faculty at Long Island University say administrators imposed a credit cap and hard deadline for curricula review at the institution, a process which is traditionally led by faculty.
- The administration also cut several academic programs without consulting faculty, they allege, poking holes in shared governance at the institution.
- Decisions are being driven by a desire to improve market competitiveness, as institution leaders compare their core curriculum requirements to those of peer institutions, faculty members say.
Dive Insight:
LIU officials may want to consider the longterm damage such swift, unilateral decisions will have on the impact of future faculty recruitment efforts. For a school that already made headlines for locking faculty out last fall when labor negotiations were at a standstill, the latest moves further impugn the faculty-administration relationship, and whispers of a dictatorship around academia will not sit well with talented professors who may be considering the institution down the line.
Still, it is important for institution leaders — preferably as part of an open process which includes opportunities for faculty input — to re-examine curriculum requirements and degree offerings periodically. As the push for affordability gets greater and greater, many institutions are feeling pressure to return to a push to get students to the graduation stage in four years, which may come down to either trimming core requirements to reduce time to degree or compromising on some of the experiential learning, like internships and co-op arrangements. Not only that, but as institutions look to their own financial health, programs that routinely graduate only a few students every year may need to be re-evaluated. It is never a popular decision with faculty and alumni to cut programs, but if the cost of running the program exceeds the value to the college of maintaining it, leaders must take a hard look at how keeping the program impacts the bottom line.