Reeling from the combined effects of shrinking enrollments, diminishing state funds, and spreading Covid-19 cases, the University of Alaska’s Board of Regents voted on Friday to eliminate 39 academic departments and reduce or merge five more.
The decision came one day after the board voted to move ahead with a study of whether to consolidate its three separately accredited universities into two. The regents will examine the pros and cons of merging the University of Alaska Southeast, in Juneau, into the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. A report is due to the regents by mid-October.
Program cuts and campus consolidations were the two most contested items on the agenda as regents met to deal with the $25-million shortfall facing the system, which has around 26,000 full- and part-time students. The programs that were cut will affect nearly 700 students and save close to $4 million, according system officials.
Among the programs eliminated on Friday was the system’s only degree in sociology, as well as degrees, some undergraduate and others graduate, in creative writing, environmental studies, geography, and theater.
The board delayed action on cutting two programs: the master’s of science and the doctorate of philosophy in atmospheric science at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. Supporters of those programs say their work in climate change and Covid-19 research are especially crucial now.
Accreditation requirements call for multiyear “teachout” plans to allow students majoring in the affected programs to complete their degrees.
Critics of the program cuts, including Cachet Garrett, a graduate student in Fairbanks and the sole student regent, said there wasn’t enough evidence that they would achieve the cost savings regents were hoping for.
“Students are texting me right now that they’re feeling very upset that certain regents are trying to shut them down,” Garrett said at one point as she tried to persuade the board to vote separately, and allow discussion, on each of the more than 40 program cuts on the agenda. As a compromise, the board held separate votes on 13 of what Garrett considered the most controversial cuts, and voted on the others as a block. In the end, nearly all were eliminated.
“Do we want to be the only public-university system that does not have a sociology department, especially as we see what’s going on in the nation today?” Gloria O’Neill, a regent from Anchorage, asked. The university will retain one faculty member in sociology to allow students to take an introductory course, but the department and major will be eliminated.
The chair of the sociology department at Anchorage, Zeynep Kiliç, expressed her frustration in an email to The Chronicle shortly after “the board nailed shut our coffin.”
“Although we appreciate the difficulties our admins face, we do see a pretty large inequity at play here in terms of how the cuts are distributed across and within campuses,” she wrote.
“If I have four children and starve my one kid while fattening up the other three because I think they will become doctors or engineers and generate a lot of income for my family, I would be considered an abusive parent,” she continued. “UAA College of Arts and Sciences, and specifically the programs recommended to be discontinued with tenured faculty to be fired, are that abused child at the moment.”
Another professor in the department, Nelta M. Edwards, also questioned the board’s priorities.
“At a time when the global pandemic has laid bare the inequalities of race and class and the recent murder of George Floyd has set off a wave of rage against racial oppression endemic to this society,” she wrote, “this is not the time to delete a program that teaches students to understand these inequalities.”
‘It Breaks My Heart’
Cathy Sandeen, chancellor at Anchorage, said in an interview on Thursday that the cuts at her institution were painful, but had been recommended after a thorough process that included extensive input from students, faculty, staff, and other stakeholders. The cuts, she said, would eliminate 31 faculty positions, 11 of which are currently unfilled.
The university system’s president, James R. Johnsen, told regents on Thursday that severe cuts were the only way to deal with the system’s budget crisis.
“There will never be enough data nor enough time to satisfy the people who may lose their careers,” he said of the proposal to merge campuses. “It breaks my heart to bring these options to the board.”
Johnsen has been named as the sole finalist to be president of the University of Wisconsin system.
The University of Alaska system’s state funding was cut by 20 percent from the 2014 to the 2020 fiscal years, with enrollment declining by 28 percent since 2010. The state’s Republican governor, Michael J. Dunleavy, threw the university system into turmoil last year, when he threatened to slash its state budget by 41 percent. After a fierce backlash, including a movement to recall the governor, Dunleavy agreed in August to reduce the cuts to $70 million over three years instead of $135 million over one year.
The system has also cut pay to 166 executives through mandatory furloughs and cut millions of dollars in systemwide administrative costs, according to a university spokeswoman. Of the $33 million in budget reductions for the 2021 fiscal year, she said, more than $4 million is from academic programs but $29 million is from administration and other areas.
This week’s votes followed an emotional public hearing on Tuesday at which students, employees, alumni, and elected leaders in Juneau pleaded with the board to reject a merger. A proposal to combine the system’s three universities, in Juneau, Fairbanks, and Anchorage, into a single accredited institution was defeated last year.
Southeast, the system’s smallest and most remote university, serves a diverse population, including students in the Tlingit tribe. The only way to get from the main Southeast campus, in Juneau, to the rest of Alaska or North America is by plane or boat. Southeast also has campuses in the coastal cities of Ketchikan and Sitka.
Richard A. Caulfield, the soon-to-retire chancellor of Southeast, called the plan to merge it with another university “shortsighted and ill advised.” He predicted that it would have a devastating impact on the region.
