Small academic programs offer benefits, like an intimate environment and a focus for scholarship. But as the recession wears on and colleges keep looking to cut costs, some programs’ small size may put them at risk of extinction. And many colleges have lots of these potentially endangered species, a Chronicle analysis has found.
For example, at a majority of colleges examined, at least one-quarter of all academic programs each awarded no more than seven bachelor’s degrees in 2007-8, the most recent year for which data are available, The Chronicle found. Some of the most common small programs are physics and Germanic languages.
Small size is a risk factor because some of these programs require an infrastructure of offices and staff members that costs money. That’s why officials in Pennsylvania and South Dakota recently began tracking degree production among programs at public colleges, with an eye toward trimming. Louisiana’s public institutions have cut more than 50 degree programs since last year because of small numbers of completions.
To be sure, colleges can point to some good reasons for maintaining smaller academic programs. Some, like mathematics and philosophy, offer general-education courses that students take to satisfy distribution requirements. Those enrollments can well exceed the number of students majoring in those fields.
And cutting some small programs would not necessarily save money. Small programs do not always have their own departments and staffs. Often a single department can oversee multiple academic programs.
The number of degrees awarded is only one of many factors that colleges should consider when weighing the value of a program, says Robert C. Dickeson, a higher-education consultant and former college president. Another factor is the opportunity for a small program to grow.
There is also the attraction of a diverse course catalog. Admission officers often argue that a greater variety of academic courses will help to draw students, Mr. Dickeson says—even though, he adds, that idea is not well supported by evidence. “On every campus I visit, there are programs listed on the books and on their Web site, and there’s no one enrolled in them,” he says.
Increasingly, though, programs with small numbers of degrees face scrutiny and possible cuts. With that in mind, The Chronicle examined U.S. Education Department data on degrees awarded in 2007-8 to identify institutions and programs that produce few degrees.
The Peril of the Few
Many colleges have a lot of programs that produce few bachelor’s degrees. And certain disciplines fall frequently into this low-producing category.
Small programs at public universities
State legislators have been keeping an eye on small programs at public institutions. Here are public colleges with the largest and smallest prevalence of small programs, defined as those awarding seven or fewer bachelor’s degrees in 2007-8. All of these institutions awarded at least 1,500 bachelor’s degrees that year and so were in in the top quarter of all institutions in degree production.
| | Proportion of academic programs
that are small | Total academic programs | Total bachelor’s degrees awarded |
| The top 10 |
| Bridgewater State College | 45% | 60 | 1,548 |
| Youngstown State U. | 45% | 78 | 1,511 |
| U. of Toledo | 38% | 78 | 2,651 |
| North Dakota State U. | 34% | 83 | 1,864 |
| Minnesota State U. at Mankato | 33% | 69 | 2,299 |
| Wright State U. main campus | 33% | 60 | 2,287 |
| Central Connecticut State U. | 33% | 49 | 1,641 |
| California State U.-East Bay | 32% | 38 | 1,828 |
| Stephen F Austin State U. | 31% | 61 | 1,961 |
| Boise State U. | 31% | 55 | 1,920 |
| The bottom 5 |
| U. of Colorado at Denver | 3% | 29 | 1,718 |
| Virginia Tech | 3% | 59 | 5,235 |
| U. of Wisconsin at La Crosse | 3% | 37 | 1,713 |
| Northern Illinois U. | 2% | 45 | 4,052 |
| U. of Colorado at Boulder | 2% | 52 | 5,790 |
| Note: Percentages are rounded, but rankings are based on unrounded figures. Minnesota State U. at Mankato and Wright State U. main campus were exactly tied; the proportion for Central Connecticut State U. was slightly below 33 percent. |
About these data
Data on degrees awarded in 2007-8 came from the annual Completions survey of institutions, which is carried out by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. We obtained the data from the center’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, or IPEDS.
We chose to define a small program as one that awarded seven or fewer bachelor’s degrees. That cutoff was derived from an Education Department taxonomy covering 377 disciplines called the Classification of Instructional Programs. The large majority of programs in that group bestowed more than seven degrees, on average.
Using that cutoff, The Chronicle examined data on a total of 1,187 institutions categorized as research, master’s, or baccalaureate arts and sciences by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
(In reporting data, universities may omit academic disciplines in which they awarded no degrees. And the data include degrees awarded as first or second majors.)
