U. of Tulsa Has a Billion-Dollar Endowment for Just 4,000 Students. Why Is It Cutting Programs?

A plan for “reimagining” the University of Tulsa that administrators rolled out last week is elaborate enough that the website describing it includes multiple infographics, videos, and a link to a frequently-asked questions page.

But for many observers, the main takeaway was pretty simple: Tulsa is cutting dozens of programs. The cuts include majors, minors, and graduate offerings across the institution, but much of the resulting outcry has centered on undergraduate programs in the liberal arts.

“For too long, we have tried to be everything to everyone,” said Janet K. Levit, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, in remarks delivered to faculty and staff members and published on the university’s website.

Here’s how the university is defining itself now: “a high-touch undergraduate institution that provides all students with a firm grounding in critical and creative thinking, and that is STEM-heavy with a professional, practical focus.”

To that end, the restructuring enrolls new students in a University Studies program before they select their majors. It shifts departments into interdisciplinary divisions in its arts-and-sciences college. And it creates what it’s calling a “Professional Super College” combining business, health sciences, and law.

Restructuring programs and cutting majors are common moves for colleges looking to shore up the bottom line. But to some observers, the move was surprising at a private university that has a billion-dollar endowment to support some 4,000 students. Why is Tulsa making these changes, and what might its plan signal about higher education’s evolving identity and economics?

Role of the Liberal Arts

Tulsa is cutting graduate degrees in physics and chemistry, all of its theater degrees, and some business programs. But the cuts in its liberal-arts program, including the elimination of majors in philosophy and religion, have gotten the most attention.

Laura Stevens, an associate professor of English, tweeted that she is collecting material to “create an archive of testimonials from current TU students and alumni about the role the Liberal Arts have played in their education, career, life…” Matthew Dean Hindman, an assistant professor of political science, described in a Twitter thread the university’s actions as a “cartoonishly bad plan to eviscerate the liberal arts.”

While the changes touch every college at Tulsa, the one “far and away the most affected” is Arts and Sciences, Hindman said in an interview. It’s not just about cutting majors, he said. The plan suggests that the liberal arts are courses that students take when they first arrive in college, before they go on to major in something else. The move away from traditional departments, he said, will mean that students will experience the liberal arts in “broad categories” rather than disciplines.

The committee that drafted the recommendations also nicknamed University Studies the “College of Retention,” suggesting to Hindman that “we’re not seen to be rigorous.”

To Kevin McClure, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, the discussion he’s seen of Tulsa’s emphasizing STEM or backing off of the liberal arts doesn’t seem like what’s really happening. Looking at the full slate of changes — including the number of graduate programs Tulsa is eliminating — he said, “in some ways I think they’re doubling down on being an undergraduate program with robust professional offerings.”

Not all of the reactions the university has gotten have been negative, Levit said in an interview. The restructuring, in which all undergraduates begin in University Studies before selecting a major, is meant to “punctuate” the liberal arts, she added, “to make sure that all of our students, once they arrive, have that common liberal-arts-and sciences foundation.”

Still, Levit said, “we know this is really hard, and this is very emotional. These are just some of the hard decisions that need to be made for the future of the university.”

While They’re Still Strong

There’s more to Tulsa’s financial picture than its significant endowment. Operating margins are tightening, said Levit. “Our net tuition revenue per student has declined while our academic costs have actually increased.”

The spending decisions of recent years haven’t helped, either. A 2017 article in The Frontier, a news site, about Gerry Clancy, the university’s then fairly new president, described its $25-million deficit, building spree, and enrollment declines.

Still, colleges rarely announce a set of program closures unless they’re in dire straits, said Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall University. Tulsa’s leaders, he said, “want to make sure they’re acting while they’re still financially strong.”

Demographic trends might not look as bleak in Oklahoma as they do for colleges in the Midwest or Northeast. But even so, Kelchen said, “my sense is that, nationwide, boards are having conversations about what will the student body be looking like five to 10 years from now.”

Tulsa has several qualities that could make its path forward difficult, said Brendan Cantwell, an associate professor in the department of educational administration at Michigan State University. It’s “a little selective,” he said, but not “super prestigious.” And it does rely on tuition revenue.

Still, Cantwell said, the program cuts point to a shift in how universities think about their endowments. “It’s not like philosophy was really market-competitive a generation or two ago,” he said. “A tacit message is: We can no longer use our resources to support programs that are market-inefficient that might be in the public good.”

A Stronger Administration

Around the country, he said, college leaders feel they need to control costs, respond to student demand, and do so “nimbly and quickly.” All of that, Cantwell said, can be at odds with the traditional approach of shared governance.

Levit, the provost, emphasized professors’ role in the reorganization. “This was a faculty-driven process,” she said, pointing to a committee made up largely of professors whose recommendations informed the plan. “The faculty on this committee collectively dedicated thousands of hours to studying the data.”

But that committee, Hindman said, is an “illusion of democratic process.” The administration is “trying to claim faculty governance where none currently exists.”

At least 80 percent of faculty members in his own college, he estimated, are “appalled” by the plan, which he referred to as “a culmination of all of our worst fears.”

As tuition-dependent colleges compete for a shrinking pool of students, concerns about how academic programs align with demand are unlikely to go away. In that context, it’s also unlikely that many college leaders will take a hands-off approach to academic offerings.

“Underlying all of this,” Kelchen said, is that “colleges are just trying to maximize their financial flexibility going forward.”

Beckie Supiano writes about teaching, learning, and the human interactions that shape them. Follow her on Twitter @becksup, or drop her a line at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com.