The University of Oregon is considering the elimination of multiple postgraduate programs as it tries to close a multi-year budget gap of more than $63 million.
A new proposal shared with UO’s Senate Wednesday would cut $17.6 million from UO’s administrative services and $25.8 million from its schools and colleges.
This would mean sunsetting UO’s master's and Ph.D. studies spanning History, Folklore, Educational Policy and Leadership, Romance Languages, Asian Studies, Comparative Literature, Classics, and more.
“We still do intend to have a broad research focus at the University of Oregon,” UO provost Chris Long told reporters at a press briefing Tuesday. “We just need to be more disciplined in how we execute on that.”
The university shared information about the proposed cuts with reporters on Tuesday on the condition that it not be released publicly until after Wednesday’s UO’s Senate meeting.
The announcement comes as UO is preparing for lower out-of-state enrollment in the coming years, which it’s attributed to rising competition and declining demographics.
Long said master’s programs are generally designed to make money, so UO schools are considering which subjects have a strong market. He said Ph.D. programs don’t generate revenue and are an investment in the university’s research capabilities.
Some of the graduate programs on the chopping block are already quite small. According to the university, Theater Arts granted just three post-graduate degrees over the past three years.
The largest program that could be cut is Folklore, which has granted more than 12 master's degrees a year on average.
Students who are already enrolled could complete their studies, but recruitment for next fall would be cancelled.
On the undergraduate level, Long said the one of the goals is to avoid cutting programs. Instead, the proposal would merge some colleges and departments to reduce overhead.
“Undergraduate tuition is a huge driver of the finances of the university, and so focusing on that and redoubling our efforts on making sure we're providing a compelling experience for undergraduates is critical to this plan,” Long said.
According to the plan, more than 100 administrative services and classified positions could be affected, and around two-thirds of those are currently occupied by employees.
Also included in the proposal are library cuts, pauses in recruitment for some other graduate programs, and reductions in the number of graduate educators. With fewer GEs, some of their workload would be transferred to faculty.
“The most important thing, from my perspective, in the plan is what's not in it,” Long said. “There are no tenure-track faculty layoffs.”
The details of this proposal aren’t yet finalized. The university will first seek feedback from the public and Academic Modification Advisory Committee, which is made up of several faculty and one student from the university Senate.
At Wednesday’s Senate meeting, some faculty expressed appreciation for a process that they said was more collaborative than the previous year’s. But others shared concerns about a shift away from humanities and potential damage to the university’s status as a premier research institution.
“We don't want programs to be closed for symbolic reasons when they're actually fulfilling critical state functions,” said Ilana Umansky, an education professor and faculty for two programs that could be cut.
UO President Karl Scholz is expected to make a final decision on the budget reductions in December.
“We have to address our current fiscal deficit in a thoughtful way, trying to do the least damage to the university as possible,” Scholz told UO’s Senate Wednesday. “At the same time, we need to put in place the foundations for a stronger, more resilient university 5, 10, and 20 years from now.”
