LOGAN, Utah — Utah State University is the first school in the state to announce which majors, certificates and emphases it plans to discontinue under legislative-mandated budget cuts for public higher education.
The northern Utah university published a list late last week of 14 academic programs that will be axed, with most of those falling under USU’s College of Education and Human Services.
One cut that stands out is the bachelor’s degree program for environmental engineering — which comes as lawmakers have said they want schools to expand engineering programs because there’s a high workforce demand for those graduates.
The budget cuts, overall, have been pushed by state leaders who say they want to see more efficiency and less “administrative bloat” in the state’s eight public colleges and universities. This year, lawmakers slashed $60.5 million across the board from institution budgets, with the demand under HB265 they reduce majors or programs that have few graduates and lead to lower paying jobs.
A university can get its share of its cut back only if it proves it’s reinvested in high-wage jobs that the state needs.
USU’s share of the budget reduction is $12.6 million. So far, it has announced that it will merge five colleges into two to try to save money. It has also asked for employees for voluntary resignations and retirements. Andinterim President Alan L. Smith said that layoffs will be likely after that.
On Friday, Smith sent a letter about the latest update to all employees. The decisions, he said, were based on many different data points that the state asked schools to look at, including graduation rates, wage outcomes and program costs, as well as discussions with deans and faculty feedback.
“No single metric determined the activities to be discontinued and no specific algorithm could be generated that would produce the list of activities for us — making decisions in context necessarily requires the application of human judgment,” he said.
Smith added that while the programs are being discontinued, it “does not necessarily mean” that all faculty and staff positions in those fields will be affected, though some “rightsizing” will occur.
More likely, he said, there will be position adjustments, including new roles, duties and job descriptions. He noted that beyond the initial list, even more program cuts are likely, too.
That list details cuts to five bachelor’s majors, four areas of emphasis, one master’s degree, two graduate certificates, one area for doctorate specialization and one associate degree at the school’s campus in Price. The programs cuts are:
- Agriculture communication, bachelor’s degree
- ASL/deaf education teacher prep program, bachelor’s degree
- Deaf and elementary education, bachelor’s degree
- Environmental engineering, bachelor’s degree
- Family life studies, bachelor’s degree
- ASL interpretation, emphasis
- Community and public health, emphasis
- Family finance, emphasis
- Physical education, emphasis
- Applied kinesiology fitness promotion, master’s degree
- National environmental policy, graduate certificate
- Rehabilitation transition, graduate certificate
- Psychology data science and research methodology, Ph.D. specialization
- Theater program, associate degree offered at the Price, Utah, campus
The school did not release numbers for how many students had been studying in those fields. But each university and college will be given three years to “teach out” programs so students can complete their degrees.
Additionally, Smith said the Logan campus’ College of Humanities and Social Sciences will merge eight departments into six. And the Department of Geosciences will also now be joined into the previously announced merger that’s combining the College of Natural Resources with the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences.
All of the Engineering Education Department, he said, will be shuttered and research efforts from that will be recentered into the engineering disciplinary departments that already exist.
Smith urged faculty and staff in his letter to “assume the best intentions of decision-makers” with the closures.
“Please be reminded,” he said, “that our proposal will be a living document and will involve changes over the next three years. It is to our advantage to leave space for us to advance our thinking as a community over that time frame and beyond.”
The state’s schools have been pressed to quickly draft their plans after the budget cuts and related legislation received final approval just last month.
The first version of their plans is due to the Utah Board of Higher Education next month, with a formal presentation to follow in June. Final approval from the Legislature will come in August and September.
