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The Closing of Academic Departments and Programs: A Core and Periphery Approach to the Liberal Arts and Practical Arts

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Abstract

Did the liberal art disciplines at American universities have the highest failure rate between the 1970s and the early 2000s? Important theoretical traditions indeed believe that the liberal arts are the most threatened disciplines in the academy, while other theories have differing views. This paper reexamines the vulnerability of academic disciplines by assessing new data. It focuses on the closing of academic departments and programs, and it uses event history analysis to show that practical arts departments and programs failed at a much higher rate than liberal arts departments and programs. In doing so, this paper raises important questions about how American universities are changing during a time of budget cuts and retrenchment.

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Notes

  1. State University of New York.

  2. Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, National Center for Education Statistics, United States Department of Education.

  3. Writing in a similar tradition, Walter Powell and Jason Owen Smith argue that the commercial values now driving the life sciences could bleed into other academic fields with negative impacts (2002: 124).

  4. Such characterization is not natural; instead, Slaughter argues that some disciplines have simply been more successful at characterizing themselves as being relevant to the market (Slaughter 1993; see also Engell and Dangerfield 1998).

  5. “Neo” Academic Capitalism supplements “classic” Academic Capitalism with resource dependence, arguing that humanities programs perhaps survive because of student demand and cheap faculty salaries (Taylor et al. 2013). They continue to argue that the humanities are disadvantaged and they do not compare the failure rates of liberal arts and practical arts programs and departments, a task that I consider here.

  6. Steven Brint and colleagues (2012a) compare the population of academic programs reported in IPEDS in 1971 with the programs reported in 2006, concentrating on academic programs that were offered by 20% of all universities in 1971.

  7. Although difficult, it is ideal to independently verify closures that are suggested by IPEDS, especially for less institutionalized disciplines. First, some programs continue to be offered even when they attract no students. Second, programs showing no degree completions in three consecutive years in the IPEDS often continue under different CIP Codes. This can happen for a variety of reasons. For example, programs appear under different CIP Codes when IPEDS eliminates a CIP Code, or when IPEDS splits a general CIP Code into 2 more specific CIP Codes. Universities also are sometimes inconsistent in their reporting and report their programs under a similar but different CIP Codes. Brint and colleagues (2012a) tried to avoid these problems by simply comparing the number of academic programs in Time One to the number of programs in Time Two. This approach does not work, however, if you want to measure churning, the opening and closing of programs.

  8. The term “quasi-markets” comes in later work involving Sheila Slaughter (Taylor et al. 2013). I use it throughout this paper since it nicely foregrounds the fact that universities face incentives and competition not just from typical markets but also from federal and state governments, among other things.

  9. Brint et al. (2012a, b) found that in 2006 81.6% of four-year American colleges had history programs; 86% had English programs; 72% had chemistry programs; and 47% had physics programs.

  10. Institutional theory also suggests that changes to market-driven organizations should not stimulate widespread cultural protest. However, we do see signs of protest appearing even when low status universities close their liberal arts programs (see e.g., Jaschik 2010; Price 2013; Rogers 2013; Reich 2011)

  11. Even popular practical fields often constitute niche fields. For example, at its peak, industrial engineering was only at 9% of four-year colleges (Brint et al. 2012a, b). Environmental engineering is another niche field, graduating 596 students in 2000. As a comparison, 23,000 students graduated with art degrees in 2000 (Brint et al. 2012a, b).

  12. This argument has synergies with Peter Eckel’s (2002, 2003) suggestion that universities close what they can get away with closing. I take this a step further by suggesting that universities can get away with closing practical disciplines.

  13. This is a viewed shared with Hearn and Belasco (2015).

  14. 1975−1976, 1980−1981, 1985−1986, 1990−1991, 1995−1996, and 2000−2001, 2005−2006, and 2010−2011.

  15. Scholars of US higher education have observed that higher status universities have greater wealth and a more selective student body, because they have more money to spend on students and have higher admission standards. Thus, US researchers commonly measure status based on these three variables. Barron’s selectivity measures admissions competitiveness, graduation rates measures the quality of students, and budget per student measures university wealth.

  16. The Carnegie Classification is a system that has helped higher education scholars organize the organizational diversity of American universities. For this paper I employ the following classification from the 1994 system: Doctoral granting universities offer a full range of baccalaureate programs and are committed to graduate education through the doctorate. They award annually at least ten doctoral degrees—in three or more disciplines—or 20 or more doctoral degrees in one or more disciplines. Liberal arts universities are primarily undergraduate colleges with major emphasis on baccalaureate degree programs. They award 40% or more of their baccalaureate degrees in liberal arts fields and are restrictive in admissions. Master’s granting universities offer a full range of baccalaureate programs and are committed to graduate education through the master’s degree. They award 20 or more master’s degrees annually in three or more disciplines. Baccalaureate granting colleges (BA II) are primarily undergraduate colleges with major emphasis on baccalaureate degree programs. They award less than 40% of their baccalaureate degrees in liberal arts fields or are less restrictive in admissions.

  17. It’s important to recognize that liberal arts colleges are not as common in other countries as they are in the US.

  18. For this analysis of Tuition Dependence, 286 of 1,331 programs at 50 public universities that face potential closure were removed because of parent-child problems in IPEDS (see Jaquette and Parra 2014). Similarly, 27 of 1,146 programs that face potential closure at private universities were removed because of parent-child problems.

  19. Hazard Ratios are derived by taking the antilog of each coefficient e(coefficient), and they describe the effect of one unit difference in the associated predictor on raw hazard (Singer and Willett 2003: 524).

  20. According to the Carnegie Classification, BA II universities are primarily American undergraduate colleges with major emphasis on baccalaureate degree programs. They are less selective in admissions or they award less than 40% of their baccalaureate degrees in liberal arts fields.

  21. Liberal arts universities were excluded from the study of language and engineering programs because so few liberal arts universities had engineering programs.

  22. A separate analysis found no statistically significant interaction between the variables disciplinary type (practical versus liberal) and size. Results are available upon request.

  23. Might Polytechnic schools have different results that these found here? My hypothesis is that the difference between liberal arts and practical arts might be exaggerated at tech schools like MIT since such organizations are plausibly more cutting edge. They are more likely to close lagging practical fields and experiment by creating new practical fields. Unfortunately, my sample of Polytechnic or tech schools is relatively small.

  24. I do not take institutionalization and pervasiveness to be equivalent, a position taken by a number of scholars (see Kraatz and Zajac 1996; Colyvas and Jonsson 2011). I argue that market demand and institutionalization are separate (and sometimes overlapping) forces shaping universities, and that each can potentially explain why some academic fields are widely offered by American universities. A good sign of institutionalization is to watch what occurs to an institutionalized department and a market-facing department that are otherwise equivalent. If both experience drops in student demand but only the market department is closed we would have support for institutionalization.

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    Robert Osley-Thomas

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Osley-Thomas, R. The Closing of Academic Departments and Programs: A Core and Periphery Approach to the Liberal Arts and Practical Arts. Minerva 58, 211–233 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-019-09389-y

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