As students and faculty raise alarms on potential cuts to programs at the University of Connecticut, UConn’s president issued a joint statement about the university’s review of dozens of low-enrollment majors.
In a message to faculty and staff Friday, President Radenka Maric and Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Anne D’Alleva characterized review of low-enrollment programs as “common sense academic ‘housekeeping’” and described the process as “essential” under the current “budget situation of the university.”
“The goal of this effort is not simply the automatic closure of undersubscribed programs,” Maric and D’Alleva wrote.
On Friday the university released a list of 70 low-enrollment undergraduate majors in the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources, College of Engineering, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Neag School of Education, School of Business, School of Fine Arts and the School of Social Work.
Programs were identified for review if less than 100 students completed majors in the program over the last five years. The low-enrollment majors include special education, philosophy, athletic training, environmental studies, art, music, agriculture, social work, geoscience, engineering physics, women’s gender and sexuality studies, Africana studies, and multiple languages.
University deans and their academic units have until the end of the month to decide whether they will recommend the suspension, closure, consolidation or continuation of these programs. According to a series of memos and documents that originated from the provost’s office, each dean must submit a summary report of planned program closures by Nov. 1, which the provost will report to the UConn Board of Trustees at their Dec. 11 meeting.
Maric and D’Alleva said the board must vote on all program closures.
Programs that wish to continue must submit an evaluation report to the provost’s office explaining why the major should remain at the university.
In a May 14 memo to academic deans, D’alleva and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Gladis Kersaint said “Many programs that may be included in this review will go through a relatively straightforward process where there is agreement at every level that the program should be continued.” However, the school leaders said they anticipate that the “review of low-completion programs will result in the closure of some programs.”
“All of these programs have been asked to justify their existence,” Christopher Vials, the president of the University of Connecticut Chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said.
Vials described the review as a “dubious” attempt to reduce spending and create efficiencies that would lead to fewer course offerings, larger classes, and threaten the UConn status as a Research 1 University.
Vials and others criticized the university for using major completions as the only metric for review, instead of recognizing programs that have high course enrollments or contribute to the university’s broader mission.
Some said they fear shrinking programs could lead to layoffs down the road and inhibit UConn’s ability to recruit competitive faculty.
In a statement to the Courant, University Spokesperson Stephanie Reitz said UConn’s projected deficit for Fiscal Year 2025 “grew from $70 million to $96 million due to the impact of salary increases negotiated through collective bargaining at the state level.”
“Additional state funding is helping to reduce the shortfall … but UConn still is reviewing options to achieve about $17.6 million in reductions to close the gap,” Reitz said.
Reitz said a “substantial portion” of the state’s support came from one-time funds. As a result, Reitz said the university is projecting a “a funding gap of $72.8 million” in Fiscal Year 2026,” and is moving forward with rescission plans, including 3% reduction across all units of the university.
Vials said it “is not clear how much, if any money the university will save by cutting small majors.
“What seems to be very clear is that the provost wants some kind of optics of blood letting … that show(s the legislature) ‘Ok, we’re drawing blood, so give us more money,’” Vials said.
“The main concern here is that they are responding to a temporary budget restraint with a permanent solution,” Vials said. “It’s not going to save them much money to cut these programs…and in doing so, they’re just going to have a far less enriched university, a far less valuable university and no doubt, a more expensive university.”
Francelis Matos, a junior majoring in sustainable plant and soil systems, described the review as “alarming.”
“It’s very worrying I may not have a degree to finish,” Matos said.
Over the last five years, approximately 80 students have completed majors in the sustainable plant and soil systems program.
Matos said students have experienced “consistent changes to degree requirements due to classes in the department being taken away or reduced.” As a result Matos said many students with the major have had to extend their degrees.
After, transferring to UConn from Connecticut State Community College to study animal science this fall, Jake Gladding said he is not worried about the university cutting the major “because of the dedicated infrastructure to the program.” However, Gladding said he is “concerned about losing educational resources tied to the field, especially after seeing the community college get hit hard by budget cuts from the statewide merger.”
Gladding said UConn has the “only in-state animal science program.” With roughly 90 students completing the program in the last five years, the animal science major fell just under the 100 completion cutoff for review.
If UConn ends up dropping the major, Gladding said he is leaving.
“I was drawn here because a niche program was offered, not because of the UConn brand,” Gladding said. “It’s not a threat, just a sad consequence that myself and others could face if majors are cut. The students and professors in these programs aren’t just data points or dollar signs.”
In a statement to the Courant, Reitz said “the Provost’s Office and University are not directing that the programs be closed or the majors be ended.”
Instead, Reitz described the process as “asking deans and department heads for their ideas on how to address the challenge of low-enrollment programs,” including advertising their major and opening Early College Experience and Core Curriculum courses to attract students.
But, in interviews with courant UConn faculty said they are already feeling pressure to make decisions that could jeopardize the strength of their departments out of fear that their programs will be eliminated in the review process.
This week, faculty in the Literatures, Cultures and Languages Department are expected to vote on how the department will move forward after every program offered by the department, except Spanish, was identified for review by the provost’s office.
The vote will decide whether the department will take its chances with the review process or combine their nine program offerings into one or two majors. The eventual decision could determine the fate of American Sign Language and Deaf Culture, Arabic and Islamic Civilizations, Chinese, Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, French and Francophone Studies, German Studies, Italian Literary and Cultural Studies, and Hebrew and Judaic Studies at the university.
Rosa Chinchilla, a professor in the department’s Spanish program described the situation as “very destructive.”
“We are being forced to make decisions that harm Spanish but protect important languages in our community like Italian, Arabic or Hebrew,” Chinchilla said. “I cannot believe that the present administration is willing to jeopardize this university as if all students’ only need are STEM courses, and not the writing skills, the communication skills, and the thoughtfulness and philosophy that are inherent in literature and cultures of our ancestors and our future.”
In their message Friday, Maric and D’Alleva addressed the “narrative taking hold that the humanities are being targeted at UConn.”
“Nothing could be further from the truth. We want to have vibrant humanities at UConn — this is essential to our mission as a flagship and Land Grant institution. At the same time, the national and global landscape for the study of the humanities and other disciplines is changing, and we need to understand and respond to those changes, including the movement of students both toward and away from the ways these programs have been structured and offered,” Maric and D’Alleva said.
“Programs do close and change over time,” Maric and D’Alleva said. “If we look at university catalogs from ten, twenty, thirty years ago and more, we’ll see numerous majors that we no longer offer.”
Michele Back, an associate professor of world languages education said she learned her program was among 15 majors under review in the NEAG School of Education on Wednesday.
In the last five years, approximately 15 students have graduated with a degree in either French or Spanish Language Education, but Back said the state cannot afford to close UConn’s world language education program.
“There are more jobs available than we have people to fill them,” Back said. “Cutting the world languages education program as well as the individual majors in the languages department would be absolutely devastating for the state of Connecticut because it would mean that there would be one less university that would be providing world language teachers to public schools.”
“I have administrators and principals that are emailing me regularly asking, ‘Do you have a Spanish teacher? Do you have a French teacher?’ And I have to say no, because of low enrollment. But if we can even get one or two or three more teachers into the public schools, that’s more teachers than they’re going to have otherwise,” Back added.
At this stage in the process, Back said there is a lot of uncertainty about how departments will move forward.
“My dean has been nothing but supportive of my program and I know that he is going to fight as much as possible because he realizes that this is a critical shortage area. It’s just — I don’t know where the breaking point is between the negotiations with the dean and the higher ups in the provost’s office,” Back said.
As the vote in the Literatures, Cultures and Languages Department approaches, Andrea Celli, an associate professor of Italian literature and cultural studies, said he does not want to make his decision “on the basis of fear.”
Celli said his department has already lost programs at the graduate and undergraduate level due to budget cuts.
Celli said it is hard for departments to expand and thrive when higher ups are constantly asking programs to reduce. He also added that increased tuition and fees make it more difficult for students to pursue their passions as opposed to more lucrative majors.
When Celli first started teaching at UConn he said the university “seemed like an interesting place for an international scholar … a place of growth, a place where to do research, a place where to work with students.” Now Celli said “It feels like the university is not interested in the work we do.”
Celli said he believes “fear has been built intentionally within the (review) process.”
“By the speed of the decisions that we are asked to make (and) by the fact that it’s not clear what the outcomes will be, it’s like roulette,” Celli said.
“Our department head is truly concerned, and she thinks that merging (majors) is a way to avoid the worst,” Celli said.
But Celli said that “sometimes it feels that going toward the scary thing is the way to not accept the fear” and in this case, the “review process and the prospect of your program being eliminated is the scary thing.”
“It makes sense to go toward it, embrace (it), and ask the provost to take responsibility for a decision and not ask us to make the decision for them,” Celli said.
